Program FAQs

The Farmers for Soil Health (FSH) collaboration between the United Soybean Board, National Corn Growers Association and National Pork Board, with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) serving as their designated administrative lead, was selected by USDA to receive a $95 million Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) award. The project includes four strategies:

1. FSH will support and expand technical assistance, enrollment and education programs in targeted states through grants associated with this project.

2. FSH has established a new financial assistance program to incentivize cover crop adoption on over 1.3 million acres of crop fields in corn and soybean production.

New Fields Planted to Cover Crops:
Participating farmers plant cover crops for three years and receive Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs) totaling $50 per new acre of cover crops planted.

• Year 1 = $25/acre
• Year 2 = $15/acre
• Year 3 = $10/acre

Existing Fields Planted to Cover Crops:
Signing Incentive Payments (SIPs) of $2 per acre are available for up to 600,000 acres of existing cover crops. NFWF will make the annual financial payments to participating farmers with funding separate from the grant.

3. FSH has created and launched an enrollment platform, through our technology partner DTN. This includes a nationwide cover crop Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system.

4. FSH will create a public marketplace platform to connect farmers to buyers of AMP commodities and opportunities for premiums and incentives.

Crop fields in a corn and/or soybean rotation are eligible to receive Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs) or Signing Incentive Payments (SIPs) in exchange for planting cover crops and participating in the Farmers for Soil Health enrollment and Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system. SIPs are limited to crop fields where cover crops are already planted annually. TIP enrollment is open to any corn or soybean fields where cover crops are not currently part of an annual rotation or if the cover crop did not meet the state’s conservation practice standard. TIP enrollment is open both to farmers with some cover crops looking to expand and to farmers with no cover crops looking to start. The same farmer may receive SIPs for fields with existing cover crops and TIPs for fields new to cover crops.

The following 20 states are eligible to participate in the Farmers for Soil Health AMP Partnership: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Farmers for Soil Health (FSH) Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs) can be stacked with other AMP project payments if they are paying for something other than the cover crop practice. FSH TIPs cannot be stacked with USDA NRCS cover crop cost-share payments, such as through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP. FSH TIPs can be stacked with other state or private (non-federal) incentives and cost-share opportunities.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) will issue Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs) or Signing Incentive Payments (SIPs) to participating farmers. These payments will be made from a separate funding pool. TIP participants will receive $50 per acre total over a three-year contract.

• Year 1 = $25/acre
• Year 2 = $15/acre
• Year 3 = $10/acre

Payments are expected to be dispersed in the spring following planting of a cover crop the previous fall. Cover crop planting will be verified by remote sensing through the Farmers for Soil Health Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) platform and self-certified by the farmer.

Opportunities within the forthcoming sustainability marketplace will be paid based on information captured in the enrollment platform managed by DTN.

Participating farmers will need to self-certify the following information:

1. Their USDA farm, tract and field numbers. Farmers without farm, tract and field numbers can obtain them from their local USDA Farm Service Agency field office.
2. For Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs), farmers must verify that they are not concurrently receiving USDA NRCS cover crop payments on the same acres.
3. Compliance with USDA Highly Erodible Land and Wetland Conservation requirements. Farmers will need an AD-1026 form on file with their local USDA office.
4. They will plant cover crop acres enrolled in TIP according to state NRCS conservation practice standards for practice code 340 (cover crop), or an alternate practice standard pre-approved by USDA and Farmers for Soil Health partners.

Farmers will be required to use our enrollment platform’s map tool to identify the enrolled fields and confirm or edit field boundaries and acreage. They will also need to provide information necessary for payments, such as a W-9 tax form.

Enrollment in the FSH program through DTN is built on a foundation of security and transparency. A key requirement is that farmers are in control of their data and can decide who may access it and how it can be used. For every offer, either Farmers for Soil Health or others from the private sector will transparently inform the farmer if their data will be shared or used by or with any third party.

For the FSH AMP Partnership, any data a farmer provides will be used to ensure compliance with USDA and Farmers for Soil Health program requirements and for the measurement of carbon and other environmental impacts in the aggregate. This data will be anonymized and reported publicly only in aggregate. Specific farmer data associated with named individuals, addresses, collection points, etc., will not be sold, shared or distributed to any third parties without express permission from the farmer. Any third-party data sharing will be subject to a licensing agreement for disclosure to that party only.

No. There is not a limit for acres of new cover crop fields enrolled as Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs), or existing cover crop fields enrolled as Signing Incentive Payments (SIPs).

Farmers who have wheat in their rotation qualify for FSH. Regardless of which year they plant wheat in their contract, farmers will receive $25 for the first contract year that they plant cover crops and $15 for the second year that they plant cover crops. Farmers will not be paid for their wheat year.