H.R. 4636 — SOIL Act

This section amends the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)—which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers for conservation practices that promote crop, forest, and livestock production while improving soil, water, air, wildlife habitat, and other natural resources—as follows: (1) authorizes payments at 90% of costs for planning, design, materials, equipment, installation, labor, management, maintenance, or training related to specified practices that benefit both soil and wildlife habitat (e.g., alley cropping, contour buffer strips, cover crops, riparian forest buffers, no-till or reduced tillage) (notwithstanding standard payment limitations); (2) revises administration of certain initiatives to cover practices within projects addressing habitat resource concerns (from practices benefiting wildlife habitat); and (3) adds a prioritization factor for contract applications developed to address both soil and wildlife habitat resource concerns.

This section modifies the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)—which provides payments to producers for adopting and maintaining conservation practices on agricultural and forest lands—by (1) adding as a factor in evaluating and ranking contract offers the degree to which a project addresses both soil and wildlife habitat resource concerns; and (2) authorizing supplemental payments for "co-benefit activities" (i.e., conservation activities addressing both soil and wildlife habitat resource concerns that, if implemented, improve wildlife habitat, increase soil carbon sequestration, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions), in addition to payments for resource-conserving crop rotations and advanced grazing management.