The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is accepting proposals for its Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP).
Donor Name: Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 08/17/2023
Size of the Grant: $25,000,000
Grant Duration: 5 years
Details:
The RCPP promotes the coordination of NRCS conservation activities with partners that contribute a significant portion of the overall costs of a project. This coordination expands their ability to address resource concerns at farm, watershed, and regional scales. Through the RCPP, NRCS coinvests with partners to implement projects that address conservation challenges and provide measurable improvements and outcomes for resource concerns.
Using guidance contained in this notice, potential RCPP partners propose projects that generate conservation benefits by addressing specific natural resource objectives in a state or multistate area or address one or more priority resource concerns within an NRCS-designated critical conservation area (CCA). NRCS and partners collaborate to design, promote, and implement RCPP projects on agricultural and nonindustrial private forest land. Through the RCPP, NRCS may provide both financial and technical assistance funds to project partners and producers to carry out projects. RCPP proposals are evaluated through a competitive proposal process based on three criteria: quantifiable impact, partner contributions, and partnership and management.
NRCS is actively working on improving the delivery and administration of the RCPP. Some of the improvements will be directed at areas such as simplifying and reducing the number of agreements while still complying with statutory and regulatory requirements, streamlining and reducing evaluation criteria, reducing lengthy RCPP easement transactions, improving the RCPP Portal, consistent guidance and training for employees and partners, as well as simplifying the technical assistance structure.
RCPP AFAs are intended to support projects and approaches that cannot be effectively carried out through RCPP Classic. RCPP AFA applications must describe the conservation approach they are proposing. The following are examples of project types that might be implemented through RCPP AFA:
- projects that use innovative approaches to leverage the Federal investment in conservation,
- projects that deploy a pay-for-performance conservation approach, and
- projects that seek large-scale infrastructure investments that generate conservation benefits for agricultural producers and nonindustrial private forest owners.
Goals of the Program
Through RCPP, NRCS employs a co-investment approach through which the agency and partners collaborate to implement natural resource conservation activities. The following are four key principles of RCPP.
- 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.
Priorities
- Climate Smart Agriculture
- NRCS strongly encourages applications that provide focus on climate mitigation. The Inflation Reduction Act specifically provides funds for RCPP to support the implementation of conservation projects that assist producers and private landowners in directly improving soil carbon, reducing nitrogen losses, or reducing, capturing, avoiding or sequestering carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide emissions.
- Urban Agriculture
- NRCS strongly encourages submitting RCPP proposals that address the conservation needs of urban farmers in metropolitan areas. Interest in urban agriculture continues to grow, and urban farmers face unique natural resource concerns related to energy conservation, water conservation, soil health, and the long-term protection of land
- Historically Underserved Farmers and Ranchers
- The RCPP’s authorizing language requires NRCS and RCPP partners to conduct outreach to historically underserved (HU) farmers and ranchers to encourage participation in RCPP projects. RCPP is also a Justice40 covered program, which is an initiative established under Executive Order 14008. NRCS defines five groups of HU farmers or ranchers: (1) beginning, (2) limited resource, (3) socially disadvantaged, (4) veterans, and (5) Indian Tribes.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $500,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $25,000,000
- Award Floor: $250,000
Project Period
RCPP funds awarded at the time the agreement is executed are committed by NRCS for 5 years.
Eligible Activities
RCPP eligible activities are based on existing USDA programs referred to as “covered programs” Project proposals must explicitly request funding for at least one of the following RCPP eligible activity types:
- Land management
- Land rental
- Entity-held easements
- U.S. held easements (for RCPP Classic only)
- Public works and watersheds
Eligibility Criteria
Entities that are classified as one of the following organizational types can serve as an eligible RCPP partner:
- 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; or b. 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 nongovernmental organization, that has a farmland or grassland protection program that purchases agricultural land easements.
- A conservation district
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
