Establishing Climate-Smart Commodities with Reduced Greenhouse Gas Footprints to Enhance Environmental and Economic Sustainability in the Texas High Plains

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. _

Texas Tech University's Texas High Plains Climate-Smart Commodities project tests three climate-smart strategies on working farms: sorghum-cotton rotation, no-till, and multispecies cover crops. It tracks environmental and economic benefits to producers with remote sensing and soil-moisture sensing. Findings are shared through the Texas Alliance for Water Conservation's hands-on farm walks and demonstrations.

The project brings together a group of 20 producers across 10 Texas High Plains counties. Its USDA agreement runs through October 31, 2028.

• Producers in the Texas High Plains.

• The project's cohort of 20 producers across 10 Texas counties has already been identified, from Hispanic, veteran, women, beginning-farmer and early-adopter producers. Ask the project team whether more places are open.

• You record detailed information on your farming activities and inputs for the project.

• $750 a year to each participating producer, for the time spent recording farming activities and inputs.

• A $10-per-acre incentive for adopting the project's practices.

• Capacitance probes or other soil-moisture sensors for each field site, including the cost of capturing and transferring real-time data.

• Soil sampling and analysis several times a year, with the data shared with you.

• Weather stations at field sites where needed, for evapotranspiration-based irrigation scheduling.

Contact one of the program contacts to start the application process. The team first checks whether the program fits your operation. If it does, you sign a contract, choose the practices to implement, and work with the project team for the rest of the project.

Program contacts: Krishna Jagadish (kjagadish.sv@ttu.edu), Samantha Borgstedt (Samantha.Borgstedt@ttu.edu) and Deidra Howell (deihowell@ttu.edu).