Environmental Quality
Incentives Program
9/24/07
1
United States Department of Agriculture
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Massachusetts
2008 EQIP Participation and Eligibility
Participation is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is voluntary. The applicant develops an
EQIP plan of operations that serves the basis for the EQIP contract for the agricultural land to be treated. NRCS
provides participants with technical and financial assistance to apply needed conservation practices. To be
eligible to participate in EQIP, an applicant must meet the following criteria:
Producer Eligibility
To participate in EQIP, an applicant must be an individual, entity or joint operation and meet the following criteria:
• Be an agricultural producer with an annual minimum of $1,000 of agricultural products produced and/or sold from
the operation for two of the last five years.
• Have an interest in the farming operation associated with the land being enrolled;
• Have control of the land for the term of the proposed contract;
• Be in compliance with provisions for protecting tenants and sharecroppers, including sharing EQIP payments on a fair
and equitable basis;
• Be in compliance with the highly erodible land and wetland conservation provisions of the Food Security Act of 1985;
• Be within the $450,000 limitation in EQIP payments received from 2002 or newer contracts;
• Be in compliance with the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) requirements (a person or entity is not eligible if the three-
year average AGI exceeds $2.5 million with less than 75% derived from farming or forestry sources).
• Producers with forestland are exempt from the $1,000 minimum annual sales, but must meet the other criteria, and
have one of the following:
o a forest management plan or forest stewardship plan;
o a prior record of timber harvest or revenue from timber sales;
o proof of capital investment on forest practices such as tree plantings, forest stand improvement, site
preparation, prescribe