Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Thursday announced $26 million in Conservation Innovation Grants awarded by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service to entities across the nation for projects that test and prove innovative approaches to conserving America's private lands.

Over $3.7 million in grants will benefit Pennsylvania and its watersheds.

The grant winners will demonstrate innovative approaches to improving soil health, increasing pollinator and wildlife habitat, protecting water quality and producing on-farm energy savings. Grant recipients will pay 50 percent of all project costs.

"We're announcing 59 grants today in 47 states that will help some of America's top agricultural and conservation institutions, foundations and businesses develop unique approaches to enhancing and protecting natural resources on agricultural lands," Vilsack said. "The grants will help spur creativity and problem-solving to benefit conservation-minded farmers and ranchers. Everyone who relies on our nation's natural resources for clean water, food and fiber, for their way of life, will benefit from these grants."

CIG PA Grants

The grants benefiting Pennsylvania include:

-- The Pennsylvania State University (NY, PA, MD)- $688,684: Maximizing Conservation in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed with an Innovative New Three-way Interseeder to Early Establishment of Cover Crops in No-till Corn and Soybean: This project proposes to establish on-farm winter cover crop interseeding demonstration trials across the Chesapeake Bay watershed and document performance of the three-way interseeder. The project will also demonstrate the nutrient management benefits of coupling cover crop interseeding strategies with an online nutrient management tool (Adapt-N) and create case studies of farmers It will also develop region-specific cover crop interseeding recommendations for the Chesapeake Bay watershed and provide this information to producers through innovative content delivery.

-- The Pennsylvania State University- $801,535: Refining and Harmonizing Phosphorus (P) Indices in the Chesapeake Bay Region to Improve Critical Source Area Identification and to Address Nutrient Management Priorities: This regional project will coordinate the testing and revision of phosphorous management tools within the states encompassing the Chesapeake Bay watershed, with general objectives to harmonize site assessment and nutrient management recommendations with the NRCS 590 standard and to promote consistency within each of the Bay's four major physiographic provinces. This regional project is one of four (three regional, one national) proposed under coordination of SERA-17, with goals to support the refinement of state Phosphorous Indices and to demonstrate their accuracy in identifying the magnitude and extent of phosphorous loss risk and their utility to improve water quality. The proposed project will promote innovations in phosphorous management at state (harmonizing Phosphorous Indices) and local (changes in behavior of farmers and/or technical service providers developing and implementing Phosphorous Indices) levels to enhance the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The project involves six objectives designed to ensure that refinement of Phosphorous Indices is grounded in the best available science, reflects local conditions and concerns and anticipates impacts to water quality and farm management.

-- University Of Delaware (DE, AR, PA)- $967,461: Innovative Approaches to Capture Nitrogen and Air Pollutant Emissions from Poultry Operations: The overall goal of the project is to help broiler producers adopt viable, practical, economical and effective strategies to improve their environmental performance, meet applicable federal and state requirements on air and water quality and to achieve strong, sustainable productive and profitable broiler producing operations. Demonstration sites will be broiler producers in Arkansas, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Nutrient Trading

In the Chesapeake Bay, five awardees will be facilitating and building infrastructure for water quality trading markets: the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Inc.; Chesapeake Bay Foundation; Borough of Chambersburg; Commonwealth of Virginia, Department of Conservation & Recreation; and Maryland Department of Agriculture.

NRCS will work with the grantees to form a water quality trading network, a forum to share ideas, coordinate program development and evaluate program components.

The projects benefiting Pennsylvania include:

-- Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Inc. (PA, MD, VA)- $437,756: Facilitating Forest-based Offsets in Water Quality Trading: This project proposes to harmonize state and local agency forest mitigation and trading requirements to ease adoption by agricultural producers, aggregators and credit buyers like developers. The project will test and refine market infrastructure, so it is immediately useful for landowners, public programs and credit buyers. It will also complete 8-10 forest-based practice pilot projects with Environmental Quality Incentives Program-eligible producers in southern Maryland to test forest protocols and market infrastructure. The project will also assist local governments in meeting the nutrient and sediment goals in their Watershed Implementation Plans by simplifying the implementation of forest based offsets and credits and easing their workload by establishing the Chesapeake Forests Offset Bank.

-- Borough of Chambersburg- $112,050: Local Utilization of Agricultural Credits Program: The purpose of the program is to provide credit aggregation, inter-basin trading and baseline and threshold compliance barrier solutions relating to the Pennsylvania Nutrient Trading Program by creating an aggregation program for credits generated by cover crop and conservation tillage best management practices (BMPs) and with education and outreach targeted to the Commonwealth’s Plain Sect agricultural operators. The Program will develop and implement a three-year local program to aggregate credits generated through agricultural BMPs, cover crop and no-till/conservation tillage practices on farms in three counties covering two watersheds.

-- Chesapeake Bay Foundation- $700,880: Operationalizing Water Quality Trading in the Chesapeake Bay: This project proposes to conduct outreach to roughly 200 Environmental Quality Incentives Program eligible farmers in Virginia and Pennsylvania to determine eligibility for participation in trading and Agricultural Certainty programs, if applicable. The project will assess the potential for the supply of credits from agricultural producers using in-place state policies for establishing the agricultural baseline. It will also compare policies for setting the trading baseline in Pennsylvania and Virginia and the practice-based resource management plan approach in Virginia with performance-based approaches using the multi-state trading tool. The results can be used to inform state policies on these issues, to link these policies with compliance with the total maximum daily load requirements, and to facilitate multi-state trading opportunities. The project will seek feedback from producers as and state policymakers on the multi-state trading tool to help improve the tool and add features that are consistent with ongoing and future developments in state trading policies and user needs.

For more information, visit USDA’s Conservation Innovation Grants webpage.

9/3/2012