Consumers are increasingly voicing that they want to understand more about where their food is coming from and how it is raised. This is in parallel with an increase in demand for more sustainably-produced food and fiber products. This project will enable producers to showcase and be rewarded for their resource stewardship by creating new market opportunities.
Incentives for Producers
- Incentive payments for implementing climate-smart land management practices:
- Prescribed grazing and burning
- Cover crop planting
- Forage and range planting
- Silvopasture
- Upland wildlife habitat management
- Riparian herbaceous cover
- Customized technical assistance
- 30% of funds to historically underserved producers
- Land and producer impact:
- 360+ producers
- 3 million acres
- $24 million in incentive payments to producers
- $22 million in direct producer benefits
- 329,393 tonnes of CO2 equivalence
- Access to market premiums for beef and bison calves raised using climate-smart practices
Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MMRV)
- Quantify carbon, GHG and ecosystem benefits:
- Soil carbon
- Soil microbial community
- Enteric GHG emissions
- Biodiversity monitoring
- Assess novel/lower-cost technologies for widespread use.
- Use data to calculate carbon sequestration and mitigation for each practice.
- Producer interface will allow real-time visualization of land management efforts and guide future decisions.
Market Development
- Development of climate-smart beef and bison commodity markets that reward producers for the implementation of GHG-reducing practices to meet consumer demand and advance supply chain sustainability goals
- Beef Approach: Development of supply shed environmental outcome approach that can reward producers for GHG reductions.
- Bison Approach: Development of a 'certified' labeling system that can be applied to bison raised with approved GHG-reducing practices and traced through the supply chain .
- Instill confidence in beef and bison consumers through data collected via MMRV.
- Producer and market impact:
- 85,000 head of beef/27,000 head of bison.
- $9,500,000 in premiums for beef and bison calves.