USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Emphasizes Climate-Smart Applications

Head of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Terry Cosby talks about climate-smart conservation practices, and the partnership between landowners and NRCS technical staff to put such practices into action.

“Most of our practices, some of them are standalone, but some of them work better when they're in conjunction with other things. There's talk about cover crops, we've really focused on a lot of that and we are really done well talking about let's get some type of cover on this ground and not leave the fallow that has been pretty popular when we talk about no till farming, reducing the amount of inputs and reducing the amount of trips across the field. And when you look at it, we took about our grazing systems and going out and making sure you're productive as well as your cattle is concerned and having grass rather than the we have 175 different standards in our repertoire. And if you name it, we probably got it and our professionals out there are the ones that come out and talk and say hey, these are some recommendations we'd like to make and what do you think about this and sometimes the producer pretty much knows what they want to do is just refining it and talking and seeing how they will fit in some of these programs. And so it works pretty well with this one one-on-one contact is one one-on-one discussion in the field with the producer and it's because of long-term partnership.”

Applications for fiscal year 2024 Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program with a focus on climate smart farming are now being accepted at all USDA Service Center locations.