H.R. 4428 — Strong Farms, Strong Future Act

This section revises the definition of conservation practice for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)—which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural and forest producers for practices that address natural resource concerns—by (1) inserting "enhancements" after "practices" in subparagraph (A); and (2) inserting "climate change and" after "mitigate against" in subparagraph (B)(v).

This section revises stewardship contract provisions under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers to address natural resource concerns through conservation practices. (1) It adds contract offer evaluation criteria—equally weighted with existing factors on environmental benefits and cost-effectiveness—to ensure targeting of soil health improvements, carbon sequestration increases, greenhouse gas emission reductions, and other national, state, and local priority resource concerns. (2) It replaces contract renewal procedures to authorize a second 5-year term (initiated in the first half of the fifth year) if the producer demonstrates compliance, commits to new or improved conservation activities for continued operation-wide improvement, and meets a stewardship threshold for at least one additional priority resource concern (if applicable); rankings and payments consider full-operation benefits, expected threshold achievements, and management of ongoing and new activities; automatic renewal applies if a perennial production system was installed or improved during the initial term.

This section amends the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)—which provides payments to producers for adopting and maintaining conservation practices on agricultural and forest lands—by (1) requiring the Secretary to adjust planned annual payments for inflation associated with producer costs (i.e., planning, design, materials, installation, labor, management, maintenance, or training) over the contract life; (2) expanding eligibility for supplemental payments to include perennial production systems—defined as agricultural production of perennial species (e.g., agroforestry products, perennial grains and oilseeds, perennial forages, alley cropping, multifunctional riparian buffers, windbreaks, shelterbelts, forest farming, silvopasture)—in addition to resource-conserving crop rotations and advanced grazing management; (3) establishing climate change mitigation bundles—defined as groupings of conservation activities, based on best available science, that achieve net greenhouse gas reductions or increased carbon sequestration and soil health—which the Secretary must make available on a state- or region-specific basis for cropland, pastureland, rangeland, and forest land, with flexibility for site-specific needs, minimum offerings for perennial production systems, soil health management systems, advanced grazing management, and specialty crops, equal accessibility for organic and conventional producers (or separate organic bundles), and annual targeted outreach; and (4) requiring a report to the House and Senate agriculture committees not later than two years after bundles are made available, including producer feedback on barriers, bundle makeup, payments, and technical assistance; demographic data disaggregated by gender, race, age, and congressional district; barriers and recommendations (including statutory changes); average per-acre greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon sequestration estimates; and outreach summaries.