Soil and Water Outcomes Fund
Cost effective solutions for soil and water stewardship
Don’t see your state or county included in the above map? We continue to scale up our work with farmers and beneficiaries and are exploring several new geographic regions for expansion. Contact us to learn more about bringing the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund to your area.
The Soil and Water Outcomes Fund provides financial incentives directly to farmers who transition to on-farm conservation practices that yield positive environmental outcomes like carbon sequestration and water quality improvement. We provide new market opportunities and revenue streams for farmers by selling these environmental outcomes to public and private beneficiaries to meet regulatory and voluntary sustainability goals, such as scope 3 greenhouse gas emission insets.
By stacking together the many positive environmental outcomes of on-farm conservation practices, we deliver substantial per-acre payments to our farmer partners and extremely competitive environmental outcome pricing to our customers.
The Soil and Water Outcomes Fund is managed by AgOutcomes.
STEP 1. Use our farmer web portal at theoutcomesfund.com to create an account, map your field boundaries, and enter baseline and future cropping system information.
STEP 2. Review the proposed payment offering emailed to you within 1-2 weeks after data submission and determine if you wish to continue participate.
STEP 3. E-sign the contract emailed to you to confirm your participation in the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, and receive 50% of your payment at signature.
STEP 4. Receive technical assistance from Soil and Water Outcomes Fund conservation agronomists as needed to implement conservation practices.
STEP 5. Receive remaining 50% payment after the crop year is complete and your farm’s environmental outcomes are measured and verified. In 2021, participating farmers received an average payment of $31 per acre.
We take a farmer-focused approach and make it easy for farmers to be fairly compensated for the environmental benefits they produce by leveraging markets for ecosystem services like carbon, water, and biodiversity.
The Soil and Water Outcomes Fund's outcomes-based approach enables our customers at public and private entities to achieve their regulatory and voluntary sustainability goals with reduced risk and increasing cost efficiency. By stacking together multiple outcomes from the same agricultural practices we achieve flexible and cost-competitive pricing for the outcomes our customers seek.
Beyond Cost Share
Farmers want to be good stewards of the land, but agricultural conservation has not always been rewarded with appropriate financial incentives. We provide payments to farmers and landowners that go well beyond the scale of existing public or private incentive programs.
Farmer Focused
Our mission is to provide financial incentives and technical assistance to farmers and landowners to facilitate agricultural best management practices. We don’t sell a product, input, or service that farmers don’t need, can’t pay for, or isn’t proven.
Stacking Benefits
The benefits of agricultural conservation extend well beyond the farm. We capture the value of these multiple benefits to the fullest extent possible, creating significant farmer value by combining multiple complementary customers in a single transaction.
“Farms are disappearing right before our eyes. Something’s got to change...My field, that’s my retirement. That’s my 401(k). I’m taking the best care of it that I can because someday I’ll need it to take care of me.”
“Soil health is a long-term investment. The Soil and Water Outcomes Fund puts farmers and landowners at the center, because if these solutions work for them, they will scale. Cargill is excited to be involved in the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund and to demonstrate how farmers can help address some of humanity’s biggest challenges.”
“For farmers considering soil health related changes, having options outside of the traditional state and federal cost share structures will be a welcome change. ”
