A record $80 million grant will fund a pilot program that will encourage producers to implement climate-smart practices on farms.

Virginia Tech received a record $80 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to help farmers implement climate-smart practices that could significantly reduce greenhouse gasses. This is the single largest grant in Virginia Tech’s history.

With the Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture, which is now underway, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will distribute more than $57 million of the grant to producers to enact climate-friendly practices and serve as a pilot program that pays producers to implement climate-smart practices on farms of all sizes and commodities, an initiative that could have significant impacts on curbing climate-changing gasses.

The Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture incentivizes and rewards farmers and ranchers for adopting climate-smart agricultural practices. Under the three-year, $80-million pilot program, the Alliance and its partners will help producers in Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and Virginia prove the value of paying farmers and ranchers $100 per acre or animal unit for stewardship practices — delivering public value through carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas reduction, improved soil health, water quality, water conservation and other environmental services.

The pilot design, including the structure of producer incentive payments, was developed by Rural Investment to Protect the Environment (RIPE), a coalition of farmers, ranchers, agricultural trade associations and environmental organizations advancing a national policy that invests in rural America by enabling producers to earn a fair return for implementing voluntary conservation practices. RIPE is a former member of the Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture.

The pilot is a project of USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, administered by Virginia Tech with participation from more than 14 additional partners.