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Some of the conservation projects under a $3.1 billion program that has been rebranded from a focus on climate-smart agriculture to expanding markets for farmers are slowly moving toward approval by USDA.
In January 2025, USDA announced it was changing the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program (PCSC), which it called a “Biden Era Climate Slush Fund,” to the Advancing Markets for Producers program (AMP), which shifted the main focus from gathering data on greenhouse gas reductions to generating markets for farm products.
But participants say there are still barriers to adoption, from the need for environmental evaluations by the Natural Resources Conservation Service to the lack of technical assistance due to changes in the program. USDA also has yet to set up a dedicated website showing which AMP projects have received approval and providing information on how farmers can sign up.
“How can farmers enroll in the ones that have been approved?” asks Bruce Knight, a consultant with Strategic Conservation Solutions and a former NRCS chief. “So, 65% of the money is supposed to go to farmers. How are they ensuring that that happens by getting farmers enrolled and understanding and participating?”
The biggest change was a new requirement that 65% of the funding for each project go to producers.
Only about 10% of the 135 originally funded PCSC projects were able to meet that threshold, leaving others scrambling to amend their projects during a period when USDA was offering employee buyouts that have left NRCS with fewer people to work with farmers.
More than 1,300 counties lost NRCS staff in 2025, with 144 losing all of their staff by the end of the year, according to an analysis conducted by Prospect Partners.
Participants and people following the program who spoke with Agri-Pulse also said USDA has yet to provide clear direction on how projects should report their progress. (USDA did not respond to questions about the program, including how many AMP projects have been approved.)
Still, a year after the changeover, some projects have had their AMP amendments approved and are moving ahead.
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Tamara Muruetagoiena (Facebook photo)The International Fresh Produce Association, for example, plans to implement a $15 million project focusing on specialty crop producers in California and Washington.
IFPA Vice President of Sustainability Tamara Muruetagoiena says the organization has about 70 producers enrolled in the project and is looking for 30 more. “We're orchard-heavy, and we'd love more strawberries or more veggies,” she says.
In order to qualify under the new 65% payment requirement, Muruetagoiena says IFPA had to alter the composition of its partners to move from measuring GHGs to focus on marketing.
“We were a little bit ambitious on the data we were thinking about, because it was [a] climate-smart [project],” she said.
While she’s excited the project is moving forward, Muruetagoiena says it’s taking time for producers to complete the CPA-52 form required by NRCS before implementing practices.
“Without a signed CPA-52, no conservation practice can proceed,” Isabelle Talkington, a farmer success associate at FarmRaise, said in a web post last fall. FarmRaise simplifies conservation funding applications for farmers.
Practices affected include “cover cropping, irrigation water management, or nutrient applications; livestock systems like waste storage and grazing; and landscape protections like riparian buffers or wetland restoration,” Talkington wrote.
Muruetagoiena says filling out the form has delayed the project’s start. She also wonders why “mild” nutrient management practices that replace the use of synthetic fertilizer would “merit a full-blown environmental evaluation.”
It is “bureaucratically taxing, time-consuming, and money-consuming, because you’ve got to work with the growers on that. That’s what we’re really puzzled with right now.”
But she emphasizes that despite the bureaucratic hurdles, the results will be worth it. “Our growers are so excited about it,” she says.
Leah Ricci of the Quivira Coalition in New Mexico also says the CPA-52 is slowing things down. “In New Mexico, talking with our contact here, the ones that require the cultural resources review where an archeologist has to assess the project are taking months to get through, and the ones that require engineering, in some cases, two years,” she said.
The coalition’s $3.9 million project seeks to produce and use biochar and compost, potentially using wood waste from clearing brush or forest. It also plans to help producers finish livestock on grass, including through the use of prescribed grazing and help them direct-market the meat they produce.
The coalition was one of several projects that appealed the cutoff of the PCSC, saying it harmed producers who were left without promised funding to kick off the project.
A USDA administrative judge agreed, finding in December that USDA “provided no reasoned analysis, made limited factual findings [and] arbitrarily changed the factual findings it made.” The department also didn’t consider “reliance interests,” the judge said. Quivira had argued that since its grant was approved, it had “timely implemented its project in reliance on the agency’s approval of the grant and that the agency admits that [Quivira] has not violated any terms of the grant agreement,” the judge said in his determination.
Quivira, Ricci said, decided not to continue with its appeal, which is still awaiting a review by the director of the National Appeals Division. A different project focusing on sustainable livestock production also received a favorable decision but has not reapplied, Ricci said.
Leah Ricci (Quivira photo)“We still don't agree with NRCS’ assertion that AMP fixes or addresses the harm that was done in terminating our project, but we want to continue to support the producers in our region who we plan to work with, and didn't have faith that the appeal was going to allow us to do that in a timely way,” Ricci said.
The coalition had to lay off four staff members who would have been paid using the grant money, she said.
In addition, “We ended up offering less technical assistance to producers who were working on using waste products from their operations to produce soil amendments, and then also helping them with grazing planning and marketing so that they could sell grass-finished beef directly to consumers.”
“We were not able to do any of the marketing activities, and did far less of the technical assistance than we had originally planned,” Ricci said. “Because of the uncertainty, we had to put those activities on hold.”
Two Midwest-based projects have recently received AMP amendments. One led by Field to Market (FTM) focuses on "innovative finance and producer incentive strategies that reduce the financial and agronomic risks for farmers in adopting conservation practices," according to FTM. "Project partners will provide technical assistance and additional financial incentives to participating producers, tying conservation practices to commodity purchases and creating a scalable model for private sector investment."
Another project, called Farmers for Soil Health, focuses on cover cropping.
Greg Goodwin is director of Illinois Corn’s Precision Conservation Management program, which is working with both. Farmers for Soil Health aims to advance the use of cover crops by providing incentives to producers in the form of per-acre payments.
“We're excited about rolling that out,” Goodwin says, projecting a May signup for fall 2026 cover crops and more “traction” going into 2027.
The biggest change in the $95 million project was increased compensation for each acre of cover crops planted, he said.
Instead of a diminishing payment, from $25 an acre the first year to $15 in the second and $10 in the third, producers will receive a flat $35 an acre. “And it doesn't have to be brand-new acres. It can just be continuation of cover cropping on an acre,” he said.
In addition, farmers can still get compensated by private companies willing to pay for ecosystem services or carbon removal, allowing them to “plus up that payment to a little bit higher number,” he said.
Another benefit of the new project is that farmers can operate on annual contracts, giving them more flexibility.
Goodwin says due to difficult financial conditions in farm country, producers are being a bit more cautious in their planning. “We're hearing more folks, even those who are veteran cover crop adopters, just questioning the scale. It’s purely based on the economics at this point.”
Goodwin says he’s hoping the environmental evaluation process can be streamlined. “It seems like there's going to be some flexibility to do batch-runs of these things especially where regionally, there's not going to be a lot of difference in how NRCS would evaluate these forms.” The FSH project is open to producers in 20 states.
