Ad Hoc Committee on Expanding Pathways
to Compensate Producers
Climate-Smart Agriculture Adoption (Pathways Committee)
Pathways Committee Overview
The State of California has a goal to increase adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices to approximately 3 million acres by 2045. A critical strategy for achieving this goal is to bolster economic opportunities for California producers implementing these practices. To help facilitate this goal, CDFA is coordinating an Ad Hoc Committee on Expanding Pathways to Compensate Producers for Climate-Smart Agriculture Adoption (Pathways Committee).
The Pathways Committee’s work will assess opportunities for bolstering the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices by exploring mechanisms to compensate producers for their efforts. The Pathways Committee will include representatives from agricultural nonprofits, Resource Conservation Districts, producers and/or producer representative groups, supply chain organizations, university researchers, and state agency staff.
The specific goals for the Pathways Committee include:
- Identify multiple support pathways through a landscape evaluation and prioritization.
- Identify California-specific challenges related to measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) processes.
- Identify MMRV needs of supply chain actors under different compensation scenarios.
The Pathways Committee was established at the Feb 12, 2026 meeting of the Science Advisory Panel.
Meeting Schedule
The Pathways Committee will engage in several meetings to work towards the project objectives. These meetings will be hosted in-person for the Pathways Committee members and the public is welcome to listen in to the discussions via zoom. Please see below for upcoming meeting information: