What We Learned on Our Journey to 100k Acres

100,000. That’s the number of acres, spread across 19 states, stewarded by more than 750 family forest owners, that are now enrolled in the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) and actively participating in the fight against climate change. That’s 100,000 acres being managed or reforested to improve the long-term health, productivity, and values and ecosystem benefits of our country’s woodlands. That’s 100,000 acres with 20-and-30-year commitments to this stewardship from hundreds of families. That’s 100,000 acres and 750 family forest owners who now have access to more than $24 million in direct incentives while also having technical forestry assistance most have never had before.  

FFCP has reached this incredible milestone due to high-impact partnerships, iterative science and accounting, tireless efforts of the AFF team, and the relentless commitment of family forest owners to caring for their lands. On this journey to 100k, we continue to learn what it takes to implement and scale a high-integrity forest carbon project, improve the health and productivity of our forests, and expand market access to rural landowners from all walks of life. Here are some of our key takeaways. 

Public-Private Partnerships Are Essential 

FFCP’s development and ongoing success, especially our success reaching small acreage and underserved landowners, has only been possible thanks to public-private partnerships. FFCP learned early on the importance of partnering with government agencies to reach more landowners, enable their participation, and de-risk and incentivize private investment in the voluntary carbon market. Leveraging federal funding to mobilize private dollars in natural climate solutions produces catalytic results, including more landowners overall engaged in active sustainable forest management, more landowners exposed to federal conservation programs, greater conservation and climate impact for the same amount of federal investment, and advancement in science and innovation that create more sustainable and effective conservation nationwide.  

We can track the beginning of our success back to one of our earliest partners, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which was foundational in the creation of FFCP and continues to play an essential role in our ability to create meaningful conservation action. It was a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) that funded the initial FFCP pilot in central Pennsylvania. Further expansion was made possible by a Landscape Scale Restoration (LSR) grant from the U.S. Forest Service. These two initial investments were essential to the understanding, testing, and improving of our methodologies and outreach to landowners. This work took place alongside enthusiastic state partners within the NRCS and State Forester’s offices and continues today with local state partners.  

Our alignment with NRCS practices through the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities (CSC) grant is leveraging the power of our partnership network, including The Nature Conservancy, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation, and Purdue University. Then, with $450 million in historic funding available through the Inflation Reduction Act, we have a fantastic partnership with the U.S. Forest Service helping us to scale FFCP alongside many other trusted partners. We can attribute these 100,000 enrolled acres to each and every partner that helped expand FFCP’s reach to landowners in need of a conservation solution for their land. 

Meet Landowners Where They Are

A central element of FFCP’s success is our commitment to not just environmental integrity but also social integrity – ensuring the impact we have is always a net positive for the communities with which we partner. Catering to each landowner’s unique forest and their needs, ensuring FFCP is the right fit for each interested landowner, and sharing the benefits of our collective success is baked into FFCP’s design.  

Regular landowner payments, forester capacity, technical knowledge sharing and assistance, and ongoing support beyond the life of enrolled landowners’ contracts all help boost rural economies, increase the value of the forest and opportunity for forest products from these lands, and ensure the climate impact of our program’s intervention continues and scales in the areas that need it most. We can’t fight climate change without listening to and meeting the needs of the communities hit first and worst by its impacts.  

When a landowner enrolls in FFCP, one of the first steps is to have AFF foresters survey the property and accommodate any level of landowner forestry experience, allowing them to take advantage of new opportunities while making educated decisions about their land. During these visits, foresters map the forest, record plant and wildlife species, measure tree health and maturity, and use these factors to get an accurate grasp of the land’s condition. From there, foresters collaborate with enrolled landowners to craft a Forest Management Plan. This plan is a collaborative effort between forester and landowner and for a majority of FFCP enrollees -- 60% -- this is their first ever management plan. 

As FFCP continues to expand to new regions, we will continue to center personal relationships with every landowner in our quest to deliver quality results benefiting all our stakeholders.  

Science Drives Integrity

Finally, we’ve learned from first-hand experience that the latest science must drive measurable and verifiable impact in climate mitigation. In an emerging market like the voluntary carbon market, it is even more important to base our project on the best science and carbon accounting available to ensure we can verify our climate impact – for the sake of landowners, carbon credit buyers seeking net zero, the viability of the market, and our partners.  

The best carbon accounting means using a non-predictive dynamic baseline methodology. Working with TNC, TerraCarbon, and Verra, AFF co-developed VM0045, the first of its kind methodology approved through the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) that uses this baseline approach. Using this innovative methodology, we can compare forests enrolled in FFCP to neighboring unenrolled forests on a regular basis to accurately isolate how much additional carbon is sequestered by FFCP’s interventions. Our commitment to long-term relationships with landowners in our program ensures extra diligence on the permanence of our credits and helps us also mitigate leakage.  

Landowners, corporate buyers, and other market stakeholders want to trust that their investment into our program is making a meaningful contribution to the climate, and our dynamic baseline methodology helps ensure the Family Forest Carbon Program is making real, additional impact in the fight against climate change.  

What's Next for FFCP

We have learned so much on our path to enrolling the first 100,000 acres in FFCP and we still have so much to learn. We’re so grateful to so many for being on this learning journey with us. AFF’s job is to make the planet better in collaboration with family forest owners and thanks to so many we are doing this—we’re actively fighting climate change and doing our part to stand along side our conservation heroes— family forest owners— who are working every day to better the environment, and we call on you to do yours.  

Partners, join us in expanding the Family Forest Carbon Program by engaging more family forest owners from all walks of life.  

Buyers, invest in a high-quality project that puts science first, and value integrity and measurable impact above all. 

Landowners, join our community and help us reach our next milestone, celebrating 1,000 landowners enrolled in the coming months.  

Want to learn more about the Family Forest Carbon Program? Visit familyforestcarbon.org.