Ecosystem Services Market Consortium

Incentivizing Farmers to Adopt Conservation Practices

Climate change is threatening food security and farmer livelihoods. The agriculture sector currently contributes 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The National Academies of Sciences estimates that the accelerated adoption of existing and imminent climate-smart solutions could significantly reduce U.S. agricultural GHG emissions. Research has shown that agricultural conservation practices such as reducing tillage and using cover crops not only reduce agriculture’s GHG contribution but increase soil health, which can help farms and ranches mitigate the effects of climate change.

One way to increase adoption of these sustainable practices is through a voluntary ecosystem services market, which pays farmers and ranchers who adopt practices that improve soil health and water quality, increase water use efficiency and in-field biodiversity and reduce GHG emissions.

The Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) is a non-profit organization that improves the environment by exploring incentives to encourage adoption of agriculture practices. FFAR partners with ESMC to fund the consortium’s research arm, Ecosystem Services Market Research Consortium (ESMRC), to provide the research necessary to create a scaled, efficient, cost-effective ecosystem services program that benefits farmers and ranchers as well as society. This investment was key to launching in 2022 Eco-Harvest, ESMC’s certified market program.

FFAR funded research and development (R&D) underpins Eco-Harvest outcomes and successes. Part of the R&D effort included developing a sophisticated measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification (MMRV) platform that provides quantifiable outcomes from the practice changes made by farmers and ranchers. This platform is an important infrastructure investment that automates much of the work for producers, program managers, auditors and buyers, as well as creates programmatic outcomes that have scientific rigor and transparency and are repeatable and scalable.

The research used to underpin all Eco-Harvest programmatic decisions is publicly available on ESMC’s website.

With support from FFAR, the Eco-Harvest program has worked with over 350 producers on more than 220,000 project acres in 27 states. These numbers are growing as the Eco-Harvest programming scales, and as ESMRC research findings add more farm and ranch systems and pathways to engagement in more states and in Canada. To increase producer outreach further, ESMC is also focusing on the farmers and ranchers who have been traditionally left out of agricultural incentive programs — mainly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) producers.

Visit the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium for more information.