The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) submitted comments this week to the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) on how funding in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for key NRCS conservation programs should be implemented to encourage farmer adoption of climate-smart practices.
ACE CEO Brian Jennings and Jonathon Lehman, founder of the consulting group Cultivating Conservation, provided comments to NRCS, detailing key findings from ACE’s South Dakota-based Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) project currently underway.
ACE and its project partners are currently implementing the Expanding Soil Health Through Carbon Markets Alternative Funding Arrangement (AFA) RCPP in South Dakota to spur farmer adoption of climate-smart practices, to quantify the resulting carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits, and to help farmers monetize these gains in existing carbon markets to ensure the durability of climate-smart practice application.
“Using NRCS resources to unlock access to lucrative carbon markets is the ultimate way to maximize improvement in nitrogen losses, and the reduction, capture, avoidance, or sequestration of carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide emissions, associated with agricultural production,” the comments state.
ACE and Cultivating are working to expand upon the successful RCPP project using IRA resources which would greatly speed NRCS’ implementation of IRA directives and has bipartisan Congressional support.