A Vibrant Future

Pilot Projects for Climate-Smart Fruit and Vegetable Production, Marketing, and Valuation of Ecosystem Services

This project will incentivize growers of specialty crops to adopt climate-smart production using practices like tillage management, alley cropping, water management and soil amendments, in order to establish consumer-driven climate-smart markets for fruits and vegetables grown using climate-smart practices. The project aims to develop tools for marketing climate-smart commodities that will be suitable for specialty crop growers, and could be adoptable by the larger ag industry.

This would include a consumer-focused “climate-smart seal” to be affixed to fruits and vegetables and/or traceable and tradeable “climate-smart benefits bundles (CSBB)” that growers can use in financial transactions.

IFPA is looking to recruit growers of crops that would be most amenable to Climate Smart Practices primarily in: California, Florida, and Mississippi. We will also consider clusters of growers in other states.

Examples of eligible specialty crops:

• Annuals: Strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, kale, specialty greens, sweet potatoes

• Perennials (Short-Lived): Blueberries, cane berries

• Perennials (Long-Lived): Vineyards, Orchards

Funding will be customized based on the grower’s chosen practice and acreage under climate smart practices.

There are two types of funding:

1. Partial off-set of direct costs

   • Up to $10,000/year to offset approximately 80% of direct cost of materials, soil testing, equipment, labor, and technical support

2. Cash incentives

   1. Will be determined based on acreage committed, practice selected, percentage of total acreage committed to a practice

• Webinar for growers