Georgia State Conservationist Terrance O. Rudolph of the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) announced today that there will be an additional signup for financial and technical assistance through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP). While applications can be submitted year round, the initial fiscal year 2015 sign up concluded in December 2014. However, anyone else who wishes to apply must do so by May 15, to compete in this year’s application pool.
NRCS is making $332 million in financial and technical assistance available nationwide to help productive farm and ranch lands remain in agriculture and to protect the nation’s critical wetlands and grasslands.
“NRCS helps farmers, ranchers, private forest landowners and partners to achieve their conservation goals using our technical expertise, Farm Bill funding and sound conservation planning,” Rudolph said. “Conservation easements are an important tool to help these landowners and partners voluntarily provide long-term protection of our nation’s farmland, ranchland, wetlands and grasslands for future generations.”
The 2014 Farm Bill consolidated three previous conservation easement programs into ACEP to make it easier for diverse agricultural landowners to fully benefit from conservation initiatives. NRCS easement programs have been a critical tool in recent years for advancing landscape-scale private lands conservation.
ACEP’s agricultural land easements not only protect the long-term viability of the nation’s food supply by preventing conversion of productive working lands to non-agricultural uses, but they also support environmental quality, historic preservation, wildlife habitat and protection of open spaces. American Indian tribes, state and local governments and non-governmental organizations that have farmland or grassland protection programs are eligible to partner with NRCS to purchase conservation easements. A key change under the new agricultural land easement component is the new “grasslands of special environmental significance that will protect high-quality grasslands under threat of conversion to cropping, urban development and other non-grazing uses.
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