Progress report for WPDP25-024
Project Information
The Sacramento Valley Soil Hub (“The Hub”) is a new, region-wide collaboration between resource conservation districts (RCDs) and partners in the Sacramento Valley. The Hub, which is hosted by Colusa County RCD, coordinates an inclusive network of farmers and ranchers, technical assistance providers, researchers, educators, and industry representatives dedicated to advancing climate-friendly agriculture in California’s Sacramento Valley.
The Hub’s work centers on expanding the capacity of RCDs to support farmers and landowners with technical and financial assistance. Staff training and professional development is key to providing adequate support to farmers, but an assessment of RCD funding reveals how difficult it is for RCDs to invest in staff training. In interviews and surveying during Spring 2024, RCD leaders and staff in the region identified training as one of three top priorities in the region-wide effort to scale up climate smart agriculture (M. Flynn, personal communication, February 2024). This Professional Development grant will be used to advance agricultural professionals’ knowledge through a three-part workshop series focused on outreach and funding, carbon farm planning, and use of the climate smart agriculture toolbox developed as part of this award. A portion of the grant will provide staff compensation for job shadowing within the RCD-NRCS network to facilitate peer mentorship, allowing staff to better assist growers in their districts.
Hub partnerships with the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts (CARCD), the Carbon Cycle Institute (CCI), University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR), and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) will strengthen the scope and reach of these capacity-focused trainings to expand the area of influence for this opportunity across the state. Agricultural professionals in attendance will learn from experts across farming, academia, agency, and the non-profit sector, which will enrich their learning experience and strengthen their ties within the climate smart agriculture practitioner community.
Objective 1: Address the educational needs of agricultural professionals in the Sacramento Valley as identified by Sacramento Valley Resource Conservation District staff and partners.
Activity 1: Develop a 3-part workshop series focused on outreach and funding for climate smart agriculture, carbon farm planning, and an online technology toolbox hosted by the Sacramento Valley Soil Hub
Objective 2: Provide an online space to host continuous and lasting support for the Sacramento Valley Soil Hub network related to climate smart agriculture.
Activity 2: Create an online toolbox to host workshop series recordings and notes, an agriculture professional directory, guidance documents for carbon farm and conservation planning, standardized outreach materials for RCDs, best practices for material translation, and a list of ongoing funding opportunities for climate smart agriculture and carbon farm planning.
Objective 3: Register at least 20 people for each workshop.
Activity 3: Recruit participants through the Sacramento Valley Soil Hub listserv, biannual regional RCD meeting, partner meetings, and NRCS network.
Objective 4: Cultivate resource sharing in the broader RCD network, extending the area of influence of this project and fostering collaboration around technical assistance for climate smart agriculture.
Activity 4: Share online toolbox with the RCD community to reach all 95 districts throughout the state and broadly provide materials for producer education.
Objective 5: Facilitate peer education and mentorship for agriculture staff within the RCD-NRCS network.
Activity 5: Compensate early career staff for hours spent job shadowing experienced RCD and partner staff across the region.
Objective 6: Evaluate the success of the workshop series and determine any remaining areas for further development.
Activity 6: Conduct a post-event survey with attendees and a subsequent Soil Hub meeting to discuss the effect and quality of the workshop series, what content should be added to ongoing training opportunities, and what remaining questions staff have.
The Sacramento Valley Soil Hub works within the network of resource conservation districts to expand capacity for climate smart agriculture technical assistance. Interviews, surveys, and research into public data have revealed a region-wide lack of funds for staff training and professional development. During this process, RCD leaders and staff in the region identified staff training as one of three top priorities in the region-wide effort to scale up climate smart agriculture (M. Flynn, personal communications, 2024). Just 17% of reported agriculture-related awards in the region of RCDs allowed staff training compared to 44% of funding awards permitting outreach and education activities. This professional development grant provides an opportunity to train agriculture professionals to adequately conduct grower outreach and education. This series of workshops, online toolbox, and job shadowing will increase the efficacy of individual practitioners and their broader professional network in each outreach, education, and planning opportunity.
As California progresses towards the State’s climate and conservation goals, natural and working lands have been brought into focus. The legislature passed AB 1757 in 2022 which requires a collaborative of state agencies to coordinate and set targets for natural carbon sequestration and nature-based climate solutions that will be integrated into State policies. California’s Nature-Based Solutions, released in 2024, calls for ambitious growth in annual acreage conserved with healthy soils and other conservation practices. The document sets goals of 152k, 206k, and 209.5k acres per year conserved by 2030, 2038, and 2045, respectively (California’s NBS Climate Targets, 2024). As conservation in agriculture gains mainstream traction in California, agriculture professionals require increased professional skills and resources to keep pace with demand.
Agriculture professionals attending this series will learn effective ways to fund, manage, and plan for carbon farming and other climate smart practices that are incentivized by State and Federal programs. Our long-term objective is to prepare the RCDs of the Sacramento Valley Region and their partners to work collectively towards scaling climate-smart agriculture and educating their network of producers. This proposal builds on prior, unrelated WSARE awards in the state: WPDP22-003 – Scaling Regenerative Agriculture in California through NRCS and RCD Conservation Planner Training and WPDP22-022 – Advancing Knowledge of Soil Health Assessment and Management Through California’s North Coast Soil Hub. While similar, this proposal marks the first inclusion of funding and outreach training for staff, and the first time job shadowing has been included as a means for staff to gain hands-on experience.
This educational series will position RCD staff well to pursue diverse funding opportunities and expand the reach of climate smart agriculture through informed outreach. Practitioners will also leave with tools to assist them in carbon farm planning and an understanding of the online toolbox that will archive all of the workshop materials and continue to be updated with new climate smart agriculture information.
Sacramento Valley RCDs Training Program Timeline
Task 1: Initial convening (May 2025)
Participants: PI, Co-Investigator
Outcomes: The project will have an updated outline of scope of work and gantt chart.
Task 2: Select educators (May 2025)
Participants: PI, Co-Investigator
Outcomes: The PI and co-investigator will develop a contact list and strategy for singing on educator partners.
Task 3: Job shadowing funds available (May 2025 – April 2028)
Participants: PI, Scholarship Administrator, RCD and NRCS staff
Outcomes: Job shadowing will increase mentor-mentee relationship building and provide real-world opportunities for early career staff to use their new outreach and planning skills.
Task 4: Workshop development and scholarship awards (June 2025 – October 2025)
Participants: PI, Co-Investigator, Scholarship Administrator, Educators
Outcomes: Each workshop will have a curriculum and agenda that is co-planned by the PI, co-investigator, and educators. The scholarship administrator determines participants who will be funded through the grant.
Task 5: Online toolbox development (June 2025 – March 2026)
Participants: PI
Outcomes: The online toolbox will be a publicly available online resource with recordings of all workshops, related climate smart agriculture resources, and planning guides.
Task 6: Hosting workshops (Workshop 1 – October 2025, Workshop 2 – January 2026, Workshop 3 – April 2026)
Participants: PI, Co-Investigator, Educators, Attendees
Outcomes: Participants will leave with expanded agriculture professional knowledge about climate smart agriculture funding, outreach, planning, and resources. Attendees will also complete the WSARE Evaluation Tool.
Task 7: Evaluation (November 2026, February 2026, May 2026, February 2028 – April 2028)
Participants: PI, Co-Investigator, Attendees
Outcomes: After each workshop, the PI will collect and compile completed evaluations from attendees. A whole-project assessment will be conducted through survey and a post-workshop convening and will be included in the final report for this grant.
Task 8: Administration (March 2028 – April 2028)
Participants: PI
Outcomes: The last month of the grant will be spent compiling whole-project assessment and drafting a final report.
Cooperators
- (Educator)
- (Educator)
Education
This project uses live webinars (recorded for asynchronous viewing), an online resource library, and in-person job shadowing to address multiple learning avenues for delivering climate-beneficial technical assistance in California. The combination of online and in-person opportunities increases access to this professional development opportunity both for technical assistance providers (TAPs) in the Sacramento Valley and TAPs across the state. Webinars provide both guidance from experts in funding, outreach, and planning and success stories and lessons learned from peers to demonstrate ways of moving from theory to action. Additionally, in-person job shadowing in the Sacramento Valley allows newer RCD staff to build relationships and programmatic understanding at nearby RCDs, agencies, and non-profits with decades of experience in this realm.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Address the educational needs of agricultural professionals in the Sacramento Valley as identified by Sacramento Valley Resource Conservation District staff and partners.
This project includes three webinars focused on funding, outreach, and planning for climate friendly agriculture. The first of these webinars took place in October 2025.
Webinar #1, Funding technical assistance and implementation of conservation agriculture featured speakers from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the National Association of Conservation Districts, and the Carbon Cycle Institute. Speakers brought their perspectives on the value of state funding, federal flow-through funds from the USDA, and private/philanthropic funding as well as tips and best practices for seeking each kind of funding. Presentations were followed by 40 minutes of Q&A with the audience to dive deeper into funding.
Webinar #2, Producer outreach for climate beneficial agriculture: Best practices, successes, and lessons learned will take place at the end of February 2026 and will feature a panel of four practitioners: Two ranchers who work in partnerships and community building around climate friendly agriculture, and two RCD staff who will share best practices for program outreach including outreach to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
Webinar #3 will take place in the spring and will focus on NRCS conservation planning and carbon farm planning with similar presentations from experts and time for Q&A.
As each webinar takes place, recordings will be posted to the Sacramento Valley Soil Hub Technical Assistance Resource Library where the broader network of RCDs and public can view them.
A poll from the first webinar in October 2025 indicate attendees had "some" or "a little" prior knowledge about funding avenues for climate friendly agriculture, with very few respondents indicating a high level of familiarity or no familiarity at all. Post-webinar survey results indicate all survey respondents improved their awareness of the funding landscape for climate smart agriculture and 17 of 22 survey respondents felt they would use some information from the webinar as a resource for producers in the future. Additional tracking has shown that, in addition to the 47 live attendees, 45 more people have accessed the webinar recording. This far exceeds the initial goal of registering at least 20 attendees for each webinar.
The planning team also collected suggestions and feedback from attendees to improve future webinars. The team has incorporated suggestions like including RCD best practices and tips for outreach to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers into the upcoming webinar #2 focused on outreach for climate smart agriculture.
Survey feedback and follow up conversations suggest a successful, accessible webinar that demystified some of the core pieces of funding in climate friendly agriculture technical assistance. In particular, attendees seemed to value the conversation on accessing private funding as this was a completely new topic for many RCD staff. The webinar recording will be hosted in the resource library for technical assistance going forward.
Provide an online space to host continuous and lasting support for the Sacramento Valley Soil Hub network related to climate smart agriculture.
This project funds the online platform and time required to gather and host general technical assistance resources in one place. The Sacramento Valley Soil Hub website has now launched and includes the first iteration of the resource library for technical assistance. Here, webpage visitors will find video tutorials on grant writing and management, Soil Hub meeting guest talks, standard operating procedures and templates for carbon farm planning, regional agricultural operations data, vendor lists for seed drills and native plant nurseries, a glossary of climate friendly agriculture terminology, and the recorded webinars from this project. The project team will continue to refine this webpage and add resources to bolster it's utility for agriculture technical assistance providers in the Sacramento Valley and beyond.
While the development of this webpage is iterative and always incorporating suggestions and comments form users, specific feedback on the resource library for technical assistance will be collected at a forthcoming Soil Hub meeting. The goal of the resource library is to minimize barriers in accessing videos, templates, and guidance that will increase the efficacy of climate smart agricultural technical assistance. By creating a single resource page, RCD staff can spend less time searching the web and various shared drives and more time performing technical assistance for local producers.
Since publishing the website, there have been 116 unique visitors with minimal publicity conducted. As the final version of the resource library takes shape, the project team will make a coordinated communications push to share the library widely.
Facilitate peer education and mentorship for RCD agriculture staff within the region.
The job shadowing fund established guidelines and opened in the Fall of 2025 to Sacramento Valley RCDs. Originally, funds were advised to be used for shadowing other RCD staff or local NRCS offices. Feedback from Soil Hub members indicated a desire for shadowing opportunities in the broader network beyond RCD and NRCS. With consensus among Hub leadership, the job shadowing fund has been broadened to include any agriculture technical assistance practitioners and organizations.
The job shadowing guidelines are as follows:
Guidelines:
These guidelines are to be in place for the first year of the WSARE grant period and will be reevaluated Fall 2026.
- No one employee can use more than 3 days of shadowing funds
- Funds will be distributed for an hourly rate + fringe benefits by the hour on a reimbursement basis
- Funds must be used to shadow ag-related on-the-job opportunities (not classes, formal training courses, etc.)
- Funds can be used by Sacramento Valley RCD staff to shadow senior RCD, NRCS, and other partner staff.
- Higher capacity RCDs can use up to 24 hours (e.g. 1 staff member for 3 days), lower capacity RCDs can use up to 72 hours (e.g. 3 staff members for 3 days each). Capacity level is self-identified and reviewed by the Soil Hub Governance Committee.
- To apply for job shadowing funds, staff will submit a google form response to the Soil Hub Coordinator.
- Job shadowing fund requests will be reviewed at quarterly Soil Hub Governance Committee meetings and must be unanimously approved by the leadership group for funds to be permitted.
- Voting on approval for the shadowing funds requests will be via closed vote in direct message on Zoom chat.
- All requests that abide by the above guidelines and are approved by the governance committee will be dispersed on a first come, first serve basis.
One RCD has applied to use job shadowing funds for three staff. This first application will be reviewed by Hub leadership in February 2026. If approved, the RCD staff are expected to engage in job shadowing with a local land trust in Spring 2026. Additional RCDs report seeking and planning out opportunities for 2026.
The job shadowing fund is intended to supplement webinars with in-person opportunities to participate in hands-on training and build local partnerships with professionals in the climate smart agriculture space. The project team aims to maximize opportunities and accessibility for staff professional development through the multiple avenues available to staff. All users of job shadowing funds will report a short summary of their learning outcomes from their experience which will be relayed to WSARE via annual reporting.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
The project team has hosted one of three webinars at the time of this report. Post-webinar survey results from the first webinar on funding indicate all survey respondents improved their awareness of the funding landscape for climate smart agriculture and 17 of 22 survey respondents felt they would use some information from the webinar as a resource for producers in the future. Additional tracking has shown that, in addition to the 47 live attendees, 45 more people have accessed the webinar recording. This far exceeds the initial goal of registering at least 20 attendees for the webinar. Several attendees indicated in the chat that this webinar motivated them to pursue contact with potential local community funds and apply for upcoming USDA-NRCS flow through funding via NACD.
Survey feedback and follow up conversations and suggestions paint a picture of an accessible webinar that demystified some of the core pieces of funding in climate friendly agriculture technical assistance. The webinar, subsequent recording, and the development of the online resource library for technical assistance signal the start of this professional development effort for technical assistance providers in California. Further impacts and action outcomes will be measured with similar polling and an evaluation session at a Soil Hub meeting in Spring 2026 after all webinars are completed. Outcomes from the job shadowing fund will be shared as shadowing is completed.