National Sorghum Seeks More Producers to Participate in Climate Smart Program

National Sorghum Producers is rounding the corner of the two-year milestone of being awarded one of USDA's Climate Smart Grants. Executive Director Greg Ruehle.

“The climate smart grant that sorghum was awarded was for the very practice of identifying bushels that ultimately could flow into biofuels production. So great synergy between what we anticipate coming through 45Z and the work that we're doing today in terms of gathering that data for the grant really.”

Ruehle says that NSP has the opportunity to pay out $50 - $55 an acre in order to gather the data, and they are eager to onboard more farmers to join the ones who kick started this grant.

“So last year was the first year of the climate Smart Grant, we did a very limited rollout wanted to kind of work the bugs out last year, we put about $50,000 of grants out to growers 10,000 acres by 25. Growers kind of scattered them throughout sorghum’s geography to make sure that we didn't have regional challenges to address this year. We upped that goal tremendously for this year and the four years that follow to a goal of a million acres of data being captured and over 40 million acres of payments being made directly to growers $42 million to be delivered directly to growers for them capturing that climate smart information and providing the data back to us.”