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Vilsack and three grant winners discuss Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the new Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program Wednesday and met with farmers and grant recipients at a Wisconsin dairy farm Thursday.

Secretary Vilsack says USDA asked farmers and agriculture groups how to proceed and they responded. “The Food and Farm Alliance came to us and said if you’re going to do this, and we want you to do it, do it with pilots, take money from CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation). Make sure it’s voluntary. Make sure it’s incentive-based. Make sure it’s market-based. Make sure there are partnerships.”

Vilsack says the program is designed to help facilitate collaboration and gather data to help more producers use climate-smart practices. 

Along with the initial 70 large projects, Vilsack says there are around 600 applications still being considered for smaller-scale grants. “These are requesting significantly less money and they may be shorter in time as well. Most of the large grants are up to three-to-five years in time, so we’ll take a look at those.”

Vilsack says the additional 2.8 billion dollars from the Commodity Credit Corporation brings the total investment to around three and a half billion dollars.  Organic Valley, Edge Dairy Farmers Cooperative, and the DeLong Company are three of the grant winners joining Vilsack to explain their programs on the farm.