The Trump administration has been working overtime to portray itself as the savior of America’s farms and food security when, in fact, it’s become our food system’s greatest threat. The recent Newsweek op-ed by Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just the latest attempt to distract from the real impact of their policies.
Earlier this month Rollins and Kennedy rolled out the Farmers First Regenerative Agriculture pilot program, promising $700 million “to help American farmers adopt practices that improve soil health, enhance water quality, and boost long-term productivity.”
These are critically important goals, especially as farmers face historic drought, desertification and other disruptions fueled by the climate crisis. But this program is throwing pennies at the problem, hoping no one will notice the billions in damage the administration has inflicted on local farmers and the environment.
The Trump administration has caused or worsened the biggest problems our food system faces today. It has rolled back environmental regulations that safeguard clean water. It has targeted the workers who grow, pick and produce our food in cruel immigration raids, terrorizing communities and creating worker shortages that could lead to higher food prices.
Trump’s USDA slashed programs that provided more than $1 billion for schools to purchase food from local producers, then claimed to be heroes for local farmers by offering a mere $18 million in farm-to-school grants. Trump’s trade wars have tanked export income to the tune of $44 billion. Then the administration turns around and offers just $12 billion in bridge payments.
None of it adds up.
The $700 million promised for regenerative agriculture comes after the USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. The climate-smart program had its flaws, but slashing more than 75 percent of funding from sustainable agriculture investments isn’t the way to fix it.
Secretaries Rollins and Kennedy tout the wisdom of utilizing existing programs in USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for their regenerative pilot. NRCS has several initiatives that are widely popular among farmers and shown to be effective at improving sustainability on farms. But under the Trump administration, NRCS has lost nearly 1 in 4 staff this year (USDA as a whole has lost more than 18,000 people), draining the department’s expertise and capacity to carry out new programs.
Even if the Trump administration were putting its money where its mouth is, the regenerative pilot program would still raise more questions than answers.
Regenerative agriculture, as a concept, has lofty goals we can all agree on. It aims to build healthy soil, advance carbon sequestration and conserve water. It often promises to be an antidote to monocultures, pesticides and pollution while enhancing biodiversity.
But for now, it’s just an idea. It’s a set of strategies, not an outcome or end goal. There are no standard definitions, metrics or regulations that create accountability for regenerative claims.
It’s no surprise that regenerative agriculture has become the food industry’s latest favorite buzzword. It evokes pastoral images of small farms and healthy food, even as it’s adopted by mega-polluting agribusinesses.
But without a standard definition of what regenerative agriculture actually means, it’s impossible for Americans at the grocery store to tell the difference between independent farmers who are genuinely striving to reduce environmental impacts and industry greenwashing.
If the Trump administration truly wanted to support American farmers and a healthy, resilient food system, it would stop playing games with rural livelihoods. It would restore and expand funding that supports local farmers while holding industrial producers destroying our soil, water and climate accountable for their damage. And it would create a clear definition and standards for regenerative agriculture to cut through the confusion for producers and consumers alike.
The pilot program’s plan to evaluate everything on the farm at once is a step in the right direction, since truly regenerative agriculture must be more than single, isolated practices. But the Trump administration must take the same approach with its own programs.
If it honestly evaluated everything it was cultivating—including all the funding cuts, new “forever chemical” pesticide approvals and countless other ways it’s undermined public health, rural communities and the environment—the administration would have to admit that it’s falling far short of delivering any wins for farmers and the American people. That, in fact, is harming people.
The Trump spin machine is in overdrive, but empty words and promises can’t fool farmers struggling to make ends meet or American families paying more to put food on the table.
Newsweek