EQIP

Cindy Ayers Elliott once worked on Wall Street—but has since traded in her high heels for a pair of work boots. The former CEO and investment banker has made a life-changing move to her Jackson home-turned-farm, where she rears goats for meat and grows organic vegetables.

When tornadoes struck Alabama in April 2011, people across the state rushed to help their neighbors with food, shelter and basic necessities. But volunteers didn’t have much time to help cattlemen round up and secure livestock.

Every year USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in South Dakota joins partners to coordinate a bird watching tour on a farm or ranch that participates in one of our voluntary conservation programs.

“When we started, there weren’t any other farms locally doing what we were doing,” says Ryan Casey, of Blue House Farms, outside of Pescadero, Calif.

Tommy Berend, ranch operator at the 9,000-acre Circle A Ranch in Archer County, Texas, wanted to eliminate mesquite, restore open spaces and plant native grasses on the ranch. The mesquite consumed large amounts of water in areas where Berend wanted to create habitat for quail and other wildlife...

Along the lush banks of the Sunflower River, Steve Martens has a slice of paradise. The Madison, Miss. resident owns 1,600 acres of farmland and forests, hospitable not only to soybeans and corn, but also to whitetail deer and bobwhite quail.

“Out with the old, in with the new” isn’t the rule of thumb at Sand Creek Farm in Cameron, Texas. Ben Godfrey, the organic farmer who owns the farm, has used the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a conservation program administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service...

During S.E. Felter’s early teen years, he baled hay a few miles from his Adams County, Miss. home. But now the land Felter worked as a youngster is a lake, after the Mississippi River swelled its banks and pushed water inland along creeks and rivers.

On a spring day in Chesterfield, South Carolina, a family works in unison to manage cattle, sheep and goats. This is a daily routine and a way of life for Paxton Pegues, his wife Olivia, and their four children Rachel, Marcellus, Spencer, and Lanier.

So far this year, Texas has lost more than 256,000 acres and 147 structures, as well as livestock, to 511 wildfires. Fortunately, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Texas is now making $400,000 available through its Environmental Quality Incentives Program to those who have...