Let’s Simplify Incentive Payments: A Roundtable on Ag Conservation Planning Tools

Join Point Blue Conservation Science for an engaging review and discussion about emerging ways to simplify the conservation planning and incentive application process (e.g. for EQIP, CSP, etc). These programs offer critical support for implementing sustainable farming and ranching practices, but participation can be exhausting: including complex application processes, redundant paperwork and many hours spent sifting through management records and translating them into rigid forms. This creates unnecessary barriers to participation.
Organizations are starting to create free, open-source tools to streamline this process to help get more funds out the door. We have heard from conservation planners that merely changing software systems to improve data entry and storage can speed up their application processes by 3 – 10x, getting more funds to producers. But with so many record-keeping platforms out there, it’s hard to keep track of them all, let alone determine which to choose. And limited software has been designed specifically for conservation planning work.

Come share your perspectives and hear from others about their strategies as we aim to generate guidelines for new tools to reduce redundancy, enhance interoperability, and foster transparency through open source solutions, and empower land stewards and TAPs to more effectively access conservation funding and implement regenerative practices.

Questions? Contact Erika Foster at efoster@pointblue.org.