(a) The Soil Health Demonstration (SHD) shall make use of the OFCIT process, including eligibility requirements, and funding set forth in § 1466.37 to provide incentives to producers to implement conservation practices that improve soil health, increase carbon levels in the soil, or both.

(b) In carrying out SHD, NRCS shall coordinate with eligible entities to establish protocols for measuring carbon levels in the soil and testing carbon levels on land where conservation practices described in paragraph (a) of this section were applied to evaluate gains in soil health as a result of the practices implemented by the producers in the soil health demonstration trial.

(c) For each SHD contract, NRCS shall ensure that appropriate data is collected and analyzed while respecting relevant privacy safeguards by transforming the data into statistical or aggregated form so as not to include any identifiable or personal information of individual producers.