ST. LOUIS — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service recently awarded the National Corn Growers Association and its Soil Health Partnership a $1 million Conservation Innovation Grant to help farmers better understand and adopt farming practices that help reduce climate change impacts.
As a result, Monsanto announced Sept. 23 it also intends to make an additional investment of $1.6 million in this collaborative effort to help provide expertise, tools and needed resources to further develop a system that will help verify and quantify greenhouse gas reductions from carbon smart farming practices.
USDA’s CIG program fosters innovation in conservation tools and strategies to improve things like on-farm energy and fertilizer use as well as market-based strategies to improve water quality or mitigate climate change.
About the project
The National Corn Growers Association and partners propose to develop a model for corporations and other entities to drive conservation adoption and achieve greenhouse gas reductions and water quality co-benefits.
Farmers enrolled in the Soil Health Partnership program will be invited to participate in the carbon reduction incentive system, in which growers are paid by corporations to sequester carbon in their soil.
Monsanto, in conjunction with the CIG project partners (NCGA, AgSolver, Applied GeoSolutions, DNDC-ART, Climate Smart Group and CropGrowers), will develop a framework that draws on existing greenhouse gas modeling science, emerging verification technologies (satellite data), and proven precision business planning methods to drive adoption of conservation practices and validate that farmers are helping achieve greenhouse gas reductions.
“To significantly scale up greenhouse gas mitigation practices, a sustainable agriculture systems approach is needed that is simpler and more cost-effective for the farmer,” said Michael Lohuis, Ph.D., Monsanto’s director of ag environmental strategy.
“The system being developed will help remove barriers to confirming adoption of best practices and to quantify the benefits these innovative farm practices can have to air, soil and water quality.”
