CA Conservation Innovation Grant 2014 | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The CA Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) 2014 opportunity is a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) funding program aimed at speeding up the real-world use of innovative conservation practices and technologies in California. The central idea is not to pay for basic research, but to help applicants take conservation methods that are already proven (or have enough evidence behind them to show a high likelihood of success) and demonstrate, adapt, and validate them under field conditions so they can be adopted more widely. NRCS expects these projects to produce results that can be transferred into NRCS practice standards, technical references, manuals, and planning tools, or otherwise move into broad private-sector use. The grant is offered as a cooperative agreement and is tied legislatively to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), authorized under the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.

Funding for the California competition in FY 2014 was anticipated to total up to $375,000, with roughly five awards expected. Individual awards were projected to range from $25,000 to $75,000. Projects could run from one to three years, and a cost-share or matching contribution is required, meaning grantees must bring non-federal resources to the project rather than relying entirely on federal dollars. The goal is to leverage federal investment to achieve practical environmental improvements alongside agricultural production, such as better soil function, cleaner water, improved air quality, and more efficient energy and water use.

Eligibility is broad and includes federally recognized Tribes, individuals, nonprofit organizations (including 501(c)(3)s), state and local governments (including counties, cities/townships, special districts), and public/state-controlled institutions of higher education. While the eligible applicant pool is wide, proposals must be California-based and should be designed with a clear understanding of NRCS conservation practice standards, planning criteria, and assessment tools, with outputs that can strengthen or augment NRCS technical guidance. NRCS points applicants to the California electronic Field Office Technical Guide (eFOTG) as the core reference for aligning projects with agency standards and implementation expectations.

The application process is structured as a two-phase statewide competition. First, applicants submit a pre-proposal, and NRCS screens submissions for completeness and compliance; incomplete applications are removed from consideration. Pre-proposals that pass screening are then evaluated on how well they use innovative technologies or approaches to address at least one of the state’s priority topic areas. Only applicants selected during this pre-proposal phase are invited to submit a full proposal. Full proposals are reviewed by a technical peer review panel using the program’s evaluation criteria, then forwarded with that review to the California Review Board, which makes recommendations to the NRCS State Conservationist for final award decisions.

Key dates for this 2014 cycle were tightly defined. Pre-proposals were due by 4:00 p.m. on March 14, 2014. NRCS planned to announce which pre-proposals were selected by April 18, 2014. Those selected were then required to submit full proposals by 4:00 p.m. on June 6, 2014. Submissions could be made by mail or courier to the USDA NRCS office in Davis, California, or electronically through Grants.gov or by email as specified in the notice.

In terms of what NRCS is actually looking to fund, the program emphasizes on-the-ground conservation demonstrations, pilot efforts, evaluation, implementation, and monitoring. Competitive projects are expected to show environmental effectiveness and practical usability, including affordability and adoption potential, rather than being purely experimental. The notice highlights several ways a project can qualify as “innovative” for CIG purposes: demonstrating a proven technology in a new setting, adapting an approach to improve performance and adoption, bringing a successful system from another region or agricultural sector into California, or producing results and methods that are clearly transferable to other producers, land managers, or agencies.

California’s priority topics for this funding round span multiple resource areas. Under planning technology, NRCS specifically calls out demonstrations of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with remote sensing tools (such as digital video, infrared, and other sensors) to evaluate impacts and monitor conservation treatments across cropland, pasture, forestland, and rangeland. Soil health priorities include side-by-side comparisons of traditional surface irrigation systems versus no-till systems using center pivot or linear irrigation, integrated approaches for increasing soil organic matter in intensive vegetable systems, rapid field assessment methods for soil health, and demonstrations linking improved soil biology to reduced nitrate losses, improved irrigation efficiency, and alternatives to soil fumigation that protect soil structure and biology. Forest soil health is also included, with interest in suites of practices that improve long-term site quality and productivity.

Water quality priorities focus heavily on reducing nutrients, pesticides, and sediment leaving irrigated lands, including conservation systems that may use approaches like bioreactors, biological pest control, and vegetated ditches. NRCS also seeks projects that improve monitoring and documentation of water-quality outcomes from conservation practices, develop better manure application timing and uniformity, improve grazing management to protect water on rangelands and pasture, and build forest management prescriptions that improve water quality. Additional emphasis is placed on developing criteria and guidance to help producers detect or indicate nitrate leaching below the root zone, calibrating NRCS assessment tools such as the Water Quality Index for Agriculture, integrating pollinator habitat with runoff and erosion control benefits, improving nitrogen management to protect groundwater, and even exploring practical methods to use nitrates already present in groundwater as a fertilizer source.

Water quantity priorities include improved on-farm irrigation flow measurement methods that support scheduling and performance evaluation, innovative irrigation scheduling tools, and evaluation approaches for subsurface drip irrigation system performance. The notice also highlights forest vegetation management strategies intended to increase water yield or extend downstream release while still maintaining ecosystem services like water quality, soil health, pest resilience, and wildlife benefits. For rangelands, NRCS is interested in practices and livestock management prescriptions that both improve water quality and increase effective water retention and storage.

Other topic areas broaden the program into forest and climate resilience and operational efficiency. For plant quality, an example priority is developing a minimum set of forest health indicators by forest type for the California Forest Health Scorecard, with an emphasis on balancing ecosystem services and economic viability. For air quality and climate change, priorities include practical soil amendments like compost or biochar to increase water-holding capacity and soil organic matter, paired with monitoring methods to estimate greenhouse gas reductions, carbon sequestration, or soil decontamination benefits. The notice also encourages drought adaptation strategies for crop systems, including dealing with salinity intrusion and timing mismatches between flowering and pollination, and it highlights conservation tillage as a strategy that can reduce fuel use, build soil organic matter, and potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions if paired with credible monitoring. Additional air-quality interests include the transferability of infrared and aerial imagery technologies for real-time planning to reduce emissions, systems that quantify emissions reductions from farm operations using GIS or similar tools, and proven systems that reduce fossil fuel use while addressing NRCS air-quality concerns.

Energy conservation and waste recycling are also prominent. NRCS seeks projects demonstrating greenhouse gas reductions through on-farm renewable energy (such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass-related systems), comprehensive comparisons of energy use between different farming systems, innovative ways to expand effective energy audits and efficiency upgrades, and feasibility assessments for biomass-to-energy pathways (including anaerobic digestion and other conversion technologies). There is also interest in irrigation-related energy savings through telemetry-enabled soil moisture monitoring networks and automation. Under waste recycling/resource conservation, the notice emphasizes technologies and systems to recycle excess biomass into useful products (including biochar and energy products), biomass recycling systems that reduce fire hazards and lower conservation practice installation costs, and California-specific development or demonstration tied to Conservation Practice Standard 633 (Waste Recycling), including producing practical specifications, job sheets, and system plans.

Wildlife-focused priorities include integrating habitat management into working agricultural landscapes in ways that support broader ecosystem services, as well as several very practical applied demonstrations such as durable alternatives to wood fence corner posts that provide raptor perches, and modifications or caps for open pipes used in conservation practices to reduce wildlife trapping. The notice also points to building out ecological site description resources by linking wildlife species to ecological site descriptions at the land resource unit level, and evaluating grazing as a habitat management tool for species such as sage grouse in meadows and sagebrush communities.

For applicants, the practical takeaway is that NRCS is looking for field-ready demonstrations with measurable outcomes, clear monitoring plans, and a strong pathway to adoption and technology transfer, all grounded in NRCS standards and California resource priorities. Projects that simply test a hypothesis or operate like academic research without a near-term implementation and adoption pathway are explicitly not a fit for this program. Contact and submission details in the notice route questions and applications to the California NRCS CIG program staff in Davis, including the listed state CIG program manager and grants specialist.

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