:quality(70):focal(249x124:259x134)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/SEAOIN4LQVB7RGGYEINZKU7KQ4.jpg)
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced improvements to the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, as well as an unprecedented $1 billion investment to advance partner-driven solutions to conservation on agricultural land through 81 projects.
The four Illinois projects that will receive $42.7 million in funding are as follows:
• Advancing Farmer-Led Incentives in the Midwest — The lead partner is Sand County Foundation and the project will cover certain watersheds in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.
• Metro Chicago RCPP; Expanding Land Access and Grower Resources and a Regional Food System — The lead partner is The Conservation Fund and the project will cover the counties in northeastern Illinois.
• Illinois Sand Prairie Wetlands Program — The lead partner is the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the project will cover certain counties and west-central Illinois.
• Infield Conservation for Operationalizing Vital Ecosystem Resilience, or I-COVER — The lead partner is Illinois Department of Bureau of Land and Water Resources and the project will cover the states of Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.
RCPP leverages a voluntary approach to conservation that expands the reach of conservation efforts and climate-smart agriculture through public-private partnerships.
Funding is made possible by both the Inflation Reduction Act, part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, and the farm bill.
“The unprecedented demand for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program shows how much interest there is from producers and partners for voluntary conservation on the ground,” said Tammy Willis, state conservationist in Illinois for USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“USDA is making historic investments and streamlining the program to make it work better for producers and partners. The combination of historic investments and streamlining actions will deliver conservation at a scale never achieved through RCPP.”
RCPP Improvements
NRCS has identified ways to streamline and simplify RCPP, ease the burden on employees and partners and help maximize flexibility for partners to leverage their investments with NRCS resources and capabilities.
Through a concerted effort over the past eight months — using guidance, feedback and expertise from partners, employees, leadership and stakeholders — NRCS has identified several improvements that the agency will implement in the months and years ahead. The improvements include:
• Streamlining RCPP agreements for fiscal year 2023 awards and moving to one programmatic agreement to begin implementing the RCPP projects awarded under the fiscal year 2024 notice of funding opportunity. This will allow partners to begin quicker implementation of their RCPP projects.
• Entrusting program management and negotiation to the state conservationists, who lead NRCS programs in each state. This further encourages the locally led process and ensuring the necessary technical needs and costs were realized before project proposal submission.
• Establishing parameters and expectations for easement negotiations, including availability of easement deed templates and established program processes to reduce partnership agreement negotiation and implementation time frames.
• Improving RCPP guidance and training, ensuring RCPP policies and procedures are communicated in a uniform and consistent manner.
• Enhancing existing business tools to improve the user experience while beginning development of new business tools that, through integration and automation, will reduce the time required for agreement negotiation, processing obligations and making payments to partners.
The RCPP improvements identified by Illinois NRCS for future projects are:
• Working Lands, Water and Wildlife Partnership — The Conservation Fund.
• Lake Springfield Source Water Protection Project — City, Water, Light and Power.
• Precision Conservation Management — Illinois Corn Growers Association.
• Southern Illinois Oak Ecosystem Restoration — Shawnee Resource Conservation Development Inc.
• Kinkaid Watershed Restoration Project — Kinkaid-Reed’s Creek Conservancy District.
Once improvements have been implemented, NRCS estimated that the negotiation time of RCPP agreements with U.S.-held easement activities will be reduced from 15 months to three months and from 19 months to three months with entity-held easement activities.
The RCPP improvements are coming at a critical time, as they will strengthen NRCS’ ability to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided $4.95 billion in additional funding for the program over five years. The farm bill and Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for this year’s RCPP projects.
With this $1.1 billion investment, NRCS has more than doubled the initial allocation for 2023 to capitalize on the unprecedented demand for RCPP and ensure project partners have the maximum amount of time to successfully implement conservation activities before funds expire in fiscal year 2031. Nationwide, there are:
• 77 climate-focused projects — $1.02 billion in funding.
• 22 projects focused on water quantity and conservation — more than $338 million in funding.
• 3 RCPP Classic projects led by Tribes — more than $58 million in funding.
• 16 projects supporting the protection and restoration of wildlife corridors — $216 million in funding.
• 10 projects focused on urban agriculture — $123 million in funding.
Since inception, RCPP has made 717 awards involving over 4,000 partner organizations. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, USDA has enrolled more farmers and more acres in voluntary conservation programs than at any point in history, following a backlog that has existed for years.
In 2023, USDA enrolled nearly 5,300 additional producers in conservation programs across all 50 states — above what otherwise would have been possible through farm bill and appropriations funding — which will provide significant climate mitigation benefits.