Government cost share programs, like Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), are voluntary programs that help producers improve working land by reducing environmental issues connected to soil erosion, water quality, and restoring or protecting wildlife habitat. The ability to reduce a producers’ risk in adopting sustainable agricultural practices by providing financial assistance could be the difference between adoption or maintaining the status quo. This is especially pressing for historically underserved (HU) producers- including Socially Disadvantaged, Limited Resource, Veteran, and New and Beginning farmers- who have received fewer contracts than their non-underserved counterparts and therefore take on larger risk when adopting a new practice.

For this study, 19 HU producers with various production types were interviewed. After identifying key themes through inductive analysis, Ribot & Pelusos’s 2003 Theory of Access was used to conceptualize the dynamic system that facilitates producers access to cost share programs. Of the producers interviewed, 12 had participated in a cost-share program and seven had not; with the amount received by cost-share participants ranged from $5,000 to $66,000. Access mechanisms highlighted include right-based program eligibility defined by the government entity and structural access mechanism-like capital, time, or technology. Importantly, NRCS staff play the largest role in facilizing relational access by opening doors to both structural and rights-based access mechanisms. Producer success in cost-share programs overwhelmingly pointed to the role NRCS staff had in providing knowledge and technical support. Overall, this study observed how interwoven access mechanisms facilitate producers’ success within a cost share program and highlight the key actors in mediating producers’ access.