The PEPA Initiative was conceived of by Dr. Jonathan Winsten in 2001 after hearing a presentation by Dr. Stanley Johnson on this subject.  In 2002, the Farm Foundation provided a grant to Winrock International to implement a national workshop to kick-off the PEPA Initiative.  The workshop took place in March 2003 at the Economic Research Service of USDA in Washington, D.C.  It was attended by over 100 people, including farmers from 5 selected watersheds, federal and state agency staff, academics and researchers, as well as policy-makers.  The workshop included plenary presentations on the facets of performance-based incentives for agricultural pollution control, such as measuring performance, designing incentives, the role of information, and policy considerations. 

The workshop program was grounded by having breakout sessions where this information was applied to each of five selected watersheds.  Each breakout group was charged with brainstorming ideas for applying performance-based incentives in each watershed. 

In early 2004, Winrock received two subsequent grants to develop detailed recommendations for the use of performance-based incentives with watersheds in Iowa and Vermont.  The McKnight Foundation provided funding to support a series of meetings in the Maquoketa Headwaters in Eastern Iowa.  During this process, the group, which included farmers, agency staff, and scientists, identified performance measures for each of the water quality issues present in the area, as listed below.

Also in 2004, the Laura Jane Musser Fund provided grant funds to pursue a similar process in the Poultney-Mettowee watershed in southwestern Vermont.  There, the only water quality issue that was deemed necessary to address was phosphorus, as there was a new P TMDL for Lake Champlain .  This group also concluded that the P Index (Vermont’s, in this case) was the most appropriate tool for estimating the risk of P loss from a farm.

The recommendations that were created in Iowa and Vermont represent the first complete, watershed-specific descriptions of using performance-based incentives for agricultural pollution control.  These recommendations provided the basis for our project Pilot-testing Performance-based Incentives for Agricultural Pollution Control, which is funded from 2006-2009 by USDA-NRCS as a Conservation Innovation Grant.  These recommendations, together with the potential for this concept in other locations led to our project Facilitating the Development of Stakeholder-driven, Performance-based Incentives for Agricultural Pollution Control`, which is funded as a National Facilitation Project by USDA-CSREES from 2006-2010.  More information, preliminary results, regular updates on both of these projects can be found within this website.