Since its inception two decades ago, USDA’s Conservation Innovation Grant program has provided significant investment in new approaches and technologies in the Natural Resources Conservation realm.

“The Conservation Innovation Grants Program. It’s a competitive program that NRCS offers to really support development of new tools, new approaches and practices and up and coming technologies to really further our natural resource conservation on private lands.”

Karen Woodrich of the Natural Resources Conservation Service says almost $542 million in investments have supported CIG projects nationwide since 2004.

“The national CIG has two parts. One is our on-farm, conservation, innovation trials, and our other is our CIG, what we call Classic. Classic is used to develop new tools and technologies. Our on-farm trials are more about widespread adoption and evaluation of some of our innovative conservation approaches. We’re investing $90 million in 53 Conservation Innovation Grant projects, and more than $69.7 million of that is on-farm trials.”

In terms of the focus within each category of Conservation Innovation Grants for 2024…

“Our on-farm trials really focused on a couple of things: irrigation water management, technologies, nutrient management, feed management and enteric methane reduction. And our classic CIGs are more of our traditional forestry, habitat, energy, economics, kind of activities.”

The end goals of CIG funded projects, according to Woodrich…

“We’re looking for creative problem solving and innovation. So the CIG partners really look at addressing our water quality, water quantity, air quality, soil health and wildlife habitat challenges, at same time trying to improve ag operations.”