California Dairy Research Foundation Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Project

Notice: _On April 14, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the cancellation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). The USDA plans to reform the program into the Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative. Contact your local USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) for more information on how to apply to the AMP initiative. _

This project will build climate-smart dairy markets and provide financial incentives for dairy producers to adopt climate-smart manure management practices to reduce methane emissions, leveraging matching funding from non-federal sources. Financial incentives are planned on a per-cow basis to producers to implement vermifiltration, evaporative liquid waste processing systems, subsurface drip fertigation using liquid manure, weeping walls, aerated static compost piles, and others.

On average producers will likely receive incentives that account for 30 to 50 percent of their total costs of CSAF practice adoption, while also receiving a premium for the climate-smart milk. This project plans to utilize partnerships designed to market climate-smart milk for a higher premium and conduct a consumer market messaging analysis to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of approaches to best promote climate-smart milk in multiple market channels.

Commercial California dairy operations. Individual dairy farmers apply directly — this is a competitive state grant round, not a partner enrollment. Criteria below are from the 2026 Dairy Plus Program Request for Grant Applications (RGA), "Eligibility and Exclusions," pp. 2-4.

Who and where. "California farmers, ranchers, and California Native American Tribes are eligible to apply. Producers receiving grant award funds must be located in California with a physical California business address."

The site must be a working commercial dairy. "The project site must be in a commercial California dairy operation," where "A dairy operation is defined as an entity that operates a dairy herd, which produces milk or cream commercially, and whose bulk milk or bulk cream is received or handled by any distributor, manufacturer, or any nonprofit cooperative association of dairy producers."

FSA registration is required. "Producers receiving grant award funds must be registered with the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) for the specific farm/tract information for all tracts. Note: One farm per tract is eligible for award." And "Only one FSA-registered entity/producer name is eligible for an award in each solicitation round" — if you run several dairies under one FSA name, only one can be funded per round.

You must already have a manure-management project to build on. This is the test most likely to disqualify an otherwise eligible dairy. Eligible project types are limited to: an "In-progress or previous AMMP recipient," an "In-progress or previous DDRDP recipient," or an "In-progress or already operational 'AMMP approved practice/AMMP-like' system" or "'DDRDP approved practice/DDRDP-like' system" proposing a Dairy Plus project. A dairy with no existing or in-progress alternative-manure-management or digester system does not fit. Note the RGA does allow: "Any previous AMMP grant recipient with an in-progress or closed-out project, or dairies that have an in-progress or already implemented AMMP-like practice, may be eligible to apply regardless of the past practice type implemented."

The practice must be on the list. Advanced manure management only — vermifiltration, weeping wall ("must have a minimum of two cells"), advanced solid-liquid separation with flocculants and/or bead filters, or centrifuge separation; optionally paired with subsurface drip irrigation using liquid manure or aerated composting. Post-digester variants apply for DDRDP-track projects. Digester and biogas end-use equipment itself is expressly not fundable, nor is anything that "propose[s] an increase in baseline emissions GHG (e.g., increasing herd size)."

Priority, not restriction. "In alignment with USDA, CDFA will prioritize awards to beginning, veteran, socially disadvantaged, and/or limited resource farmers or ranchers, by carving out a minimum of 10% of Dairy Plus Program funds (or approximately $7,500,000) to be granted to members of these groups throughout the program's lifetime." You do not need to be in one of those groups to apply.

No herd-size minimum or acreage minimum is published. The 2026 round is open, with applications due 5:00 p.m. PT on Monday, September 14, 2026, through CDFA's online grant system.

Competitive reimbursement grants for advanced manure management, sized per cow. Terms below are from the 2026 Request for Grant Applications (RGA).

• Award cap: "Project funding award cap at $750 per cow, for a maximum of $1,250,000 per project." The funding-scenario table repeats this for every eligible practice as "Up to $1.25 M ($750/cow)."

• Match: none required. "Cost share, including matching funds and in-kind contributions, is not required for the 2026 Dairy Plus Program; however, cost share is encouraged to demonstrate commitment to the project." Importantly, it is not scored on amount — "Reviewers will consider whether cost share is provided as evidence of commitment to the project, but they will not reward applicants for proposing a greater share than other applicants." Prior AMMP and DDRDP grant awards cannot serve as match.

• Payment timing: "Grants are paid out on a reimbursement basis following invoice submission by the awardee." You front the money.

• Grant term: "The maximum grant term will be 12 months initially, with the possibility of 24 months pending extension of contract end date approval from USDA. Awarded projects must be complete and operational no later than 12 months from the date of the award." For the 2026 round the agreement is "initially anticipated to begin on March 1, 2027, and end on February 29, 2028."

• Budget limit within a project: the project "may include a maximum of 25% of the budget for the improvement of the existing and/or previously funded, primary manure management system, with the exception of anaerobic digester and biogas end-use systems."

• Underserved carve-out: CDFA is "carving out a minimum of 10% of Dairy Plus Program funds (or approximately $7,500,000) to be granted to" beginning, veteran, socially disadvantaged and/or limited-resource farmers and ranchers over the program's lifetime. Note: "Gender alone is not a covered group for the purposes of USDA AMP/Dairy Plus programs."

• CDFA "reserves the right to offer an award amount different from the amount requested."

• One award per producer identity: "Only one FSA-registered entity/producer name is eligible for an award in each solicitation round."

Round size: "The 2026 Dairy Plus Program will make approximately $34 million available." Track record: two prior rounds (2023, 2024) funded 37 projects totalling $43.6 million. Applications for the 2026 round are due 5:00 p.m. PT Monday, September 14, 2026.

Grants applications are closed for 2024. Applications will open in spring 2025. For more information, see the website.