Conservation at Work: Cover Cropping through CSP at Mora Mora Farm
By Clare Boland, Communications Manager
OFRF is currently working to increase farmer and community awareness of the federal funding opportunities available to organic and transitioning farms. As part of our work with the Northwest region of the USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP), we’re spotlighting the experience of one farm—Mora Mora Farm in Oregon—that received funding and support through the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).
Their story offers a transparent look at what it’s really like to work with NRCS: the benefits, the obstacles, and the lessons they’ve learned. We hope other farmers can use their experience to navigate the process of applying for and implementing CSP contracts more easily.
Meet Mora Mora Farm
Source: Emilie Chen
For Catherine Nguyen, a farmer in Troutdale, Oregon, the ethos of her farm is encompassed by the name, Mora Mora Farm, which means “slowly slowly.” After a busy season of farming, Catherine was catching up with a friend who had recently traveled to Madagascar. Her friend shared the phrase “mora mora,” which captured the pace of life there; instead of rushing, there was a culture of patience and contentment, acknowledging that all things take time. The phrase stayed with Catherine, so much so that when she started her own farm in 2018, she used it for the name. “[Farming] is an industry about high production,” Catherine said. “I know my tendency is to go, go, go. The name reminds me to take a moment to slow down.”
True to the sentiment that good things take time, Mora Mora Farm has been steadily growing over the years. Catherine began her farm as part of the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District’s Headwaters Farm Business Incubator, a five-year program that provides land access, equipment, infrastructure, and business support for beginning farmers. After graduating, she moved her farm to a parcel of land being farmed collectively by previous Headwaters graduates. Today, Mora Mora Farm has one and a half acres in production with a diversity of 40 to 60 different crops, including Asian heritage varieties. Catherine considers her community-supported agriculture (CSA) model “the heart of the farm,” but also supplements the farm’s income by vending at the King Farmers Market, restaurant accounts, and nonprofit partnerships.
In May 2024, the farm obtained organic certification through the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP). “We had been practicing organic since the start,” Catherine shared, but she decided to pursue certification to build trust with the customer base at the Portland Farmers’ Market. To her, organic farming is about “growing healthy food and feeling good about what you’re doing.”
When it comes to growing her operation, Catherine cites other farmers as her greatest resource. “Everyone is so open and generous with their knowledge,” she said, and when facing specific challenges, “farmers in the region have usually already dealt with what I’m curious about.” A fellow farmer on her land is how Catherine first heard about the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). CSP is a program administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) that compensates agricultural producers committed to increasing conservation on their farms. In 2024, Catherine started a contract to reduce soil compaction on her property through cover cropping.
Why CSP?
Source: Megan Clark
For Catherine, the CSP program presented an opportunity to get financial support for work she was already doing. CSP supports farmers by providing a minimum of $4,000 per year for a 5-year contract to install, maintain, or improve a conservation practice on their farm. One of the requirements of the Headwaters program is that any land that is not in production over the winter must be put in cover crop. “The practice was already instilled in my growing practices,” Catherine shared, but through the CSP program, she was able to get financial and technical support for it. “It’s an incredible program,” she added. “Every farmer wants to be growing food. They also want to be doing good things for the environment. But it’s costly to do both.” CSP helped bridge the gap between generating income and investing in conservation.
She emphasized that the financial component can’t be overstated; in an industry with razor-thin margins, choosing to seed a cover crop rather than another round of cash crop can feel like a “double loss” in the short term. But with CSP, that burden is reduced, making it easier to prioritize the overall health of the land for the long term.
Deciding on a Conservation Practice
After graduating from Headwaters and moving onto a new property, Catherine had to adjust to a new set of challenges. “Technically, I’m on a wetland, which makes water management key to this site.” Catherine has experienced issues like standing water, flooded aisles, and soil-borne diseases on her new land. When approaching NRCS, her primary focus was on determining how to best move water throughout the farm.
As part of the application process, applicants have a one-on-one consultation with an NCRS staff member to discuss resource management on their farm and determine which “enhancement,” or conservation strategy, will work best. After considering a few different strategies, she and her NRCS agent decided on “cover crop to minimize soil compaction (E340F).” Having living roots in soil can help mitigate excess water. “They kind of act as straws to pull water out of the soil and keep it moving,” she explained. Since she had utilized cover crops before, it “felt like an easy step into improving the soil.”
“I remember being surprised when I was looking at the enhancements online,” Catherine shared. “They were so detailed in a good way. It’s like this is the enhancement, and this is how you implement it. It’s very specific. They gave me a list of cover crops to choose from, and from there it was just me trying to decide, which ones do I want? Which ones are readily available in my area?”
Timeline
Catherine first heard about the CSP program in spring 2024 and was able to seed her first round of CSP-funded cover crop in October of that year. The first step was reaching out to her local NRCS office and reviewing her conservation options. After that, farmers need to register with the Farm Service Agency (FSA). Catherine was already in the system from utilizing other USDA programs. Her advice is to register sooner rather than later: “Once you’re in the system for NRCS or for FSA, everything becomes so much easier.”
Next, she worked with her NRCS agent to make sure she had all the required documents to begin her conservation work. Catherine said the biggest myth about working with NRCS is “the amount of paperwork.” “A lot of farmers hate doing admin, but it really is manageable.” She described the timeframe as about “a month of emailing going back and forth.” But after the documentation is complete, farmers can focus fully on farm work.
In terms of implementation, “the contract itself is so simple.” She was given a list of recommended cover crops, a designated amount of acreage, and a timeframe to complete the work by. “There’s not a lot of hoops to jump through,” she said. “[The Program] lets us actually be able to be out in the field and not be consumed by paperwork.”
NRCS determines the payment amount per project, but after that, it “is up to the farmer to figure out where it gets distributed.” Farmers receive their project payments as lump sums per each tax year of the contract. Outside of purchasing the cover crop seed, Catherine used the CSP payments to cover the labor costs of the project. Having the CSP funds allowed her “a little bit more wiggle room to have my employee do [the work] versus me.”
That fall, an NRCS agent came out to Mora Mora farm to do a site visit and assess how the project was going. Catherine received her first reimbursement payment later that year.
Doing CSP on Leased Land
Accessing farmland is increasingly cited as a barrier for beginning farmers. Young farmers, like Catherine, often will lease land rather than buying. The land she currently farms is shared with several other farm businesses. When Catherine first considered an NRCS contract in 2023, through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), she wasn’t able to because another farm business was already tied to her land in the system.
When she applied for CSP in 2024, NRCS worked with her to subdivide the plot she farms into three different managing farms in the system. Through the other farms on the property, the land houses multiple NRCS projects, including hedgerows for wind management and high tunnels through EQIP.
>> Related Reading: Héktor Calderón-Victoria of Three Feathers Farm shares his experience working with NRCS’s EQIP to install a hedgerow border and two high tunnels on his four-and-a-half-acre farm in Morgan Hill, California. Read his story.
Outside of the issue of subdividing the property, Catherine has had an easy time implementing her contract on leased land. Besides sharing a lease with NRCS, there are no additional requirements for farmers who lease. “Our landowner is pretty hands-off in terms of the production site,” she shared, “and he is also all for conservation.”
Working with NRCS
Catherine described her experience of working with NRCS as overwhelmingly positive. “Everyone I’ve worked with in the NRCS—and at this point, I’ve probably worked with three separate people—has been so prompt in their responses and really easy to work with,” she said. As an organic farmer, Catherine found that the program generally aligned with her organic certification requirements, though there was some confusion around sourcing organic cover crop seeds. “There was a specific type of clover that’s part of my enhancement that I had a really hard time finding,” but through some back and forth with her agent, she was able to determine a seed that would still meet the requirements of the program and certification.
One hiccup during the process was the 2025 funding freeze of USDA programs. She received an email instructing participants to hold off on implementing their CSP projects unless they could take on the financial risk themselves. During that period of uncertainty, many NRCS offices experienced layoffs, and there was “a weird time of not knowing who my point of contact actually was.” Later that year, funds were released, and Catherine received her reimbursement as planned. Despite staffing changes at NRCS, Catherine noted that the current representative covering Multnomah County has been “amazing,” and she still usually gets a response within 48 hours of emailing her office.
Source: Mora Mora Farm
Conversation at Work
Two years into her CSP contract, Catherine has completed two rounds of winter cover cropping. The practice has aided with soil compaction as planned, noting that “where there is cover crop, the water is being absorbed faster.” Without a clear baseline for the property—Catherine has been using a cover crop since she moved to the site—it’s hard to say how significant the enhancement has been. But she has “definitely seen less standing water since I’ve been on the site.” Catherine considers cover cropping “part of a holistic strategy to figure out water management” on her farmland.
One of the most helpful resources NRCS gave her was a list of cover crops for the project. Having worked on farms in the past, Catherine said that “most farms have their go-to cover crop rotations,” and she had defaulted to using mixes she had previously worked with. Being part of CSP gave her room to experiment and determine what mix works best for her property. Currently, she uses a mix of clover and triticale for her winter rotation. In future seasons, she’s hoping to include a summer cover crop as well. “NRCS was kind of the first entity that put summer cover crops on my radar,” she said, “[working with them] has provided more depth to my crop rotation.”
More than anything, the program has allowed Catherine the time and funding to prioritize cover cropping. Rather than stressing to maximize profit, Catherine said that CSP has “given me a little bit more breathing room, knowing that this project is funded.” Having that comfort has allowed her to commit more fully to the practice, for example, taking extra time to prep her beds to ensure better germination. The experience has led to her putting more of her land into her cover crop rotation. In 2026, she’s planning to “have two acres under management, one in production, one in cover crop.”
“[CSP] allows you to start dreaming a little bit more,” Catherine said. “Cover cropping is a practice I have done before, but I was able to do it better and to think a little bit bigger in terms of conservation.”
Advice for Farmers Considering CSP
For Catherine, working with CSP has been a big help to her farm. She praises the program for letting “farmers do what they’re good at, which is food production.”
In terms of her advice for farmers considering the program, she shared:
- Get into the system. Already being registered with her FSA office expedited the process. Once you’re in the system, it “opens the doors to all these other programs.”
- Start early. “It will likely take 3 to 6 months to actually get everything signed,” Catherine said. “And especially if you’re taking an off-season, you might as well be cozied up in your house doing a bunch of office work.”
Overall, Catherine wants to share with other farmers “how easy it was.” “It takes a little bit of time to get everything squared away and to learn the definitions of things,” she said, “but the payoff for the work is worth it. The return on investment is great.”
Ready to Apply? Here Are a Few Helpful Resources
If you’re a farmer considering applying for CSP or other NRCS programs, here are some helpful tools to get started:
- Download a printable summary of the key takeaways for farmers to consider when applying to NRCS CSP here.
- Download OFRF’s CSP flyer for more information on the federal funding program, including eligibility and application details, available in English and Spanish here.
- Connect with your local NRCS office to start developing a conservation plan: nrcs.usda.gov/contact.
- Know your eligibility. Farmers who are classified as beginning, limited-resource, socially disadvantaged, or veterans may qualify for higher reimbursement rates and advance payments.
The SARE Farmer/Rancher Grant Program is a competitive grant program that provides funding to producers who have designed their own research projects and teams. This program aims to award funding to projects that address real-world, on-farm challenges and include both research and outreach components.
