The senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow, and Iowa Republican Joni Ernst have proposed a tripling of funding for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) as part of legislation that would give the program more flexibility. The RCPP was created by the 2014 farm law to coordinate soil, water, and wildlife stewardship across swathes of land; other USDA conservation programs, by contrast, work on a farm-by-farm basis.
Stabenow said the new legislation would allow for more innovation in addressing soil and water problems. Ernst, an Agriculture Committee member, said the RCPP “is a successful and cost-effective approach to encourage voluntary and proactive conservation.” The RCPP requires local partners to share the cost of projects. Stabenow said the program has so far leveraged more than $1.2 billion in private funding.
At present, the USDA can channel to RCPP projects 7 percent of funding from programs that include the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. The Stabenow–Ernst bill would give the RCPP 20 percent of that funding and require the USDA to run the RCPP as a freestanding program rather than having to operate within the rules of the agency’s other conservation programs.
For a fact sheet about the bill, click here. To read the text of the bill, click here.
The USDA homepage for the RCPP is available here.