Other Ag News:
For Immediate Release
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Release: NSAC Holds Briefing as USDA Funding Freeze and Layoffs Threaten Farmers and Communities NationwideWashington, DC, March 6, 2025 – Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a coalition of more than 150 farm, food, conservation, and rural organizations, held a virtual briefing on how the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding freeze and employee layoffs are affecting farmers and ranchers.
Panelists – who called on USDA to end the freeze and release funding on all signed contracts – included farmers from North Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and California. These farmers shared their own stories of how the ongoing federal funding freeze – in addition to significant layoffs at USDA – has created challenging and often dire circumstances for farmers and communities from coast to coast, threatening farm viability and livelihoods.
Rachel Bouresssa of Wisconsin said “I have EQIP and CSP contracts. I also work with organizations with RCPP agreements. At a time that I am looking forward to the growing season ahead, I am unsure if many of my contacts will be paid. … It’s not just my work. There are many small businesses, from excavating companies to plumbers, engineers, and suppliers that will also be impacted and they may not even know it yet. These are small businesses in rural communities.
“The NRCS in Arkansas, we depend on it. It has saved our farm a couple of times because it’s allowed us to implement programs and conservation that have allowed us to cut inputs like herbicides and fertilizers and things. And without them, I wouldn’t be here fighting the fight now. And we were already short staffed in Arkansas. We’ve got NRCS agents manning two or three counties and we just lost 40 plus employees. We were short to start with, so what does that mean about payment processing?,” said Adam Chappell, a farmer from Cotton Plant, Arkansas.
Steve Tucker from Southwest Nebraska said “We have a lot of big companies that do big runs of product, but on the flip side of that, there’s nobody to take care of the smaller brands who are doing more specific specialized products and want to work directly with farmers …. So {I got} a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant … to try and help provide some funding to help get these things off the ground. I had farmers on board. … I had {consumer packaged good} brands,… We put this together, had numbers. And then this freeze happened and I went back to ’em and they said, nothing’s going to go until that freeze comes off or the freeze disappears, then we’re done, we’re out,” Tucker lamented.
Patrick Brown of Warren County, North Carolina has 90% of his acreage enrolled in a Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program. He was scheduled to plant 500 acres of grain this spring and the contract was scheduled to go through 2028.
“Now that the current project has been frozen and we’ve actually already done the work as far as planting those cover crops in the fall, we’re now going into the 2025 growing season with financial uncertainty whether or not I have to face the fact of putting this farm back into collateral and bond operation capital in order to plant a successful crop or wait on the federal government with emergency relief, which we still have not received,” said Brown noting that “without farming, we don’t eat and it is really terrifying going into this year faced with this level of financial uncertainty, but also the markets and the tariffs that are being announced daily, and the mental health aspect of farming as well.”
Anna Knight of Redlands, California talked about the impact of the funding freeze on Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, saying “every single week, my farm packs 1,000 food boxes with 12 different kinds of fruits and vegetables sourced from 25 different farming families. … we receive about $6,000 a week for this produce. We’ve been in contract with USDA for the last 12 months in order to produce these boxes and we’ve been planting, harvesting, weeding, packing in this effort. On Monday, we were alerted that this program was frozen and that tomorrow, Friday the 7th is going to be our last delivery. …For us, this represents an immediate $60,000 loss…Collectively, this suspended contract represents $300,000 that immediately is gone and our farmers don’t have an outlet for. LFPA has been such an important and impactful financial bridge that has helped so many farmers in my region be able to get back on our feet and connect with community members who really need this fresh produce. This is a real economic impact and economic loss for the farmers in my community.”
Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director, added that “stories like those shared by today’s panelists are playing out in countless communities nationwide. The ongoing federal funding freeze is threatening livelihoods as we speak – and creating uncertainty, confusion, and anger among the very people the Department is meant to serve. It’s high time for USDA to end deliberation of whether or not to honor its own word, and to immediately release funding on all signed contracts.”
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The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net
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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins today praised President Donald J. Trump’s action to make adjustments to tariffs imposed on imports from Canada and Mexico that fall under his historic United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in addition to a reduction of
“The pause is a place of immense potential and power. Cultivating a relationship to the pause means cultivating a relationship to possibility.” – Octavia Raheem
Farmers and earth workers at an agricultural retreat walk together in evening silence. Photo by Jamie Johnson
Farmers & earth workers know about rhythms: rise and set of the sun and moon; warm and cold of the day and night; wet and dry of the Spring and Summer. Those of us that work in rural areas where quiet prevails, even sometimes hear the thud of our footsteps as we cross the grass, left and right….or the beating of our hearts as we push our physical limits, pump and rest.
A few years ago, in my work as an agricultural educator, I started getting curious about the rhythm of meetings, trainings, and classes. It often felt like they were consistently fast-paced and action-packed, with an assumption that there was never enough time to do or learn all that was needed. I wondered how they might feel differently if the educational design included more pauses – moments of silence that might offer rest for our minds and hearts. I yearned for intentional breathing room to hold the joys and sorrows present in the room. Along with the knowledge and skills we farmers and earth workers are eager to share with one another, I wanted open space to invite our imaginations to wander and play, giving rise to new possibilities.
Ella Cara Deloria, a Lakota writer and educator spoke of the importance of this in her writings “The Way of Silence”. She said “We Indians are not afraid of silence. In fact, for us, silence is more powerful than words. Our elders were trained in the ways of silence, and they handed over this knowledge to us… People should regard their words as seeds. They should sow them, and then allow them to grow in silence. Our elders taught us that the earth is always talking to us, but we should keep silent in order to hear her”
Today, in the Retreats and programs I lead for the agricultural community, one of our guiding Touchstones, or values, in how we relate while in conversation is “Trust and Learn from the Silence”. We ask that participants treat silence like a member of the group, allowing a pause after each person speaks. This ensures that we receive whatever was shared, without rushing in to react, agree, disagree or change the subject. In the pauses between, we gaze into the center of the circle in which we sit. Keeping our attention on the shared space in the middle of our circle helps us to remember that we are physically forming a container for the words each person speaks. The pauses enable the words to grow in our hearts and minds as we contemplate each person’s perspective and truth.
Ella Cara Deloria offers another important perspective in her teaching above, which is that there are many non-human voices ‘always talking to us’. Farmers know this well, attuning to bird song, listening to the earth crackle with fresh rain, or noticing the songs of the wind. But our teaching and learning venues are often indoors, sealed off from the web of life. Creating moments in our agricultural programs where we intentionally contemplate our interconnectedness to all things reminds us that we are part of an abundant, resilient ecosystem that is much greater than its individual parts.
So, what about Octavia Raheem’s words ““The pause is a place of immense potential and power. Cultivating a relationship to the pause means cultivating a relationship to possibility.” I have noticed that when our educational programs are fast-paced, we tend to be in reaction mode. We are trying to keep up, process all that is coming at us, and organize what we want to contribute to the conversation. When we pause, we offer participants a period of recovery. We may need time to recover from tension in the room or discomfort we’re experiencing. We surface to notice how we are feeling and what we genuinely want to contribute. With enough pauses, we become more present. We might even begin to imagine, create and dream.
This is a challenging time to be growing food and sustenance for ourselves, our families and our communities. To me, it feels more important than ever to pause, to receive one another with greater attention, tune in to the voices of the earth, imagine new ways and remember old ways. If you’re drawn to creating more pauses on your farm, or in your meetings and programs, you can learn more at our Small Farms Program Growing Together website, or join us for upcoming events. https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/projects/growing-together/
The post The Immense Power of a Pause appeared first on Cornell Small Farms.
WASHINGTON, March 5, 2025 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that people recovering from the impact of recent severe storms, flooding and straight-line winds may be eligible for food assistance through USDA’s Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP). Approximately 12,600 households in 14 counties in Kentucky are estimated to be eligible for this relief to help with grocery expenses.
Washington, D.C., Mar. 4, 2025 — Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins delivered remarks to hundreds of local leaders at the National Association of Counties. There, she previewed her vision for restoring rural prosperity to America. She discussed the importance of the President’s efforts to rein in out-of-control government spending and federal overreach to return more power to the people. She also addressed the wildfires in the Carolinas and provided an update on the Department’s distribution of economic and disaster aid passed by Congress in December.
Denver, CO, March 3, 2025 –Yesterday evening, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins delivered remarks at Commodity Classic, where she announced the Department’s plan to distribute the economic and disaster aid passed by Congress late last year. She also walked the trade floor and met with leaders of the four primary commodities represented at the event: corn, soybean, wheat, and sorghum.
Washington, D.C., Mar. 3, 2025—The U.S. Forest Service is actively responding to multiple wildfires reported over the weekend in North Carolina and South Carolina following a Red Flag Warning issued across the region. Dry conditions and downed timber from past storms have elevated wildfire risk, and response teams are engaging in initial containment efforts at this time. The U.S. Forest Service is monitoring the situation hourly and will send additional personnel as needed. Sec. Rollins plans to visit the affected area on Friday, conditions permitting.
Since January, the Trump Administration has frozen vast swathes of federal spending under a series of Executive Orders, including at the United States Department of Agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of lawful, signed, active contracts and grants – supporting critical conservation payments, farmer technical assistance, sustainable agriculture research, market infrastructure, and so much more, and representing billions of dollars in federal funding – are frozen, which threatens farms, jobs, and livelihoods in communities nationwide.
Federal courts have delivered ruling after ruling that the funding freeze must be lifted – but to date, the Administration has yet to act to unfreeze funding and with every passing week, the situation worsens: farmers and organizations are facing layoffs, work stoppages, and rising debt due to the federal government’s failure to honor its legally binding financial commitments.
Farmers, ranchers, and advocates are speaking out. In February, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) members hit Capitol Hill in force, holding nearly 150 meetings with lawmakers, emphasizing the urgent need to release owed payments. Farmers and advocates shared personal stories about how they have been left in limbo, unsure how to plan for the upcoming season or cover expenses. These stories deserve to be heard in this moment. Our coalition has been working tirelessly to elevate the voices of people directly affected, connecting policy issues to real-world consequences. Below is a sampling of recent media coverage.
Farmers, Advocates, and NSAC Speak Out
NBC News:
- Farmers hit by a federal funding freeze scramble to respond ahead of spring thaw
- Farmers Struggling Due to Funding Freeze
“Ang Roell, a farmer and beekeeper in Massachusetts, had planned to begin installing deer-proof fencing, mulch and an irrigation system for a recently planted orchard — an initiative supported by more than $30,000 in federal grants that are now on hold.
Without that money, Roell worries that when the chestnut trees and elderberry bushes begin to sprout leaves in just a few weeks, there will be nothing to stop deer from chewing up the baby leaves. And Roell said the farm will struggle to keep the plants regularly watered and weeded without the infrastructure it had been counting on.
“We risk losing the plants because we can’t keep up with the watering schedule,” Roell said. “The delay of time might not seem like a big deal for someone who is not a farmer. But it actually is.””
Des Moines Register: USDA lifts Trump freeze on some funding owed to farmers, vast majority remains on hold
“About 1,000 Iowa and Midwest farmers said this month they’re owed $11 million for conservation work they completed last year. The bulk of the money — $9.6 million — is owed to Iowa farmers, the Iowa Soybean Association said.
The Trump administration’s actions, part of a broad government review now underway, also have left in doubt another $86 million promised Iowa and Midwest farmers under a five-year “climate smart” agriculture initiative approved during the Biden administration. The soybean association said Friday it’s not learned if money in the programs it’s administrating are included.
Practical Farmers of Iowa said Friday the group is hopeful USDA will pay farmers for planting cover crops and other conservation work they’ve completed. But it’s still unclear when the federal government will pay the group for its work, a commitment that’s supposed to reach about $4.4 million this year.
Meanwhile, the Conservation Districts of Iowa, a nonprofit that provides farmers with technical expertise on conservation efforts statewide, has laid off 38 employees because of the spending freeze.”
Arkansas Democrat Gazette: A deal is a deal. Or at least it used to be
“Dan Spatz, owner of Conway-based Healthy Flavors Farm, said, “If the current contracts that have been signed on EQIP are in question, then I’ve already put deposits down on fulfilling my side of the contract and, yes, I potentially could be impacted.”
The contract he mentions was signed in May, and he has until December 2027 to complete construction on his project. It stands to reason that any delay could result in an inability to pay the bank, so to speak. Just because the government stopped paying doesn’t mean the banks stopped collecting.
“We used to say, ‘the full faith and credit of the U.S. government’ and when you sign a contract with someone in a country of laws, you expect that contract to be honored, especially if it’s by your government; that’s the disturbing thing here,” Mr. Spatz said.”
Civil Eats: Exclusive: DOGE Cancels Contract That Enables Farmer Payments, Despite $0 Savings
“DOGE’s own accounting shows that because the contractor had already been paid in full, canceling the contract resulted in $0 in taxpayer savings.
Smith-Brubaker reached out to House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) today to share her concerns. “How will we look in the eyes of dairy farmers, providing the whole milk for which you’ve advocated, and tell them that, to save the government $0, we have to cancel work that would have brought them more stability and more business?” she asked.”
Additional CoverageCivil Eats:
- Farmers Say Climate-Smart Commodities Projects Are Crumbling
- Despite Cuts to DEI Initiatives, Food and Farm Advocates Say They Will Continue to Fight for Racial Justice
- Trump’s Funding Freeze Creates Chaos and Financial Distress for Farmers
Agri-Pulse Newsmakers: Feb. 21, 2025: Sen. Tina Smith on federal aid freeze, USDA layoffs
Daily Yonder: ‘This Business Just Wouldn’t Exist’ – Farmer Says Federal Program Was Critical to Success
Hagstrom Report:
- NSAC to Rollins: Relieve and reverse pain, confusion
- Rollins releases some NRCS program funds, but groups want more
Grist: One senator’s lonely quest to make the farm bill more sustainable
WSKG NY: New York farmers continue to wait on frozen USDA funds
Newsmax: US Farmers in Dire Straits From Trump Spending Freeze
KTTN: Federal funding freeze leaves Missouri farmers struggling for aid
Public News Service/Kiowa County Press: Frozen funds hurting farmers in MO, nation
Iowa Public Radio: Trump’s freeze on federal funds leaves some farmers waiting in the cold
Farm Progress: Senate confirms Brooke Rollins to lead USDA
San Antonio Express News: Will Republicans Control of Congress Lead to Updated Ag Laws? Texas farmers hope so.
The Preamble: The Government Promised to Pay — Then it Didn’t
TriState Livestock News: Frozen Funding, Stalled Programs, Farm Bill Impacts: Farmers, Ranchers, and Advocates Elevate Urgent Priorities on Capitol Hill
Lancaster Farming: Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Executive Director Opposes Federal Grant Freeze
Pittsburg Post-Gazette: Pa. farmers feel funding pinch as federal freezes trigger labor and infrastructure instability
PBS: Farmers are feeling the weight of Trump policies
WPSU: Centre County residents protest against Trump administration and Elon Musk
NBC News: Farmers hit by a federal funding freeze scramble to respond ahead of spring thaw
WSKG NY: New York farmers continue to wait on frozen USDA funds
Providence Journal: Make good on the contract’: How Trump’s spending freeze has left RI farmers in a lurch
Farms.com: CalCAN Joins Farming Organizations from Around the Country in D.C. for NSAC’s 2025 Winter Meeting
The New Lede: USDA’s climate webpage purge breaks laws and hurts farmers, lawsuit alleges
The New York Times: Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites
Reuters: USDA review of University of Maine funding could hit PFAS, biofuel research
NSAC has been a leader in agricultural policy for more than 35 years and has been instrumental in helping to develop some of our nation’s most successful agricultural programs for conserving natural resources, advancing the next generation of farmers, supporting agricultural research, and creating sustainable market connections. To stay informed about this and other important issues, sign up for NSAC’s free e-newsletter!
The post Funding Freeze Impacts: Farmers and Organizations Speak Out appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
Washington, D.C., Feb. 27, 2025 — Following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s announcement of new measures to combat highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), elected leaders and industry stakeholders from around the country are applauding the five-pronged strategy.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins joined FOX News to outline the Department’s strategy to strengthen biosecurity, support farmers, and ensure affordable food prices for American families.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2025 – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins today announced Tom Schultz will serve as the 21st chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service.
“Tom is the right person to lead the Forest Service right now, and I know he will fight every day to restore America’s national forests,” said Secretary Rollins. “Together, Tom and the incredible employees at the Forest Service will work to execute the agenda of President Donald J. Trump to make America’s forests healthy and productive again.”
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