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The National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition (“NSAC”) noted in a recent article that the U.S. Department of Agriculture‘s Natural Resources Conservation Service (“NRCS”) has made available $25 million through the Conservation Innovation Grant (“CIG”) program.

The CIG program is stated to be a sub-program of the NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

CIGs support the development and testing of “promising new conservation technologies and approaches.” The goal is to make them available for use as quickly as possible by conservation-minded farmers and ranchers.

NSAC states that the CIG funding can be used to fund single or multi-year projects. However, the projects may not exceed three years.

The CIG announced by NRCS is specifically targeted for on-farm conservation innovation trials. NRCS has identified priority topics for such trials as:

• Irrigation management technologies
• Precision agriculture technologies and strategies
• Management technologies and strategies

A link to the article can be found here.