MDA Receives More Than $1.1 Million in Federal Conservation Innovation Grants

The Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) has received two Conservation Innovation Grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS): $623,175 to establish a Certainty Program to reward farmers who exceed water quality goals through the adoption and maintenance of conservation practices; and $500,000 to expand Maryland’s nutrient trading market to include the urban sector.

“Both of these grants offer new opportunities for promoting more effective and efficient land use while meeting the state’s water quality goals,” said Maryland Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance. “Clean water is essential not only to farmers, but to all of our citizens, and local conservation efforts. Programs like those supported by this funding are critical to achieving a healthier Bay while accommodating economic growth.”

Certainty is a voluntary approach supported by both the USDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide “assurances” to the agricultural community so that farmers may conduct business in a predictable regulatory setting in exchange for the implementation of additional best management practices (BMPs) to reduce nutrient run-off and erosion. The CIG grant will enable Maryland to join twelve other states, primarily in the West and Midwest, already using the Certainty Program to accelerate implementation of BMPS.

In Maryland, the Certainty Program will employ a performance-based calculation tool to conduct individual on-farm assessments for compliance with local and Bay-wide total maximum daily load (TMDL) requirements.  Agricultural landowners and producers who meet baseline and agree to conservation practice implementation, as well as performance monitoring and reporting, will be certified as having satisfied water quality goals and regulatory requirements during the lifespan of the agreement.  This program not only will recognize and reward those who demonstrate a commitment to conservation and cleaner water, but can also quality them for participation in Maryland’s water quality trading market.

The second grant provides funding for a project to expand the Maryland Nutrient Trading Program by providing the market rules and infrastructure to allow urban non-point sources to utilize water quality trading as an innovative approach for complying with Maryland’s growth offset policies. Through a partnership among MDA and the Maryland departments of the Environment and Planning, the project will analyze demand for offsets to accommodate future population and economic growth in priority areas of the state; develop the tools to assist communities in determining offset requirements; and identify and inventory a supply of renewable agricultural credits.  The development of a robust water quality trading market is expected to reduce the costs of achieving water quality standards by bringing private sector financing to the implementation of conservation practices while generating a stream of revenue for landowners and producers providing important ecosystem services to the community.

This is the fourth Conservation Innovation Grant MDA has received from USDA for nutrient trading.  In 2007, MDA received a $250,000 grant to develop the principles and guidelines for an agricultural non-point trading program.  In 2009, MDA received a $445,000 grant to implement a nutrient trading program between point and non-point sources in the Upper Chesapeake Bay.  And that same year, MDA also received a $65,000 State CIG to integrate the USDA/NRCS national Nutrient Tracking Tool or NTT into the Maryland Nutrient-net based trading platform.

NRCS administers CIG as part of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). NRCS uses CIG to invest in innovative, on-the-ground conservation technologies and approaches with the goal of wide-scale adoption to address water quality and quantity, air quality, energy conservation and environmental markets, among other natural resource issues. MDA’s proposals were selected by USDA from among 239 applications received from organizations across the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific Islands.