Climate-Smart Commodities Project Grants

Overview

Climate-Smart Commodities

_Strengthening Grassroots Leadership & Capacity to Scale Climate-Smart Systems and Facilitate Historically Underserved Producers' Access to Markets_

Background

NACD recognizes the role that farmers, ranchers, and forest stewards can play to reduce and sequester greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change.

The National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) is proud to be a recipient of a USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant. Through this program, NACD will competitively select and fund a series of locally-led pilot projects across the U.S. and territories. We anticipate reaching 1,400 producers, getting conservation on over 430,000 acres, and reducing or sequestering over 1.5 million metric tons of CO2e.

NACD is seeking projects that foster private-public partnerships, scale implementation of climate-smart practices, advance Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV), and support producer participation in resulting markets. Projects will be competitively selected and should:

* Leverage the locally-led conservation delivery system to provide the education and technical assistance needed to transition to climate-smart production systems.
* Develop economic opportunities within communities and build local capacity that can sustain projects and partnerships beyond the life of the grant.
* Seek to mitigate historical and systemic barriers within the broader food system to increase the participation of underserved producers and communities.
* Provide external match, leverage, or additional financial incentives to producers, more holistically de-risking their transition to climate-smart systems and supporting their long-term economic viability.

NACD’s total subaward budget is nearly $80 million. Approximately $42 million is dedicated to producer incentives to implement conservation practices. The remaining funds will be awarded for project implementation.

Funding: $80 million, approximately $42 million dedicated to financial incentives to producers to implement climate-smart practices

Match: The maximum award is $5.75 million per project

* Pool A: > $2.5 million - $5.75 million (50% or 1:1 match)
* Pool B: > $1 million - $2.5 million (30% match)
* Pool C: > $750,000 - $1 million (20% match)
*  Pool D: $750,000 and below (15% match)

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* Phase 1 is open to any interested entity, public or private. Please note, however, that projects and partnerships must involve a conservation district or Tribal conservation district, state/territory association of conservation districts, resource conservation & development council, and/or Tribal government or inter-tribal consortium.