CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The term “climate-smart” disappeared from the national political lexicon following the mid-2025 restructuring of the Biden administration’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) initiative, which was established under the former president’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. However, several farm and rural conservation programs still termed “climate-smart” are currently funded and promoted by the Illinois State Legislature through the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA).

Five of these programs were highlighted and discussed during the 2025 Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) Summit, Nov. 5 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign. The most popular and recognizable of the state programs, the Spring Savings for Fall Covers cover crop incentive program, has been in existence since 2018. According to IDOA’s Bureau Chief of Land & Water Resources, Michelle Curby, funding remains insufficient to cover demand for the program, which rewards cover crop growers not compensated by other USDA-led or private conservation programs.

“We still have acreage we are unable to fund, but we are getting closer to matching those each year. There was about 2 percent we were unable to fund (in 2024-25),” said Curby, adding that the state-led program now extends to over 200,000 cover crop acres annually. 

Illinois’ Fall Covers for Spring Savings program offers a premium discount up to $5 per acre on the subsequent year’s crop insurance premium, depending on a producer’s individual insurance policy, for every cover crop acre enrolled and verified in the program. In applying for this program, growers should consult their local soil and water conservation district (SWCD) office staff or the IDOA Bureau of Land and Water Resources at 217-782-6297.

Another cover crop program that relies partially on state funding, the I-COVER (Infield Conservation for Operationalizing Vital Ecosystem Resilience) program (a combined Illinois-Indiana-Iowa initiative), has been temporarily paused by the state of Illinois due to the ongoing uncertainty around the reliability of federal funding. I-COVER is designed to promote the implementation of cover crops and the adoption of new technologies to implement covers via the Partners for Conservation (PFC) Program.

“This program encourages seed cover in late summer and early fall, kind of looking for an earlier establishment of cover. It includes over-seeding prior to the harvest of the cash crop using new technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones; using the technology is what qualifies you for the program,” Curby said.

In its first year of a planned three-year life cycle, the $7 million I-COVER program will be funded by the state of Illinois and a USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) multi-state grant, according to Curby. “We are now more secure in this funding, and plan to hold signups in January or February of 2026,” she announced.

The Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) is a smart agriculture program that is part of the clean agriculture portion of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s (IEPA) Priority Climate Action Plan. The plan identifies practices such as no-till management to help reduce the release of greenhouse gases. “A reduction goal of 896,000 metric tons of GHGs was identified in the plan. The CPRG smart agriculture program plans to implement no-till and strip-till on approximately 1.9 million acres or about 644,000 acres each year of the three-year program,” said Curby of CPRG, which, like I-COVER, is partially funded by an NRCS RCPP grant.

CPRG pays producers $35 per acre across three years to participants not enrolled in any other state, federal or corporate programs that compensate farmers for conservation tillage practices. Its initial pre-enrollment period ended in late October with heavy interest from producers in 97 of Illinois’ 102 counties, Curby stated. “Over 1,200 applications were submitted for over 847,000 acres,” she said. “To put that in perspective, that is almost twice the number of applications we received for the Fall Covers program, which is going on seven years in existence, and more than 3.5 times the acreage.”

A fourth program, PFC, is a cost-share initiative that promotes conservation practices such as filter strips, terraces and grass waterways in order to reduce soil loss on Illinois cropland. Curby described how “State funds are distributed to Soil and Water Conservation Districts which prioritize and select projects that save the most soil or benefit the most acres in the most cost-effective manner” under the program, with construction costs divided between the state and landowners.

Recipients must agree to continue or maintain these practices for at least 10 years. The PFC Program funds programs at Illinois Department of Natural Resources, IDOA and IEPA. Programs under PFC include the sustainable agriculture grant program, cost-share programs for conservation practices, and grants for soil and water conservation districts.

Finally, the Streambank Stabilization and Restoration Program rewards farmers and landowners for employing low-cost, effective vegetative and bio-engineering techniques to limit streambank erosion, which is a major tenet of the NLRS. “This provides cost-shares for farmers with extremely eroding streambanks. Recipients must agree to begin or maintain streambank stabilization practices for a minimum of 10 years,” Curby said. “Numbers-wise, we had around 15 projects in 2021, five projects in 2022, seven projects in 2023 and four in 2024. So, there has been a decline in these projects from what we can gather is a cost issue or a logistics issue in getting permits.”

Steambank Stabilization and Restoration Program funds can be used for labor, equipment, and materials for projects that stabilize or restore severely eroding streambanks. To participate in this program, producers should contact their local SWCD to see if they are eligible.