Connector
Connector
The Conservation Technology Information Center, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and Houston Engineering, is leading development of a new online tool, the Connector, as a key element of a new project selected in September 2022 for funding by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program.
The overall project (ACTION) is being led by the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, which was awarded up to $35 million by USDA to conduct this new partnership pilot. Through their global collaborative, Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM), Wolfe’s Neck Center will lead an alliance of over 60 national and regional buyers, funders, and organizations to launch and support climate-smart agricultural pilot projects on farms and ranches in the Northeast, Mountain West, and California.
The Connector will allow producers and landowners to find programs and service providers who can help plan, implement, and verify voluntary conservation and climate-smart ag practices. CTIC is partnering with Houston Engineering and The Nature Conservancy on the development effort. The Connector will bring many benefits to producers, allowing them to find buyers for their climate-smart commodities, to find other programs to support adoption of conservation practices, and to find service providers to help implement them. Additional Connector capabilities, including the ability to automatically tap MMRV resources, are planned as later phases of the overall OpenTEAM project.
Now that development of the prototype has begun, CTIC is seeking an intern to assist with the collection of information for two registries: the first on programs and the second on service providers. Here is a link to the job posting.
If interested in learning more about the Connector, please contact Ryan Heiniger at heinger@ctic.org.
