USDA is investing $10 million in an initiative to sample and measure soil carbon on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres to quantify the climate benefits of the program.
“These CRP Climate Change Mitigation Assessment Initiative projects will survey, sample and measure the climate benefits of land enrolled in CRP conservation practice types over time,” said Zach Ducheneaux, Farm Service Agency administrator. “This data will help USDA better target CRP practices to achieve continued climate wins across environmentally sensitive lands while strengthening our modeling and conservation planning resources for all producers.”
The initiative will begin implementation in fall 2021, with three partners who will sample three categories of CRP practice types: perennial grass, trees and wetlands. The data collected will be used to bolster COMET-Farm and COMET-Planner tools, which enable producers to evaluate potential carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emission reductions.
