Paying Ranchers and Farmers for Soil Health: San Miguel County’s Payment for Ecosystem Services Program
Project Overview
San Miguel County in southwest Colorado covers 1,289 square miles and has about 8,000 residents. Roughly 60% of the county is public land, and 29.5% of county land is classified as agricultural, ranging from irrigated ranches and farms in the central county to dry grazing land in the west end. Many of those operations face development pressure and limited water, and the county wants to keep agriculture viable there. Not every community has a ski resort that can run its own soil carbon research, so the county set out to show that local government can fund carbon sequestration on private land directly.
The program grew out of a long history. Former District 3 Commissioner Art Goodtimes, inspired by Sally Collins, founding director of the USDA Office of Environmental Markets, launched a pilot Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) project in 2010 that paid seven private landowners for access so botanists could survey rare plants. It was paid for by the county’s Open Space mill levy, a dedicated property tax created in 2001. In 2016 the effort expanded into carbon ranching with test plots, and in 2019 the county sought funding for a scalable soil health pilot and hired Chris Hazen to administer it.
A Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) Colorado Water Plan grant, paired with the county’s open space funds, provided the starting pool of money. The grant was meant to produce a template, but because COVID made stakeholder workshops impossible in 2020, the team went straight to implementation with three landowners who were already practicing regenerative agriculture. The model borrows from California’s soil health program, which is funded through that state’s cap and trade revenue and started in Marin County before going statewide.
The mechanics are designed to be transparent and replicable. Landowners choose practices from the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) practice list, such as prescribed grazing, no-till, carbon amendments like biochar or Johnson-Su extract, critical area planting, range planting, nutrient management, and forage and windbreak plantings. Payments follow the EQIP payment schedule with a 1.5 multiplier, so the deal is better than going to NRCS directly and avoids the long federal wait list. Practices can be stacked. Carbon benefits are estimated with COMET-Planner, a GIS-based NRCS tool developed with Colorado State University, and the county counts that carbon toward its own greenhouse gas goals, in effect running a small local carbon bank.
Each participant signs a simple three-page contract with the county, plus an operating plan, a payment schedule (with money up front for seed or equipment rental if needed), a map made in the county’s public GIS system, and a COMET-Planner report showing the expected CO2 equivalent. Since 2023 a soil scientist has joined the team, collecting baseline data using the BLM’s AIM protocol, and every landowner visited receives a free soil health report with lab results, including a standard soil health assessment and PLFA biology tests, with no obligation to sign.
Participation has grown steadily. In 2021 three landowners signed, sequestering an estimated 135 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. In 2022 the team worked with eight landowners and signed six contracts. The program added more landowners in 2024, and the team expected about 15 signed contracts in 2025, including a fifth generation ranching family on Wrights Mesa and several landowners who had declined in 2022 or 2023 and came back on their own. Hazen acknowledged that the cost per ton is far higher than buying offsets, but said the real purpose is supporting the west end producer community, and that the cost per ton has been falling as the program grows.
Lessons Learned
Line up three essentials first
Jamison named three conditions for success: buy-in from the county commission or town council, secured funding for both administration and landowner payments, and a trusted community liaison to engage landowners. San Miguel County’s dedicated open space mill levy gave it a reliable local funding source, and a state water grant helped launch the soil health phase.
Borrow existing standards for pricing and measurement
Rather than invent prices, the county ties payments to the NRCS EQIP schedule with a 1.5 multiplier, which keeps payments consistent between landowners and easy to explain. COMET-Planner provides the carbon estimate. It is not exact, and practices sometimes drop in or out of the tool year to year, but it keeps the program transparent and replicable.
Trust beats marketing
The team hosted forums, ran radio and news spots, and spent thousands of dollars on printed materials, yet Hazen said none of it produced a single phone call. Enrollment came from conversations between neighbors and personal relationships, so recruiting early participants who are respected locally, and a liaison who already knows many producers, matters more than outreach campaigns.
Start small and let landowners self-select
The program asks producers to try one practice rather than overhaul their operations, on the view that doing one thing beats doing nothing. A free soil health report with no commitment opens the door, and several landowners who said no at first returned years later. One rancher told Hazen he would keep the new practices with or without county money.
Keep verification light and contracts simple
Instead of easement-style enforcement, the program asks for seed bag tags and photos of the work, and anyone who does not follow through is not eligible the next year. A per-landowner payment cap limits what is at risk. Hazen worried that demanding more proof could erode the trust the program depends on.
Partner with universities and be honest about limits
A Western Colorado University master’s student used the project as her capstone, and four more students have since joined, which brought unexpected capacity and education benefits. The program covers private land only because funding would not stretch to public land leases, and measuring yield gains and other co-benefits beyond carbon is still a work in progress.
Program Contacts
Starr Jamison, Natural Resources and Climate Resilience Director, San Miguel County
Chris Hazen, Project Administrator, Payment for Ecosystem Services Program; Executive Director, San Miguel Conservation Foundation, San Miguel County