NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) | USDA NRCS GA CIG 001

Opportunity Information: Apply for USDA NRCS GA CIG 001

The NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program is a discretionary grant opportunity from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS), Fort Worth office, focused on agriculture, the environment, and natural resources. Its core purpose is to move conservation forward by encouraging new, practical ideas that work alongside real-world agricultural production. Instead of funding routine conservation work, CIG is aimed at innovations that can be tested, proven, and then adopted more broadly by producers and the conservation community.

CIG is designed to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies. In practice, that means projects should introduce or validate new tools, methods, or systems that improve conservation outcomes on working lands while remaining workable for farms, ranches, and private forest operations. A key expectation is that funded projects do not stop at experimentation; they should produce results that can be transferred into day-to-day use. That transfer might happen through direct uptake by agricultural producers, by incorporation into NRCS technical manuals and guides (so the methods become part of standard conservation assistance), or through commercialization and broader distribution via the private sector. The program also recognizes that innovation is not limited to equipment or agronomic practices, and it explicitly allows for innovative approaches such as market-based systems, which can create financial or incentive structures that encourage better conservation performance.

The types of activities CIG generally supports include pilot projects, field demonstrations, and on-farm conservation research. Pilot projects and demonstrations typically emphasize trying an approach at a realistic scale and showing how it performs under actual operating conditions, with enough documentation that others can replicate or adopt it. On-farm conservation research is described in fairly specific terms: it is an investigation intended to answer a particular applied conservation question using a statistically valid design, and it must use farm-scale equipment on farms, ranches, or private forest lands. That definition matters because it distinguishes CIG from purely academic or laboratory research. The emphasis is on applied questions, credible experimental design, and results generated under real production conditions, which helps ensure the findings are relevant and usable.

From the posted opportunity details, the funding opportunity title is "NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG)" with the opportunity number USDA NRCS GA CIG 001 and CFDA number 10.912. The funding instrument is a grant, and eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning it is open to any type of entity, subject to any additional eligibility clarifications that may appear in the full announcement. The award ceiling is $75,000, and the agency anticipated making about 25 awards under this posting. The opportunity was created on February 22, 2018, with an original closing date of March 30, 2018.

• The Department of Agriculture, USDA-NRCS-MSD-Ft Worth Office in the agriculture, environment, natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.912.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 22, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 30, 2018. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $75,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 25 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for USDA NRCS GA CIG 001

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