This AURI Connects: Fields of Innovation webinar focuses on ecosystem services markets. We look at work done in Minnesota to test and develop new, market-based models to provide financial incentives to farmers that implement practices – such as new cash cover crops – that improve soil health, store carbon in soils, and reduce nutrient runoff from their fields.
Efforts currently underway include a 50,000-acre pilot project in the Sauk River watershed in Central Minnesota. The Nature Conservancy is working with Ecosystem Services Marketplace Consortium, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to advance ecosystem services markets that incentivize farmers and ranchers to improve soil health and implement edge-of-field systems that benefit farmers, society and the environment.
The webinar features some of the leaders in this project who examine the potential these types of markets hold to increase the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture in Minnesota and beyond.
Run Time: 58:12