Final Report: PES & Soil Health Working Group Wants to Get More VT Farmers Into the Conservation Stewardship Program
Read Now! The Executive Summary of the PES & Soil Health Working Group's final report outlines their consensus against creating a new program to measure or model units of ecosystem services that would be traded on a market to offset and carry on with pollution across the globe. Instead, the group noticed that there already is a federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) program, the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), that is rewarding regenerative agricultural practices but has very few Vermont farms enrolled - so far. The working group will soon launch a pilot Vermont Farmer Ecosystem Stewardship Program to enhance CSP with additional payments after completion of application and planning phase so that farms feel the benefits right away and not years into the implementation phase.