Successfully Secure NRCS EQIP Contracts for Farmers
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EmailFebruary 26, 2025
More InfoThis session offered a step-by-step support in helping farmers understand the scope of the EQIP program, and how to best advocate for themselves and their farm when interacting with their local field office. We aim to help farmers get the most out of EQIP through better comprehension of the program, and how contracts are issued.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Welcome. If this is your first session or if you're attending another session in the series. This session today is part of our MI Ag Ideas to Grow With virtual conference. As always, we'd love to thank our sponsor for this conference, Steve from Agri Strategies. I believe I saw him come on into this meeting. We really appreciate your support in making sure that we can keep this conference free for everyone to attend and share lots of great information. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Sam Wallace, who's going to be talking to us about NRCS programs today. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming out to today's session. Today we're going to be going over NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and their Environmental Quality Incentive Program or EQIP. So we'll be going over how to obtain contracts and going over some of the practices that you might want to look into and answer any questions you guys have along the way. Before we start, my name is Sam Wallace. I am a coordinator with the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, otherwise known as TOP or TOPP. I'm located in Grand Traverse Conservation District, and we also have Kim Williams Guillen here, who's one of the coordinators in Ann Arbor. And then Mariel is also working with the TOPP program. A bit about our program. Our goal is to connect certified organic farmers with new and transitioning organic farmers. So if you're an organic farmer, whether you're certified or transitioning or want to learn more and work with another farmer, feel free to reach out to any of us after this meeting and we can get you in touch with some more information. Prior to my role with TOPP, I was a soil conservation technician with NRCS, so I'm happy to share some of my insight and my experience working with them. So today, we'll be going over three main slides. We put together this presentation for you guys. We'll be going over what is EQIP? What are some practices that organic farmers can be looking into? What are the main practice categories? What are the differences between NRCS programs? What are the differences between these categories? The second slide we'll be going over is the workflow. So everything from application to contract, the general timeline that USDA runs on throughout the year, some practices that were operational and new for this past fiscal year. We'll talk a bit about high tunnels, since they are pretty popular and useful practices that organic growers and farmers alike can be looking into. So you don't need to be an organic grower to apply for these, but they may be especially interest for organic farmers, and then strategies for success for working with USDA. And lastly, we'll be going over some funding updates. So we'll go over each one of these squares individually. So I know there's a lot of information at once, but we'll hopefully go over it all in more detail. Um, so let's focus on the first slide here. So the goal of today's presentation is to help explain EQIP to farmers in Michigan for those who are interested in accessing federal grants and technical assistance to grow your farm business, to improve your environmental incomes, and to build your communities, agriculture, economy, and food security. And again, this presentation is brought to you by Michigan State and by the Midwest Top Program. So USDA has a couple of different agencies, but the three that are most we'll talk about today, there's a farm service agency, otherwise known as FSA. FSA, they are the people you want to talk to when you get your farm records and register your farm. Get those farm records is going to help you get the door for a lot of different programs. It's going to help with your tax ID. It's going to help locate where your farm is on the map. FSA also has loan programs, crop insurance programs, disaster relief. And then for any organic farmers, they have a certification cost share program, which covers 75% of your certification fees or $750 per scope. However, that funding was not reauthorized this year, so they have money right now, but when that money is gone, it may not be available later, When you go to your local USDA office, you're going to want to meet with FSA first. There's also the rural Development Agency, which has to do more with community focused programs and buildings. And then NRCS or Natural Resources Conservation Service. Those are geared towards landowners and farmers alike who want to be doing conservation focused programs. They have programs for watersheds and easements, but the ones that are more popular are those two that are highlighted. So EQIP and CSP or conservation stewardship program. There's a lot of overlap between the two programs. So farmers who want to get funding for tree and shrub plantings, cover crops, improving soil health, planting pollinator habitat, controlling invasive species, doing crop rotation, CSP and ECP, they have programs for both of those. The differences between these two, however, is EQIP is a good way of getting your foot in the door. It's more of a broad scope. However, it has a higher payment rate. And there are only certain practices that are offered through EQIP. High tunnels or transition to organic designs and forest management plans, those are offered through EQIP. CSP is a five year program. And so if you want to be doing different practices over, you know, one, two, or three years or more, that may be something to look into, and you get a base payment of $4,000 every year, and that is a more specific. So there are more CSP enhancements, but a lot of them are different ways of planting trees and shrubs or different ways of planting pollinators or different ways of planting cover crops. So, it might be of interest when you do meet with your field office, talk with them to see what program best fits your resource concerns and your goals. So we're going to be talking about EQIP today. So what is EQIP exactly? EQIP is a way to receive technical and financial assistance to address environmental and resource concerns. You receive a cost share program to reduce negative environmental impacts of farming and adapt conservation practices. These are administered at the state level, and they're funded by the farm bill. And they access to your local office. So every county is going to have an NRCS office. Some offices cover more than one county. So for example, where I am in Grand Traverse, they cover Leelanau County and Traverse County. Ann Arbor, they're going to be looking at counties that cover Washtenaw and the Detroit area. And so, you know, well, if you don't have an office in your county, you may have one in the county next door. The cost here is going to help cover the cost implementation. It's not going to cover everything, but it's going to cover a good percentage of it, and then you receive a payment after completing a practice. So if you're planting cover crops, you receive a direct deposit after planting those cover crops and getting it checked out by your local office. Same for planting trees, same for doing a conservation cover or crop rotation or high tunnel. So if you're an organic farmer and you are looking for specific EQIP practices, EQIP, they have three main practices that are organic focused. There's the conservation plan supporting organic Transition or the CPA 138, and they transition to organic design or DIA 140. So just a little background, NRCS likes using different number codes to differentiate between each practice. That way it's just easier for them to reference what practice is. The 138 and 140, you'd be working with another they call a technical service provider or third party plan writer. And the 138 and 140 is having someone help write a organic system plan for you, and then they would prescribe different practices that they will recommend. So like a composting facility, a cover crops or crop rotation or high tunnels. Organic management is the interim practice, 823, click on here. This is a suite of practices or a umbrella. This is the practice standards, so it's going to give everything in detail what it is. But through 823, you can get funding to implement practices like a composting facility, filter strips, a forest improvement, a high tunnel system, mulching, cover crops. It's just a way of combining all these practices into one main code. One thing to keep in mind though is that these practices are fairly new and so not all your offices are going to be familiar with them. When you do go meet with your field office and you say, Hey, I want to get 138, they'll reach out to other offices if they need more information. But if they're saying we don't have it, it's being offered by them, stand up and let them know this is what you want to be doing for your farm. So EQIP has three main practice categories. There's the Code 100, the Code 200, and there's the 300 and above. The 100 are conservation planning activity and design implementation activities. Like I said, these are working with a technical service provider. So those can be stuff like a a certified crop advisor, it can be a qualified forester, it can be someone who's gone through a training process and is eligible to write these plans for you. There's a link here to find your TSPs, So this is listed alphabetically, and so you can see there's TSPs for everything from access roads to constructed wetlands and contour farming to field borders, forest Harvest Management, forest improvement. If you want to look up one particular, we'll go to organic, and you can see there are TSPs for writing these. The issue, however, there's only a handful in the State of Michigan. We are looking to train a couple more. So if you are a farmer and you want to help train other farmers and help write plans for other farmers, we are looking to recruit some more as well. But if you just want to find someone to help out with tree and shrub plantings or cover crops, you can look up there as well. One thing to keep in mind though with the 100 is that it's going to take more time. And we do have a full list of all the CPA and DIAs offered in the State of Michigan. So we have stuff like conservation plan, so health management plan, a forest management plan. The DIA will be a they'll sometimes try to package these together. Sometimes they'll do them individually. And so if you have more questions on, you know, does a DIA or CPA fit your goals and your resource concerns, that is a question for your field office because it's going to depend on each farm. We also have CEMA or conservation evaluation monitoring activities. Those are written by qualified individuals. So those can be TSPs, those can be certified crop advisors, those can be consultants. It's a less rigorous process, but there's fewer practices, and they can't write everything that a TSP can write. There's also the 300, which are majority of your practices. That's going to be your cover crops, that's going to be your mulching, your nutrient management, your rotational grazing, your tree and shrub plantings. Those can be completed by yourself or someone you hire. The time to complete will vary and a lot of these practices are prescribed by NRCS themselves or by the field offices. This graph right here shows you apply for a 138, you might look into doing a supporting practice like soil health testing. Then from there, you might look at doing another supporting practice, organic management, 823. And then same thing for a nutrient plan, may look at, I want to get 100 or 101. You might say, Hey, I also want to get a soil testing, and I also want to get a nutrient management. So the differences between individual practices, the 300 and above, and a CPA, individual practices, you can you can request them one at a time, and they're going to have a shorter turnaround because a lot of these are written by the field office. However, a TSP, like a CPA and DIA can open the door to more practices. Like I said, the TSP is going to recommend plant cover crops to a composting facility. And there's not always a one to one correspondence, so sometimes they're coupled and sometimes they're written individually. It's going to depend on that TSPs qualifications and what practices are recommended. When you're working with a TSP, there's a couple of questions to be asking them. One, can you complete this in your contract deadline? So when you get a contract, you have a year to complete these practices. You want to make sure that the CPA can be completed within that year. What is the fee for the service? So sometimes the cost share will cover the entire cost, like a forest management plan, We'll cover the entirety of what the TSP is requesting. Sometimes the TSP may ask for more money than what you're receiving for NRCS. So that's something to keep in mind for budgeting. When and how do you need payment? Sometimes the TSP will ask for money upfront or sometimes they'll wait until the contract is completed. And then you want to see a sample of their work. You want to make sure that the work they're doing meets your expectations and it's something that you know you can implement on your own. So we'll go to the next page. So we'll be going over workflow, timeline and strategies for success. So if you do decide to go with NRCS, there are five steps. The first one is get your phone number. So that entails, you know, setting up a meeting with your local FSA office. You can give them a call ahead of time, or you can just stop in the office. There's always someone in the office unless people are in the field. But more often than not, someone will be there to answer your questions. This link will take you to how to find your local office. You can also just Google, find my USDA office or find my NRCS office, and it will come to this page. You can select your county. I'll go to Grand Traverse. Go search. And then here I can find the contacts. So the head of the NRCS field office, Jason Kimbrough, the head of the FSA office, Kathy Kozlowski, and then the head of the rural development, Keith Sebright. And then it'll have their address, and I'll have their phone number. If you live in another county, we'll go to Leelanau You can see again, Jason covers that county. So these offices will cover more than one county more often than not. When you do meet with your local FSA office and your NRCS office, you want to bring a ID, you want to bring a copy of the lease or deed, and you want to bring your Social Security number. When you meet with your office, you will also submit different paperwork. So here is a link to the general application. It's pretty straightforward. You can fill this out on your own, or you can fill it out with the field office, whatever works best for you. But, you can just fill out your name and location where your farm is, and then they will help you fill out the rest of those questions. When you meet with your office too, you'll fill out some eligibility paperwork. That will entail a direct deposit form so you can get you paid for doing the work. You'll fill out a farm operating plan, a customer data worksheet, and then a form indicating if you have any wetlands and have you done any kind of drainage work on them. When you meet with your local InterCS office, you'll schedule a visit with the district conservationist. District conservationist is the person running the office. So we saw Jason. He's the DC for the office. They'll schedule a visit to come out to your farm because they want to walk the property with you, see your resource concerns, see what goals you have, and then they can prescribe different activities to they may not have thought of at first. When you are meeting with your DC, you'll go over different resource concerns that you have available. So this link I'm clicking on, this is a link that farmers.gov has. And so these are the six main resource concerns they're looking at. They're looking at your soils. Now you have any soil erosion, issues of soil health, They're looking at water, especially if you have any runoff for creeks or ponds or any water nearby. They're looking at plants. Do you have any plant productivity concerns? Do you have any invasive species or noxious weeds? They're looking at animals as well, so your livestock and your wildlife habitat. Energy, they're looking at equipment, and then air, stuff like greenhouse gases or odors. So you can just click through here and you can see, you know, what are some resource concerns of soil, and you can create your own conservation concerns list. You'll also go over different practices. It's helpful to review these practices before and so that may give you some insight on what you can do for your farm. So this link takes you to the payment schedules for this last fiscal year. You can look at the cost list. So we can look at Michigan, we can click on our County, and then you can look at the cost list for each of the programs that NRCS offers. So you can look at for CSP, for EQIP, for easements. So for EQIP, you can look and see how are you get paid for implementing different practices. So you can see now the different payments for comprehensive nutrient management plan, for a forest management plan, and so on. HU are historically underserved and those are anyone who is a minority, anyone who is equal to or makes less than the poverty line, and any woman farmers. You can also look at the scenario reports. Go into Michigan again. This is a good way of seeing all the different practices they offer through EQIP. Again, conservation plan, alley cropping, brush management, critical area planting, cover crops, and so on. We've also listed just a way to find all the conservation practice standards. And so this will be more this has all the practices themselves that NRCS offers. And if you click on, say brush management, it's going to give you the practice standards and details on what does brush management entail? And that is for controlling invasive species like your Amal and your glossy buckthorn. So when you leave their office, you decided here my research concerns out on my farm, here the practice I want to be implementing, share that with your field office. When they do the site visit, they're going to visit those places where those concerns are evident. Again, they'll look and see something that you may not have noticed at first that they have seen like you may not notice invasive species, or you may not notice erosion on the farm or you may not notice a ponding or flooding area. It's helpful to keep photos so you can look at seasonal concerns, especially for ponding and flooding. And that's a good way for organic farmers to keep good records of what you're doing on your farm. And then you want to discuss practices of interest. So after the site visit, no, they'll have a clipboard, they'll have an aerial imagery, they can write down what they saw, what practices you can do in the farm. They're going to send you a list of recommended practices. You are welcome to approve or decline or modify any of them. Again, it's your farm, it's your land, it's your contract, it's your work. So you want to make sure that this plan fits your goals and your timeline and your budget. The application deadline for EQIP did pass in November. However, there's always a chance that there may be a second round of funding available. If there isn't, you will be applying for practices that will be implemented next year in fiscal year 2026. Anything that you scheduled today won't be implemented until next year at the earliest, again, unless there's another funding pool. If you decide to get a forest management plan and you're approved, if you decide to get a 138 and you're approved, then you'll find a TSP that you can work with. They're not going to give you a recommendation for a TSP, but they will give you a list of who you can work with, and it's up to you to give them a call and figure out what best fits your schedule and your goals. Again, you'll receive cost share. That's not going to cover everything, but it is going to cover a good chunk of the work you're doing depending on what you're doing. Any questions so far? Hi, Sam. So I've just been chatting with Allison in the chat, and she asks, once this written CPA and DIA is approved by NRCS, there's an additional waiting period before you may or may not be selected for funding to actually implement a practice, correct? For example, a manure for manure storage, the plan can be written and improved, but the actual building of the manure storage might be another one to two years or more before it's actually funded for construction, correct? So, yeah, you will you may be able to submit a waiver to your field office and receive a percentage of the money upfront. But again, any work that you do, you won't get paid until that work is completed. Right. Yeah. This might be more well, I was understanding it more as a question of, you know, if I know that I need a manure storage facility, is worthwhile to go through the CPA DIA process or just ask for the practice. And I think that the answer is that it depends. It depends a little bit, kind of, like, how costly is the practice. So, you know, something like asking for a manure storage facility that might be kind of expensive. You may have a better chance of getting it funded eventually if it's a TSP who's recommending that you build a manure storage facility. Yeah. And something like that too, the engineers are going to get involved. So NRSCS has a list of engineers that can help design these things. And so that might extend the the weight as well too. If you have something that's really time sensitive, maybe some of these practices just don't really fit the bill. But if you're willing to wait and willing to receive that cost share, it can be beneficial. Yeah, and I think it's just the thing to bear in mind with these is like, you know, if there's something you know that you're going to want to implement in a couple of years, you know, start getting the ball rolling now. Certainly, if I had had better awareness of what the programs were and what was available, there are things I would have applied for a couple of years ago thinking, you know, I want to do that in, say, three years. And, if that's the advantage and disadvantage, you know, it's that you have to have that time. And I think the other things Sam touched on that Allison asked about earlier is with payments and paying, say, a TSP or paying for any practice is that in general, this is a reimbursement program. So what it means is that you're getting a contract, you're approved for a certain payment rate, you do the work, and then you get reimbursed for it. And that work might be hiring a TSP, in which case you would get reimbursed later on. And then in many cases, it's meant to offset the cost of making an improvement, but it doesn't cover the entire cost. Yeah. And one thing also, if you're worried about, you know, financing and paying upfront for all this stuff, The conservation stewardship program is a good alternative because you'll get that payment every year. So you'll get $4,000 for managing the land. The purpose of CSP is to reward landowners and farmers who are doing good work on the land already. And then, what you can do is if you have a CSP may have practices for getting a waste source facility. So you can get some money upfront and that can help cover some of the costs. And then with a big project like a waste source facility, that you may get more than $4,000 every year. And so, you know, that's something to look into as well is does CSP fit my goals and my budget more and are you willing to enter a five year contract with them? EQIP does have more flexibility, though. If you decide that you know, you wanted to be doing a composting facility in 2027, and then next year realize, I don't have the budget for this, I don't have the time or this isn't in my best interest anymore. You can cancel the application. You don't need to apply for that. With CSP, when you enter that contract, you're locked into that. So you're required to complete that stuff during that schedule or you into compliance issues. And if you run into compliance issues, you're you're doing back pays on the money you already got. So You know, again, that's that's just a discussion to have with your field office of what are you doing on the farm and what makes more sense for you for your goals and your budget and your timeline. Right. And I think the other thing, and we are if you look under approval and implementation, there's a link there that I can share in the chat. You don't sometimes you're able to get the financing ahead of time if you're historically underserved. Yeah. Thank you. And Chris is asking in the chat, doesn't your land already have to be in crop to get CSP? If it wasn't in beans, if it's a field, can you still get some money for wind breaks, et cetera? That is a good question, and I I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. For CSP, I'm not so sure. Certainly for EQIP, you have to have a history of production of at least one year at the given site. Yeah. It's the case for both of them for both practices. Okay. Okay. So what's the USDA timeline? So in the winter is they're looking at the first round of funding. So any contract that was approved for funding is going through that first round. If your application is selected, you're going to receive a contract. And This spring will be anyone who's applying for EQIP or CSP, this will be the pre planning stage. That's when you're meeting with your field office. That's when you're planning what you'll be doing for that year. As we talked before, sometimes if there's money available, they'll do a second or third round. That's not a guarantee, but if that is the case, they will reach out to you and ask if you want to continue with application and if you want to enter a contract. You may not hear until the spring though if you get funded. I know it's a little confusing. But again, keep in touch with your field office on any updates with how your contract is going with funding. They'll be able to answer that question for you. When the summer comes around, that is when they're doing a lot of the site visits. They're doing a lot of fieldwork and you want to schedule your visits in the summer if possible. They'll come out to your farm. They're not going to deny you that. And you can submit your paperwork at any time throughout the year. So you can submit in the spring, the summer, the fall, or the winter. The fall marks the beginning of the new fiscal year. So the federal fiscal year starts October 1, and all deadlines for all programs are announced after October 1. So we don't know the deadlines yet for fiscal year 2026. However, last year's deadline was in November, so there's a good chance it'll be November again. And again, if your application is submitted After the application deadline, you will either go through that second round of funding or you'll be put on the list for fiscal year 2026. So a couple of things that were announced last fiscal year. So payment tiers for areas in Southeast Michigan. Those have a higher cost of living, so those have a higher payment rate. So if your farm is in Clinton, Eaton, Genesee, Huron, Ingham, Jackson, Lapeer, Lenawee, Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Sanilac, Shiawassee, St. Clair, Tuscola, Washtenaw, or Wayne County, you'll receive a higher payment rate. Um, they announced a couple of different funding options. There's the Michigan water source pilot for urban farmers. That was geared towards urban farms who are doing stuff with water catchment systems and irrigation. They also increase the contract rate for small scale producers. So if your operation is less than one acre, you have a higher chance of getting funded. They increase the number of agri forestry practices, and something that is especially exciting is the high tunnels, which have historically been those receive their own funding pool. So in the past, high tunnels were getting ranked against people who are doing no brush piles against two who are doing forest improvement, brush management, cover crops, crop rotation, and they weren't getting funded to the same amount. And so they announced their own funding pool for high tunnels. So the likelihood of a high tunnel getting funded has increased. If you're interested in getting a CPA or DIA, that does not entail a organic transition and does not entail forest management, some other ones to look into our soil health management plan, the agricultural energy design, and the pest management system design. So some strategies for sucess when you're working with NRCS, applications that have more practices, they're going to have a higher chance of getting funded. So if you're getting a high tunnel, if you're doing high tunnels with mulching plus cover crops and irrigation system, you have a higher likelihood of getting funded versus a contract with just a high tunnel. If there's a practice on that list we reviewed and you want that practice, review associated resource concerns and how they can address them and emphasize those in your site visit. Again, it's your farm is your contract. It's important to it's good to have these applications. You don't want to have too many at the same time and you can spread them out over several years. One year you can do cover crops, the next year you can do crop rotation, and then a third year you can do a pollinator habitat. Or if you want to do them at the same time, you're welcome to do that as well, and know what you want to do on the farm and advocate for yourself. A bit more information on the High tunnels program. So the payment rates will be by square footage and will depend on the scale of structure. If you're historically underserved, so minority, woman or veterans, beginning farmers, you will have a higher payment rate. High tunnels will cover up to 2178 square footage. So if you're high tunnel is smaller, they'll cover the entirety cost. If you have a high tunnel that is bigger than 2178, they'll only cover up to that amount. Any more will be out of your own pocket. It needs to be from a commercial source, so you can't build it yourself. It needs to come from a vendor. We list it hoops and manchs are high tunnels down here. There are two really good vendors that are very popular with farmers. They can only be used in a natural soil profile, so they need to be growing on the ground. No hydroponics, no potted plants, no cement ground. It's not a greenhouse. It's a bit different, and they need to be at least six feet high. You can only be using for growing crops. It's not used for storing equipment, and you need to have some kind of crops or garden in place before where you're going to be establishing the high tunnel. Sometimes your field office may add practices like mulching, critical area planting, or crop rotation. If you do go with Nifty hoops, they'll accept a payment. So NRCS can send the money directly to them. For Manchester High Tunnels. You would pay them after you received funding from NRCS. So these are some practices that we recommend for farmers, especially organic farmers. You don't need to be organic, but these are just recommended ones. We talked about high tunnels, conservation covers. So that is your warm and cool season grasses, your palmer habitat, your native grasses, your fields and open areas. Crop rotation, cover crops, wind breaks, fencing, that will be for livestock. So you need to have livestock established already. That will be for internal fencing. Field borders, prescribed or rotational grazing, nutrient management, and pest management conservation systems. Before we go into funding, any other questions so far? Per wants to know what the deadline is for high tunnel applications. High tunnels will be ecliped, so that will be in November that will be in the fall. Right. But again, you can apply any time of year. Yeah. It's just that your application would, you know, if you apply now, it means that you will be in the 2026 funding pool. Okay. So I'm sure we all have questions about what's going to funding. So I've been in talk with some NRCS staff. This is what I have heard from them. So that's really important to note is that any money that is obligated is still expected to be paid. So if you have a contract with NRCS, you should still receive funding, and all funding is through the farm bill. So the farm bill has not been touched. So every practice that EQIP and CSP offer, those are still available to everyone. There's nothing that has gone away. However, there is a funding pool called the Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry or CSAF mitigation activities. Those, however, are being re-evaluated right now, and those fundings are on pause. Um, how funding works is that they have a number of different funding pools. So we'll go into this right now. There's a number of different funding pools. The farm bill covers all practices, and there are individual funding pools like the CSAF, beginning farmer, historically underserved, veterans, high tunnels. That money has been allocated to help farmers just to make it easier for farmers to get stuff like cover crops, make it easier for a farmer to get you know, brush management to control invasive species. However, any applications that are sent in now, those will just be diverted to the farm bill. So when you submit an application, it's being ranked or reviewed and basically is that every application in the state are sent to a database and applications with more practices and certain practices have different scores. So those higher impact practices will have a higher likelihood of getting funded. Um, And so those applications are competing with each other for money, and, you know, once that money is gone, they won't be basically as long as that money is available, the application should go into the contract. So that's why they have a second round of funding to help fund any other applications that did make the first cut. So a couple of practices that were not CSAF funded originally, fencing, access roads, and high tunnels and all CPA practices. Those were never funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded the Climate Smart programs. And so those practices were never impacted. There is a PDF that they have available, and this is a publicly available, and this lists all of the climate smart activities for both EQIP and CSP. Some notable ones have been stuff like roofs and cover, Critical area planting, silvopasture, woody residue treatment, field borders, filter strips, irrigation pipelines, mulching, and then some CSP ones as well. We have a question in the chat, which is, I'm wondering if there's been any talk of updating the pools for next year, specifically wondering about the historically underserved category and if that's going to be re-evaluated? I don't know. I've asked and I don't think they know either. So one thing to keep in mind is that any news that we're hearing Field offices are hearing at the same time. So there's nothing being held in the dark right now as far as I know. You know, I'm sure there's some things from Congress and from DC that we don't know about. But as far as I know right now, historically underserved will still be available. If you don't want to go through that list, these are just some notable climate smart practices, I mentioned before, conservation cover, field borders, roofs and cover, tree and shrub establishments. So again, funding is still available for these. They just don't have their separate funding pool anymore. So those will just be funded by the farm bill. What can we do with this information about funding? Keep in touch with your local office on any updates. They're going to know stuff as it goes down the pipeline, as it goes down the ladder, and be able to give you any updates. As I mentioned before, any money that's obligated is still being processed and paid. You can still apply for these practices under the farm bill, and this funding freeze is not guaranteed. Some of this might go to court. There's a lot of stuff in the works, a lot of stuff in the background, so just keep an eye out for that. If you have any questions about your contract and if it's being impacted, again, talk to your field office. They're going to give you some more updates and they're going to have more information on your contract specifically. Application deadlines aren't until October. Or November or this fall. So, you know, there's time for changes in funding. So, you know, this funding freeze may go away entirely and all that money may get opened back up. CSP payments are still being processed regardless of enhancements are scheduled. So you will still receive that $4,000 every year in the fall. And then if you're looking for any other organizations to help out with funding or help out with conservation assistance, a couple of ones, MAEAP, the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program, Produce Safety, CISMA, the cooperative Invasive Species Management area. They have offices across the state and different counties. The forestry assistance programs, they do qualified forest programs, which is a good tax program. MiSTRIPS, Organic Farming Research Foundation, and then local organizations, Keep Growing Detroit and Crosshatch. Those are two of our partners at TOPP, and they do work with community focused programs, micro loans, and they're just a good resource to tap into. And Claire is asking, when do we find out if funding for an application is approved? And that's usually in spring, right? Yes. Yeah. So there's a couple of things that go on. So after the application deadline, they go through that ranking process. They're going to look at all of the applications they have on file. They'll submit it into their data systems, and then that will be sent to the state office, and the state office will give the thumbs up for those with the higher scores, and then it will just trickle down until the funding is spent. Thank you, Sam. We know that we didn't actually spend too much time really talking about organic practices per se, but we really wanted to make sure to have some space to answer the questions about the funding and what the future of the program is, even though a lot of us we're all finding things out at the same time. Are there any other questions out there about EQIP and getting funding? Certainly, these are all things I wish I had known five years ago, at least. Chris asks, if I want to extend a new crop of season for strawberries, can I get a hoop house? Yeah, absolutely. So hoop houses are great for extending the growing season, especially in Michigan where, you know, we have a shorter growing season than states to the south of us. And, you know, I've seen some dairy producers get high tunnels. And you can also manipulate those hoop houses by adding extra layers of tarp. You can also get different add ons to your hoop house. So if you want to get any remote sensors, if you want to get anything for ventilation, you can do that kind of stuff. If you go back to a couple of slides. I just asking do you already have to have berries in production. And Chris and I have been chatting a little bit about, you know, that question of one year and whether or not the land is in production. And my understanding is that if an area simply has not been in agricultural production, there has to be a production history of one year. But if there's a plot that, say, has been used for agriculture, you can apply for a high tunnel on it as long as it has a history of production. You don't necessarily have to have had berries in there per se. I Yeah. Is that your understanding, Sam? Yes. Yeah. So even if you are planting a new crop that year, as long as that land has been in production in the past, you are welcome to apply for a programming. Right. And I think that it's just they don't want you to say, oh, I'm going to cut down this forest and put in fields here is what they're trying to get at. Yeah. And again, that's going to be a question you have with your field office is what is a land history and what are your goals for the property? And that's going to help also with recommending different activities you can be doing on your farm. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day. Thank you, everyone.