Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture
The Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture incentivizes farmers and ranchers to adopt climate-smart agricultural practices that can boost crop yields, support rural livelihoods, and build resilience against climate change. Under the three-year, $80-million pilot program, the Alliance and its partners will help producers in Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and Virginia prove the value of paying farmers and ranchers $100 per acre or animal unit for stewardship practices — delivering public value through carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas reduction, improved soil health, water quality, water conservation, and other vital ecosystem services. Led by Virginia Tech, the Alliance is supported by USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities with participation from more than 14 state and national partners.
Engagement Targets
Notes: (1) Minor fluctuations in the number of retained growers is expected from year to year. These fluctuations may be due to year-over-year crop rotation effects or other factors beyond the control of the project. Enrolled acres represent the total number of acres on an individual farm in a specific year. The ability to report enrolled acres is based on the Fieldprint Project Standard requirement that individual growers enrolled in projects enter at least 10% of the acres managed for a specific crop. (2) Entered acres represent the actual number of enrolled acres for which data is entered in the Fieldprint Platform for analysis.
Objectives
Climate-smart farming practices help farms better withstand extreme weather, allowing them to maintain consistent yields.
In the 2025 calendar year, we held applications for a second round in Arkansas and moved those from the first round through the contract period, while navigating hurdles to producer payments including government shutdowns and the implementation of a program-wide CPA52 environmental evaluation requirement for all practices.