Strengthening Grassroots Leadership and Capacity to Scale Climate-Smart Production Systems and Facilitate Underserved Producers' Access to Markets

This project will work through its network of 3,000 conservation districts throughout the nation to grow and advance grassroots efforts to ensure producers and local communities are prepared to meet the demand and have access to climate-smart commodity markets. Project plans to support implementation of climate-smart practices like cover crops, nutrient management plans, forest stand management, prescribed grazing and forage and biomass planting.

Planned marketing efforts include identifying strategies for building acres or products. The project plans to use COMET-Planner and/or other data models (e.g., Truterra Sustainability Tool, SYMFONI) to identify practice options that maximize carbon sequestration.

HabiTerre’s technology and quantification solution – SYMFONI – captures the trade-offs and synergistic effects of the system of conservation practices implemented; HabiTerre plans to develop a farmer-facing dashboard that summarizes producers’ historical GHG emissions (e.g., soil organic carbon changes, N2O emissions, and CH4 emissions/uptake) at the field and farm levels. NACD plans to verify soil organic carbon (SOC) changes through soil sampling on a representative subset of fields.

The project plans to support development of climate-smart market opportunities that benefit local economies and identify strategies for bundling acres or products, provide additional education on Scope 3 protocols and traceability, and what is needed to participate in climate-smart commodity markets. NACD also plans to cultivate national partnerships that facilitate access to growing climate-smart markets.

Of the producers enrolled, over half are planned to be underserved producers.  The project also plans to invest in the Indian Nations Conservation Alliance (INCA) and organizations that serve tribal producers, as well as Rural Coalition and their members, the Rural Advancement Fund of the National Sharecroppers Fund and Kansas Black Farmers Association to strengthen Conservation Districts’ outreach to historically underserved communities and producers.