Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 11/8/21

USDA is currently reviewing nearly 400 comments on how climate pilot programs should work, with the goal of announcing more details sometime between the end of this year and early 2022, reports our Helena Bottemiller Evich.

“We listened to farmers,” Vilsack said in an interview last week. “Farmers basically said: Demonstration projects. Let’s figure out what works and what doesn’t.”

More timeline talk: Vilsack added that after applications are received, the goal would be to make decisions by “late spring” about how the resources will be allocated. He also said it was possible that the “rubber could meet the road” a bit sooner — maybe in the first quarter of the year — but “certainly” applications would be open by then.