$500 MILLION AVAILABLE FOR Conservation Projects!
Impact
RCPP proposals must offer effective and compelling solutions that address one or more natural resource concerns to help solve natural resource challenges. Partners are responsible for evaluating a project’s outcomes.
Partner Contributions
By statute, partners are responsible for identifying any combination of cash and in-kind support that provides a significant portion of the overall costs of the project. Proposals will be evaluated, in part, on the contribution of non-Federal resources to the project. NRCS makes investments through the RCPP to leverage the partner’s investments in the project.
Partnerships and Management
NRCS seeks projects that integrate multiple conservation approaches, implement new technologies, build new partnerships, or effectively employ program flexibilities to deliver conservation solutions. Partners must have experience, expertise, and capacity for managing the partnership and project, providing outreach to producers, quantifying the environmental (and when possible, economic and social) outcomes of an RCPP project, and consistently providing technical assistance that follows NRCS or negotiated project-specific technical requirements. RCPP ranking criteria give priority consideration to applicants that meaningfully engage historically underserved farmers and ranchers as well as those that coordinate with other Federal, State, Tribal, or local efforts.
Funding Overview
Up to $500 million will be available through the RCPP for the fiscal year 2023, of which up to $50 million will prioritize AFAs with Indian Tribes.
The minimum funding amount is $250,000. The maximum funding amount is $25,000,000.
There is a 25 percent cost-sharing for this program.
Eligible Applicants
- An agricultural or silvicultural producer association or other group of producers.
- A state or unit of local government.
- An Indian Tribe.
- A farmer cooperative.
- A water district, irrigation district, acequia, rural water district or association, or other organization with specific water delivery authority to agricultural producers.
- A municipal water or wastewater treatment entity.
- An institution of higher education.
- An organization, business or entity with an established history of working cooperatively with producers, as determined by NRCS, to address:a. local conservation priorities related to agricultural production, wildlife habitat development, or nonindustrial private forest land management; orb. critical watershed-scale soil erosion, water quality, sediment reduction, or other natural resource issues.
- An entity, such as an Indian Tribe, state government, local government, or a non-governmental organization, that has a farmland or grassland protection program that purchases agricultural land easements, as defined in 7 CFR 1468.3. 10. A conservation district.
Eligible Activities
- Land management
- Land rental
- Entity-held easements
- U.S. held easements (for RCPP Classic only)
- Public works and watersheds
A single RCPP project application can propose to employ any combination of these eligible activity types as part of an RCPP project.
