Deadline: 04-Nov-20
The Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) promotes coordination of NRCS conservation activities with partners that offer value-added contributions to expand their collective ability to address on-farm, watershed, and regional natural resource concerns. Through RCPP, NRCS seeks to co-invest with partners to implement projects that demonstrate innovative solutions to conservation challenges and provide measurable improvements and outcomes tied to the resource concerns they seek to address.
RCPP is an innovative program that has as its critical feature a co-investment approach through which NRCS and partners collaborate to implement natural resource conservation activities.
Goals
Following are four key principles of RCPP:
- Impact— RCPP proposals must propose effective and compelling solutions that address one or more natural resource priorities to help solve natural resource challenges. Partners are responsible for evaluating a project’s impact and results.
- Partner Contributions—Partners are responsible for identifying any combination of cash and in-kind value-added contributions to leverage NRCS’s RCPP investments. It is NRCS’s goal that partner contributions at least equal the NRCS investment in an RCPP project. Substantive and sizable partner contributions are given priority consideration as part of the RCPP proposal evaluation criteria.
- Innovation—NRCS seeks projects that integrate multiple conservation approaches, implement innovative conservation approaches or technologies, build new partnerships, or effectively take advantage of program flexibilities to deliver conservation solutions.
- Partnerships and Management—Partners must have experience, expertise, and capacity to manage the partnership and project, provide outreach to producers, and quantify the environmental (and when possible, economic and social) outcomes of an RCPP project. RCPP ranking criteria give priority consideration to applicants that meaningfully engage historically underserved farmers and ranchers.
Funding Information
- The maximum RCPP funding available for any project (combined financial and technical assistance) selected under this announcement is $10 million. The minimum funding amount for an RCPP project is $250,000.
Eligibility Criteria
Lead Partners
The lead partner for an RCPP project is the entity that submits a project proposal, and if selected for an award, negotiates and executes an RCPP PPA with NRCS. The lead partner is ultimately responsible for ensuring completion of project deliverables, delivering all partner contributions, and assessing project outcomes. Lead partner entities must qualify as one of the following:
- An agricultural or silvicultural producer association or other group of producers.
- A State or unit of local government.
- An Indian Tribe.
- A farmer cooperative.
- A water district, irrigation district, acequia, rural water district or association, or other organization with specific water delivery authority to agricultural producers.
- A municipal water or wastewater treatment entity.
- An institution of higher education.
- An organization or entity with an established history of working cooperatively with producers on agricultural land, as determined by NRCS, to address:-
- Local conservation priorities related to agricultural production, wildlife habitat development, or nonindustrial private forest land management; or
- Critical watershed-scale soil erosion, water quality, sediment reduction, or other natural resource issues.
- An entity, such as an Indian Tribe, State government, local government, or a nongovernmental organization that has a farmland or grassland protection program that purchases agricultural land easements,
- A conservation district.
Contributing Partners
- In addition to any contributions coming from the lead partner, RCPP projects may include direct or in-kind contributions from other entities, known as “contributing partners.” Contributing partners may be an eligible partner (i.e., entities described in the list above) and may also be a third-party individual or organization (even a non-USDA Federal agency) that would not qualify as an eligible party by the statutory definition.
Producers and Landowners
Agricultural producers or private landowners receiving funding as part of RCPP projects must—
- Provide a tax identification number. Where applicable, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Pacific Islanders may use another unique identification number for each individual eligible for payment;
- Where applicable, provide the percent interest share in a payment consistent with operation or ownership shares;
- Comply with the highly erodible land (HEL) and wetland conservation (WC) provisions of the Farm Bill; and
- Comply with the Farm Bill’s AGI provision or receive a waiver.
For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=328578