The Agriculture Department will be awarding $90 million for 53 projects through a program aimed at developing new technologies and approaches for conservation efforts, Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday.
The money — some of which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act — is being allocated through the Conservation Innovation Grants program, which funds tool development and on-farm trials for habitat conservation, forestry, energy conservation, economics and indigenous knowledge projects. Around $69.7 million is going to on-farm trials projects, while $20.2 million will be put toward projects in the "classic" segment of the program, which focuses on the creation of practices and technologies.
“Over the last 20 years, USDA’s Conservation Innovation Grants have helped spur new tools and technologies to conserve natural resources, build resilience in producers’ operations and improve their bottom lines," Vilsack said. "Thanks to President Biden’s historic Inflation Reduction Act, we are able to further empower our conservation partners, as well as help meet the demand from producers, to engage in conservation practices that are good for profitable farming, good for rural economies and good for the climate."
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Vilsack made the announcement in a visit to Pennsylvania, where two of the funded projects are based. One, according to a USDA press release, will test PaddockTrac, a precision ag technology meant to gauge the availability of feed on dairy farms. Another, led by The Nature Conservancy ,aims to assist farmers with nutrient management in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
The largest grant — $5 million — was awarded to Minority Farmers of the South through the On-Farm Trials signup. The three-year project, according to a summary, will use drone-collected data to precisely irrigate and apply nutrients to over 12,000 acres of minority-owned land in Mississippi.
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