NRCS and Investment Capital: Investing in America Together

Author

Encourage Capital and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)

Publication

September 2017

abstract

In 2016, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) entered into an agreement with Encourage Capital to explore how NRCS might better use Farm Bill conservation funding to leverage private capital. This report is the culmination of many months of interviews, discussions and analyses that involved NRCS staff as well as external partners and stakeholders.

We stand at an interesting time in the history of private lands conservation in the United States. With all the successes that NRCS has helped achieve over many decades—substantial reductions in soil erosion, increases in no-till agriculture, de-listings and avoided listings of endangered and threatened species—we recognize that the agency does not have the resources to help all of the private farm, ranch and forest landowners that need assistance.

At the same time, we know that there is increasing interest in finding new sources of funding for private and working lands conservation. At NRCS, we support this interest insofar as it focuses on uncovering resources that can extend our mission of helping people help the land. At NRCS we take a broad view of the term conservation finance—we are interested in uncovering non-Federal resources that can be deployed on private lands to benefit rural economies and the environment. Impact investment, corporate investment, philanthropy, green bonds, municipal funding—all of these funding sources are welcome and needed to address the Nation’s natural resource challenges on private lands. This report focuses on private capital and impact investment, but many of its findings apply to other funding sources, as well.