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Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Small Farmers Are Struggling With Trumpian Chaos—and Bracing for More
Fielding phone calls from concerned growers has become a commonplace occurrence for Nick Levendofsky, the executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union. The upheaval in the U.S. Department of Agriculture since President Donald Trump took office in January has left many farmers with unfulfilled contracts and broken commitments. Grants that once offered vital financial lifelines have been frozen. Programs that once provided assistance and aid have been eliminated. Uncertainty about the future has become the bumper crop. 'It's just been a barrage from the very beginning,' said Levendofsky of the changes made by the Trump administration. 'We were getting phone calls from not just members of ours, but farmers and ranchers in general, saying, 'What do we do?'' He recalled a recent conversation with the owner of a vineyard in northeastern Kansas who had been promised a loan to build solar panels and an electric vehicle charger. But with USDA freezing funding for the renewable energy projects guaranteed by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, the farmer was stuck with the bill for the already completed project. 'He had a $55,000 USDA-guaranteed loan that now USDA said, 'We're not going to pay,'' said Levendofsky. In April, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release the previously authorized frozen funds. That same month, however, the USDA canceled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, a separate grant program intended to promote sustainable farming and forestry practices. The administration repackaged that grant as 'Advancing Markets for Producers,' with existing agreements under review. The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, or MOFGA, was among the organizations affected by these changes. The group had a multiyear grant from the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, said executive director Sarah Alexander. Along with another Maine-based group, MOFGA was slated to work with 200 farms in the state to assess whether they met certain criteria to receive funds for improving climate resiliency. 'That money has gone away, and that's been really devastating,' said Alexander. 'That's a really direct impact that's both on our budget and work this year with our staff's [ability] to provide direct training and technical assistance to those farms, but then also the farms ultimately losing out on that money.' The USDA announced in March that it would issue up to $10 billion in relief for commodity producers for the 2024 crop year, and the White House has mulled additional financial assistance for farmers to mitigate potential effects from tariffs. During Trump's first term, USDA doled out roughly $23 billion in aid to farmers amid retaliatory Chinese tariffs on certain American imports, including wheat, soybeans, and corn. Given the current uncertainty surrounding the tariffs that Trump can and may impose—and the status of ongoing trade negotiations with China—it's unclear what kind of financial assistance farmers can expect this time around, if any. But Erin Foster West, policy director at the National Young Farmers Coalition, said that programs intended to help commodity farmers have less of an impact for smaller-scale producers. Meanwhile, the USDA has eliminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, which connected small farmers to community food pantries and anti-hunger organizations, as well as the Local Food for Schools program, which allowed schools and childcare facilities to purchase food from local farms. West said that the LFPA had been particularly helpful for members of her organization at the beginning of their careers. 'Many were using that as sort of a bridge as they were growing or expanding, and didn't expect to have that forever but expected to have it for maybe a few more years,' said West. 'Now it feels like the rug has just been pulled out from underneath them without any notice, without any support, without any communication.' Producers also highlight the stalling of farm bill negotiations in Congress as a major source of worry. Typically approved every five years, the farm bill governs the country's nutrition, agricultural, conservation, and forestry policy and is historically passed on a bipartisan basis. However, the 2018 farm bill has been extended twice—most recently at the end of last year—and discussions among lawmakers on crafting the new measure have been largely stagnant. Meanwhile, some of the agenda items that would typically be included in the farm bill are instead being addressed by the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, the massive Republican legislative package including tax breaks and dramatic cuts to government spending. The bill, which narrowly passed in the House last week, slashes nearly $300 billion from nutrition programs, but includes roughly $60 billion for farm safety-net programs. The measure—which is moving through a process known as 'budget reconciliation' to avoid the 60-vote threshold for approving legislation in the upper chamber—is now under consideration in the Senate. The changes to SNAP include tightened work requirements, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated would lead to more than three million recipients losing their benefits in an average month. The bill would also push more of the cost of SNAP onto states, which the CBO estimates could lead to reduced or loss of benefits for around 1.3 million people. Alexander argued that the farm bill was the preferred venue for hashing out nutrition and farm policy. 'They are two sides of the same coin because the food that we're producing in this country should be what is feeding our citizens,' she said. 'SNAP at its essence should be supporting what our farmers are producing.' Farmers and their communities are thus concerned not only about changes in the USDA, but how that upheaval might be compounded by changes to SNAP. Nichelle Harriott, policy director at HEAL Food Alliance, a coalition of organizations that work directly with farming and food systems, said that member groups were now floundering amid the uncertainty on the executive and legislative level. 'We have a member in Georgia, for instance, who the entirety of their work is to ensure that vulnerable children in their communities have access to healthy nutrition. And of course, with the absence of federal funding to do that work—as well as the impending cuts of SNAP—they are really seeing increasing challenges,' said Harriott. If would-be SNAP recipients do not have the benefits to spend at their grocery stores, she said, and small producers also cannot share their crops, there will be 'a lot of ripple effects in local communities.' Levendofsky expressed frustration that many of the people who would be most affected by this double whammy of changes live in rural areas—both producers and SNAP recipients. Rural Americans have consistently higher rates of food insecurity, and non-metro areas have higher rates of participation in SNAP than their urban counterparts. 'We're hurting the very people who have voted for so many of these folks in Congress, and even folks that voted for this administration,' said Levendofsky. 'I'm nervous about what's coming because I think, especially, the folks that supported this administration in the last election didn't feel like they were going to be affected. I think they probably felt like this was, you know, a 'safe' bet or vote for them, and that it wasn't gonna be a problem. Well, it's about to be a problem.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's USDA resurrects one climate grant program, kills another
Farmers who were left in limbo after the U.S. Department of Agriculture froze renewable energy grants are finally starting to get paid. At the same time, however, farmers have been hit with the cancellation of another USDA grant program: the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Dale Westphal is among the farmers who recently got long-awaited grant money for a clean energy project. After learning last year that he'd been approved for a $20,000 grant under the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), he put up about $46,500 to install solar panels on his corn and soybean farm in southern Minnesota last year. He viewed it as a smart way to protect himself from rising electrical rates. Earlier this year, the USDA told him — and thousands of other farmers nationwide — that his grant funding had been put on hold because of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term in office. That order froze billions of dollars for renewable energy under President Joe Biden's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In April, Westphal got his grant money — a welcome development that he says has made his solar investment worthwhile. 'I don't think I would have done it without the grant, because the payback would have been so much longer that it wouldn't have made sense,' he said. In an email to Floodlight, a USDA spokesperson said that between March 25 and May 9, the agency issued nearly $126 million in reimbursements to more than 1,000 grantees under the REAP program. As of May 9, more than $960 million in awards to nearly 5,000 grant recipients had not yet been sent out, the spokesperson said. That money remained undistributed because the grant recipients had not yet completed work on their projects, or had not yet submitted paperwork to show that the projects have been completed and paid for, according to the USDA. The release of funds comes after legal pressure and complaints from farmers who had already put money on the line. A federal lawsuit filed against the USDA in March sought a court order to compel the Trump administration to honor the government's grant commitments to farmers and nonprofits. That complaint, filed by the Earthjustice environmental law group, is still pending. And in April, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the USDA and five other federal agencies to release frozen IRA funds. READ MORE DOWNLOAD FOR REPUBLICATION
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Climate-Beneficial Fibers Were Gaining Traction. Then Trump Happened.
From the time it kicked off in 2023, the Climate Beneficial Fiber Partnership worked to do precisely that: link up a slew of stakeholders to bolster the production of so-called 'climate-smart cotton and wool to build agricultural resilience, regenerate soil health and expand economic opportunities for American growers. This wasn't some flash-in-the-pan pilot scheme, either. Led by the National Center for Appropriate Technology and its five partners—the Carbon Cycle Institute, Colorado State University Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Fibershed, Seed2Shirt and New York Textile Lab—the project spanned 135 farms and ranches, amounting to some 2.1 million acres, across California, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming. More from Sourcing Journal Will Trump Tariffs Help or Hurt U.S. Garment Workers? $2 Billion of Home Textiles Up in the Air in India Amid Tariff Tumult Why REI Retracted Support of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum And if ambitions were big, then so was the backing. A $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities provided enrolled producers with technical assistance, reimbursement and incentive payments to plan, verify and implement whole-farm greenhouse-gas reduction and carbon sequestration roadmaps. The goal was to sequester an estimated 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the grant period by reducing synthetic fertilizer application, increasing soil organic matter and boosting water-holding capacity. It sought to build markets, bolster rural communities and prioritize engagement with traditionally underserved producers, particularly Black families in the southern states. At least that was the thrust of the original five-year plan. If the freezing of already committed federal money at the outset of the second Trump administration wasn't enough to derail efforts only two years in, surely the cancellation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities in mid-April has. While the USDA says that select projects may still qualify for review if they can demonstrate that a 'significant amount of the federal funds awarded will go to farmers,' among other things, Rebecca Burgess, executive director of Fibershed, a California nonprofit that focuses on building regional fiber systems, isn't hopeful. 'Fibershed and partners literally met all of the new requirements, minus the fact we drove 62 percent of funding versus 65 percent to growers,' she said. 'Now all partners have to reapply, which will take administrative time—meetings, agreements, document creation—and we've already done that, and so there's no efficiency in having to do the admin all over again. It took two-and-a-half years to be awarded and onboarded last time. There's nothing efficient in this approach.' The axing of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, which the USDA says has now been 'reformed and overhauled' into the Advancing Markets for Producers initiative, was far from unexpected. President Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly excoriated the science of climate change, which he has dubbed a scam or hoax. Since his inauguration, the White House has launched an all-out assault on the global climate consensus by halting government studies, terminating employees en masse, rolling back environmental regulations and purging references to global warming from federal websites. He has staffed his cabinet with like-minded people who share his antipathy for the previous administration and hew closely to the party line. People, in fact, like Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who referred to the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities as a 'Biden-era climate slush fund.' 'The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,' Rollins said in a statement. 'The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden administration. During my short time as secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.' And if there's perhaps one thing the administration wants to dismantle more is any initiative bearing the whiff of 'woke' through the promotion of D.E.I., or diversity, equity and inclusion. 'Black,' 'BIPOC' and 'marginalized'—all foundational concepts for the Climate Beneficial Fiber Partnership, which aimed to dedicate at least 40 percent of program benefits to producers who have traditionally been left on the sidelines—are also just some of the words that the Trump administration has ordered to swerve in grant proposals and contracts. 'When you look at the percentage of the resources that go to Black farmers across the U.S., it is staggeringly low,' said Tameka Peoples, founder of Seed2Shirt, the country's first Black-woman-owned vertically integrated apparel manufacturing and print-on-demand company. 'We're losing land at hundreds of thousands of acres a year. That is counter-social justice. That is targeting. So we need to stand up and fight for what's right as it relates to farmers who have been historically underserved and, quite frankly, left out of the larger climate conversation.' By now, the harm from lost funds has already rippled out, washing away financial certainty that both businesses and farms rely on for long-term planning. Peoples said that the funding gap hasn't only affected the livelihoods of farmers, some of whom have been cultivating cotton for five-plus generations and 'went out on a limb' to implement the regenerative practices, but it is also an existential threat to her 10-person team. 'When you're CEO, you're like, 'O.K., well, I'll just sacrifice my stuff, and we'll figure out how long we can do this with resources in reserve,' she said. 'But at the end of the day, we would like for payment terms to be reviewed and honored.' Even the funding pause that preceded the program's cancellation was perilous because everyone was expected to 'keep working without pay,' said Laura Sansone, who created New York Textile Lab to support regenerative farming practices through a wool purchasing cooperative in New York State called the Carbon Farming Network. When funding was still up in the air, she had to forgo compensation, even digging into her personal pockets to pay her carbon farm planner. That the farms New York Textile Lab works with will still have their animals, and the animals will keep producing fiber, is one thing, Sansone said. Whether it'll still be able to provide the technical assistance and cost sharing to mitigate the problems of constant resource extraction is another question. More than shoring up climate resilience, she said, the Climate Beneficial Fiber Partnership has been about growing 'deep roots into our communities and having direct accountability to the land and the people and the animals.' 'I don't see how we can really follow through with that; it's very difficult without the funding,' said Sansone, who also works as a textile designer. 'We're trying to build contingency plans to raise money, but this is a lot of extra work to take on. So, on top of keeping everything afloat, I will now have to pivot and try to find funding. It's difficult, but all of us in the program are going to start to lose employees. And it's the farmers who will be losing out the most.' Hearing the government's attitude toward climate change reminds Benjamin Wood, owner of a 140-acre farm just outside Waterville, N.Y., that raises sheep and vegetables, of the story of King Canute, who 'sat on the beach and ordered the tide not to come in. It's coming in anyway.' Trying to ignore scientific reality is not only futile, in other words, but also foolhardy. 'I directly relate these animal disease problems—like the avian flu and the price of eggs—to climate change,' he said. 'I think that's a direct link. I think people need to understand that our beef cattle herd is down 20 percent because two years ago we had a serious drought in the West, and a lot of them had to be sold off, and they haven't been replaced. So all of that is going to affect our production and the price of food for the average consumer.' The extra cash from the Climate Beneficial Fiber Partnership, Wood said, helped pay for improvements that his regular income couldn't, such as new water lines, pasture reseeding and tree planting. He'll still keep doing what he was doing, but the pace will be much slower. What's arguably worse for farmers are the whipsawing conditions driven by Trump's brewing trade war. If there's another blow they can't take at a time of rising input costs and falling commodity prices, Wood said, it's the tariffs that are already stoking price increases. 'A lot of people don't know this, but Canada really supplies us with potash, which is an important nutrient for all crops, and they're just tacking on a tariff—first 25 percent, now 10 percent—which is going to make it very expensive, which in turn, will cut down production,' he said. 'There's another 25 percent tariff on steel. That's going to raise the cost of farm machinery, which is already out of reach for a lot of people. So there are a lot of ramifications here that the normal person doesn't see.' Tariffs nearly ruined farmers during Trump's first go-around at the presidency. The only thing that saved them from complete annihilation was a $23 billion federal bailout program. In what appeared like an acknowledgement of what went down before, the USDA announced last month that it would be shelling out up to $10 billion to agricultural growers through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program for the 2024 crop year. As far as Burgess is concerned, however, this is a short-term distraction. 'He's paying $84 an acre to cotton growers for just a one-time payment,' she said of Trump. 'Ours was a five-year catalytic grant. It was not the dole. It was about building markets that normalized climate-resilient agriculture through pricing structures and verification and certification. But this was a threatening grant to this administration, because it built an alliance between groups who are marginalized or felt marginalized and would rebalance things ever so slightly.' What frustrates Burgess beyond the progress they were making—'you had Black farmers just starting to gain trust and conservative, more libertarian ranchers and farmers also going, 'Maybe climate beneficial isn't so bad,' she said—is that the Climate Beneficial Fiber Partnership would have been stepping stone to restoring the country's decimated infrastructure for processing fiber and textiles by creating what she calls 'short-distance supply chains.' Burgess pointed to microfactories like Unspun, which is 'not coming out of China or Mexico but out of the Bay Area.' 'I'm really excited about marrying some of those vertically integrated, very high-tech, late-stage value chain technologies like Unspun and getting them the yarn they need,' she said. 'Right now, we can't produce the yarn they need from our farms, which are literally an hour-and-a-half from their technology center. So those are the things I was hoping and I'm still hoping to do.' Heidi Barr knows the feeling. For the past five years, the PA Flax Project co-founder and CEO has been working to revive the flax-for-linen industry in Pennsylvania. This would involve more than simply ramping up acreage for the climate-friendly plant, which requires little to no chemical inputs or irrigation and helps improve soil health through the aerating properties of its deep root system, she said. The last flax processor in the United States shuttered some 60 years ago after it was no longer able to keep pace with cheaper European and Asian imports. Recreating the infrastructure that would transform flax into linen is a much harder lift. The bulk of the PA Flax Project's $1.7 million funding, divvied up over three years, also comes from the USDA, albeit through the Organic Market Development Grant, which is still in a holding pattern. The organization was just about to go into the mill construction stage when it learned the government would no longer be reimbursing its expenses. It's had to lay off two staff members and pause contractual work with third-party consultants. Farmers also can't plant crops without the commitment to see them through harvest. The suspension of this work at such a crucial juncture appears at odds with the Trump administration's 'America First' policy to reshore domestic manufacturing. By 2030, the mill could provide $6 million in annual revenue, 16 full-time jobs for administration and mill employees and opportunities for at least 100 farmers in the region, perhaps even as far north as Canada. 'It's kind of a no-brainer for a very modest investment,' Barr said. 'But the other reality is that it doesn't matter, because if this funding freeze continues and we cannot raise the money to fill the gap, we will have to cease operations,' she said. 'Losing the momentum at this moment is devastating. You can't just turn the faucet back on and fill the glass. It will take time to build up again.' Finding alternative sources of funding won't be easy. State grants are an option, though many of them are tied to larger federal aid. While private philanthropy is another option, competition will be tougher than ever. Apparel and home furnishing brands that source textiles could also step up. Indeed, retailers such as Everlane and Carhartt have started to sponsor American farms transitioning to climate-beneficial cotton in strategic bursts. Their role now, Peoples said, is more critical than ever. 'We just need more of them—maybe a coalition of the willing at this point,' she said. 'When you're in climate work and when you're in community work, the impact is for generations. We're talking about changing people's lives and changing lands. And so if we can't do this work anymore, the planet will suffer over time.' Peoples doesn't want to call any brands out. That's not her style. But she wants them to know that while smallholder farmers are used to doing a lot with a little, the United States is in danger of losing them altogether. And, with that, their intentional stewardship of the land. 'I'm calling any brand in that wants to see a change in this space to be like, 'Let's figure it out and let's work together,'' she said. 'Either way, I know Seed2Shirt isn't waiting. We can't afford to. Science tells us it's getting worse, and if we don't do something now, we don't know the type of world we'll be able to hand over to our children.'
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's USDA cuts programs aimed at helping farmers improve soil, water quality
The USDA announced earlier this month it was ending a $3 billion program to help farmers use climate-friendly practices. (Preston Keres | USDA) In the first months of the administration of President Donald Trump, organizations working to keep Wisconsin's environment healthy have seen cuts to key grant programs. Now they are watching for Trump's retreat from environmental protection to hit communities across the state. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices. Trump administration officials called the program a 'Biden era slush fund,' saying that not enough of the money went directly to farmers. The USDA cancelled projects that did not meet three criteria: a minimum of 65% of funds needed to be going directly to producers, grants must have had one producer enrolled by the end of 2024 and at least one payment must have been made to a producer by the end of 2024. 'The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,' USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. 'The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.' A USDA fact sheet published last year states that 28 Wisconsin-based projects were funded by the program. One of the organizations receiving funding was the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, which has worked to protect the Fox and Wolf Rivers — which are connected to Lake Michigan — for more than three decades in the region of the state most densely occupied by industrial agriculture operations. On April 22, the Alliance received an official termination notice for two grants it had received through the program to share costs with farmers to institute practices such as cover cropping and no-till planting, according to a statement from the alliance. Both practices help farmers maintain soil health and prevent potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus from running off fields and into the local water system. The grant funding also supported 10 technical support jobs at county land and water departments, Pheasants Forever and the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The loss of the money has resulted in the cancellation of 37 contracts with farmers, 4,000 acres of planned no-till planting going unfunded and, this fall, 16,000 acres of farmland that may not have cover crops planted. In its statement, the Alliance said that government support for programs like these is an investment that helps farmers long term, even if some of the money doesn't go directly into their hands. 'We fully support the goal of directing more resources to farmers. In fact, we design our programs with low overhead to ensure dollars go where they matter most,' the Alliance stated. 'However, the review process did not account for one important factor: technical assistance is direct farmer support.' Just because the money doesn't go straight to the farmers doesn't mean they don't benefit, according to the Alliance. 'Farmers often pay out-of-pocket for the kind of expertise our technical staff provide — support that is essential to the success and longevity of conservation practices,' the statement continued. 'Excluding this from the 'producer-directed' category overlooks the real-world value of those services. Without that guidance, funding becomes a one-time transaction instead of a long-term investment. Fox-Wolf's model is built not just on providing financial support, but on ensuring that practices are implemented effectively and sustained over time. That's what makes our work effective — and why this funding mattered.' Jessica Schultz, the Alliance's executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the goal of the grants was to help the region's farmers transition to these soil-friendly practices beyond just one season, allowing the organization to help protect the watershed, which is suffering from 'excess phosphorus and sediment loading,' in the long term. 'These practices also improve soil health, but transitioning to a continuous cover system requires a new approach to farm management. This shift can result in short-term yield losses or necessitate investment in new equipment,' Schultz said. 'The cost-share provided through our grants would have played a vital role in helping farmers overcome these initial barriers. However, to realize lasting water quality improvements in our rivers and lakes, these conservation practices must be adopted consistently — not just for a single season, but year after year — across the majority of farmland in the basin.' 'The technical assistance offered through our projects was intended to support farmers through this transition, providing both expertise and access to equipment from across the region,' she continued. 'Our goal was to foster long-term adoption by equipping producers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — not just for one growing season, but for the future health of our local waterways.' The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance isn't the only organization that has lost grant funding since Trump's inauguration. Wisconsin Green Fire has already had two grants, totaling nearly $100,000, canceled, according to Meleesa Johnson, the organization's executive director. The first grant, worth about $32,000, was aimed at working with the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to develop resources for local governments seeking to implement climate change mitigation strategies such as improving stormwater management and planting more trees to reduce heat island effects. The second grant was a $65,000 contract with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service to establish a farm sustainability rewards program. Similar to the alliance's grant, that program would have given farmers money in exchange for implementing practices such as no-till planting or reducing the use of nitrogen. Green Fire had already spent money on getting the farm sustainability program off the ground, and now, according to Johnson, it's unclear if the organization will be reimbursed. 'We're not the only ones,' she said. 'There's a lot of groups out there that have been moving along, doing the work, meeting the benchmarks of contract expectations, and now, well, many of us are, most of us are not being paid for the work that we've all begun. So it's hard. It's not impossible for organizations to regroup, but it just makes it more difficult.' Johnson said that this program was about getting money directly to farmers — even if the program's description used the word 'carbon.' 'First and foremost, this was about getting money into the hands of farmers either already deploying good conservation practices or wanting to, [who] didn't have the resources to do it,' she said. 'This wasn't about Green Fire. This was about farmers, and we were just developing the metric and the strategies to make sure that high performing farms with good conservation practices were being rewarded for doing really, really good work.' Without programs like these, Johnson said, Wisconsin will continue to 'see that continual slow degradation of farm fields and water quality.'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maine looks to offer farmers zero-interest loans amid federal funding cuts
Farmers and supporters from across the state paraded in Augusta on April 16, 2025 to draw attention to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's cuts to programs and grants that provide critical support to Maine's farming community. (Photo by Eesha Pendharkar/ Maine Morning Star) Maine Sen. Stacy Brenner introduced a bill during a public hearing Thursday that would allow the state to better financially support farmers during unexpected events and emergencies. 'This is not a hypothetical concern,' Brenner (D-Cumberland) told the Legislature's Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee. 'Farmers across Maine are facing unprecedented challenges from increasing erratic and extreme weather to the uncertainty of federal support.' Brenner's bill, LD 1605, comes after more than 100 farmers and supporters — including U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree — paraded through Augusta last week to protest federal cuts to agricultural grants and programs. In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has cut several programs that have provided millions of dollars and critical support to Maine farms. Just last week, the federal agency ended the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which has provided over $477 million to help Maine farms subsidize projects focused on integrating climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices. A cost-sharing program that helps integrate conservation practices into working lands is also under threat as the Trump administration has tried to freeze one of its funding sources: the Inflation Reduction Act. Beyond these sizable cuts, Maine farmers have expressed concern over President Donald Trump's back and forth on tariffs that they say could eat away at their already thin profit margins. With tractor parade, Maine farmers protest USDA cuts that could leave many in debt LD 1605 would allow the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry to use one of its existing funds to grant zero-interest loans to farmers in the event of a disaster or loss of funds due to federal cuts. The proposal is co-sponsored by Republicans and Democrats in both chambers. 'This is smart, targeted investment in rural resilience, food security and the future of Maine's agriculture,' said Brenner, who also serves as president and CEO of Maine Farmland Trust and owns Broadturn Farm in Scarborough. The department is in favor of the bill because it currently lacks a mechanism to distribute rapid emergency funds, said Director Megan Patterson. She told the committee that this legislation could offer that 'crucial bridge funding' for farmers during unpredictable times. An original version of this bill sought to include food banks, which have also been hit by federal cuts to a program that would have provided $1.25 million to Maine over the next three years for food banks to source fresh produce from local growers. Brenner said she decided to move forward with a proposal that utilized existing funding levers and had to make the hard choice to leave food banks out. Good Shepherd Food Bank said it supports the bill even with the changes because of its strong partnership with Maine's farming community. Maine Farmland Trust and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association also both spoke in support of the bill. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
