The Agriculture Department on Wednesday announced plans to spend $1.5 billion to bankroll projects that are part of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural lands. It’s the latest expenditure from Inflation Reduction Act funds in fiscal year 2024, as the agency races to spend the nearly $20 billion allocated to USDA’s wildly popular conservation programs by the end of fiscal 2031. RCPP alone will receive nearly $5 billion in funding, total, from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the spending announcement in Mankato, Minnesota at an event touting President Joe Biden’s “Investing in America Agenda.” The White House has repeatedly dispatched Vilsack and other top cabinet officials to highlight the administration’s historic investments in infrastructure, rural programs and green initiatives as they seek to shape the narrative around the 2024 presidential election. Biden’s allies are hoping the spending will help Democrats make inroads with rural voters, who have voted solidly Republican in recent decades.
The administration is working under a strict deadline to allocate the remaining roughly $15 billion of total Inflation Reduction Act conservation money over the next seven years.
RCPP was allocated $800 million for fiscal year 2024, meaning USDA will spend about $700 million more this fiscal year than the bill prescribed.
