PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (February 1, 2023) – Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), along with research partners, has been awarded a grant to establish a project – dubbed the Climate-Smart Sustainability (CSS) Certificate – to quantify the value of existing and newly adopted climate-smart interventions and administer these practices to support small-scale, underserved, and limited resources farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Climate-Smart Sustainability (CSS) Certificate will substantially expand opportunities for climate-smart commodities and small-scale underserved, and limited resources farmers of strawberry, edible soybean, radish, and leafy green commodities. Farmers of the aforementioned crops will be offered an incentive to take up climate-smart practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon in the soil while improving soil health and production.
Researchers at Texas A&M University, the University of Houston, and Michigan Aerospace Corporation, will join PVAMU in the development of this project. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded the team nearly $5 million as part of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative announced by the USDA in February 2022.
“I am proud to announce these historic grants from the Department of Agriculture. The CSS Certificate project will have an unprecedented impact on historically underserved and small-scale farmers,” said PVAMU Vice President of Research & Innovation Magesh Rajan, Ph.D., P.E., MBA. “The funding for these projects boosts our ability to develop projects that support historically underserved farmers across the State of Texas while the success of these initiatives will benefit PVAMU and HBCUs nationwide.”
Ram Ray, Ph.D., associate professor, College of Agriculture and Human Sciences
Per the announcement, the USDA is investing more than $3.1 billion in an effort to expand markets for America’s climate-smart commodities, leverage the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart commodity production, and provide direct, meaningful benefits to production agriculture, including for small and underserved producers.
“Expanding opportunities for small and underserved producers is a key goal of Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities,” said USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Small and underserved producers are facing the impacts of climate change head-on, with limited resources, and have the most to gain from leveraging the growing market demand for agricultural goods produced in a sustainable, climate-smart way. Our goal is to expand markets for climate-smart commodities and ensure that small and underserved producers reap the benefits of these market opportunities.”
The CSS project is led by Ram Ray, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Human Sciences (CAHS) at PVAMU. He is thrilled about the opportunity this funding brings to his team of researchers and to greater rural farming communities statewide.
“This is a very exciting project for me because we plan to develop innovative technologies and approaches to monitoring greenhouse gases, which ultimately benefit other researchers and stakeholders,” said Dr. Ray. “A very good thing about this project is that about $1 million will be paid directly to the limited resources [of] small-scale growers/farmers as an incentive. All they need to do is the climate-smart practice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon in the soil while improving soil health and production.”
The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities opportunity is a historic initiative from the USDA to support a diverse range of farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners, but it also opens the door to bringing cutting-edge agricultural technology to a diverse range of producers across the United States.
Dr. Ray was awarded alongside his colleague, Clarence Bunch, Ph.D., Agriculture Natural Resources Program Leader of the Cooperative Extension Program (CEP) who was awarded nearly $3 million for the PVAMU Climate-Smart Farm Planning Program.
“By developing scientific knowledge and translating the results into solutions for grand challenges in agriculture, these projects will make a positive impact on both science and society,” said Executive Associate Director of Cooperative Agricultural Research Center at PVAMU College of Agriculture and Human Sciences, Erdogan Memili, DVM, Ph.D.
This award comes on the heels of previously won USDA grants under the first funding pool announced in September 2022, in which PVAMU was a co-lead for three projects. Interestingly, Dr. Ray is the PVAMU lead for one of the three funded projects.
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By Jenna Craig