SALEM, Ohio — A new era of “unprecedented prosperity” for agriculture is set to begin now that Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, the Biden administration’s slush fund for serving the interests of non-governmental organizations over American farmers, is dead. At least that’s how the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins put it in a press release issued April 14.
“The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration,” Rollins wrote, adding that since taking office, she has heard from many farmers who felt sidelined by the USDA, citing excessive bureaucracy, unclear goals and burdensome reporting requirements.
That wasn’t the intention of the program, according to the USDA as recently as last year, which promoted it as a way to create new markets for sustainably grown products, helping American farmers compete globally while supporting rural economies
The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through agricultural and forestry practices — efforts the USDA said could equate to removing more than 12 million gas-powered vehicles from the road for a year. It also pledged to support small producers and underserved communities, generate new revenue streams and include institutions serving minority populations.
The USDA initially allocated $1 billion to launch the program, but overwhelming interest and strong proposals prompted the agency to ultimately invest nearly $3 billion across 70 projects in the first funding round in May 2022. A second round followed that December.
However, the program mostly benefited special interests in service of the “Green New Scam,” as Rollins called it. According to the department’s review, administrative costs cannibalized an outsized share of funding, and in some instances, less than half of the money actually reached farmers it was intended for.
The program will be replaced by a new initiative, Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP), which the USDA says realigns funding with Trump-era agricultural priorities. Only projects able to prove that at least 65% of funds will go directly to farmers may proceed.
By farmers, for farmers
But Climate-Smart’s termination has left those on the ground — including food hubs, rural nonprofits and farming organizations — grappling with confusion, frustration and uncertainty.
Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania-based farmer-member group, was a key partner in implementing Climate-Smart Commodities programs across several states. Nearly 200 of Pasa’s members were enrolled in the program, with another 750 applicants waiting to join.
That is, until earlier this year, when the organization’s Climate-Smart funding was frozen, putting up to $40 million in direct payments and technical assistance at risk. The funds were meant to support regenerative practices like agroforestry and cover cropping, as well as efforts to measure environmental benefits such as water quality and soil health, while providing marketing strategies to help farmers promote their efforts and connect with climate-conscious consumers.
Executive Director Hannah Smith-Brubaker called the experience “a real rollercoaster.”
“The first communications we read basically just said, ‘The program has been terminated,’” she told Farm and Dairy. “Then we got a follow-up letter saying … ‘Your grant was evaluated. Based on the evaluation, you didn’t meet certain criteria. You may resubmit if you think you can meet this criteria.’”
The back-and-forth left her team uncertain whether they could revise their application or they had to start over under the new AMP framework, the prospect of which she described as frustrating due to its entirely different goals and assumptions.
Smith-Brubaker cited the USDA’s mandate that at least 65% of grant funds go directly to farmers as a significant obstacle. Originally, Pasa had planned to allocate 75% to 80% of its grant funds for technical assistance and marketing support, but the USDA no longer considers such services as satisfying the new AMP benchmarks.
Ironically, Pasa originally planned to reimburse farmers for hiring their own technical and marketing support, but, at the request of farmers, took on the work themselves — managing contractors and paperwork, with USDA’s approval at the time.
“And now, we’re being penalized for it,” Smith-Brubaker said. “Our farmers expressed a need — we designed a program to meet that need. (Now,) USDA seems more focused on criticizing the former administration than assessing whether this truly meets farmer needs.”
Gone too soon
Omanjana Goswami, an interdisciplinary scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, initially had concerns about the Climate-Smart program when it was first launched. Much of the first round funding went to large corporations including Cargill, Walmart and PepsiCo — companies with the resources to reduce their emissions themselves — suggesting that billion-dollar corporations were reaping the benefits while small-scale and minority farmers were being left behind. More than 75% of the initial projects centered on meat and dairy, two of the agriculture sector’s largest contributors to climate change. Much of the funding was directed toward corn and soybeans, crops primarily grown in ethanol production and to feed livestock, a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions and land use changes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
But her view shifted as the program evolved.
“The USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program was a big, bold venture that served farmers interested in applying soil-building, pollution-preventing measures on their farms, who were usually unable to access the oversubscribed and underfunded conservation programs at USDA,” she said in an email to Farm and Dairy.
Goswami noted that while the first round of projects were fairly criticized for centering commodity crops and corporations with histories of behaving badly, the second round made real strides by directing more funding to food crops and minority-serving institutions, including several historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal organizations and programs focused on underserved farmers. She also pointed to the program’s long-term potential, particularly its role in driving innovation across supply chains, which could have sparked large-scale transformation.
“With the effective cancellation of the Climate-Smart Commodity program halfway through its tenure, it will be impossible to evaluate whether it was meeting its goals and what the overall impact has been,” she said.
“The public’s best interest”
The lost potential weighs heavily on Lori Stern, executive director of Marbleseed, a Wisconsin nonprofit supporting organic and transitioning farmers across the Midwest. Marbleseed’s active Climate-Smart Commodities projects in Ohio aimed to support, measure and market climate-smart organic grain and field crops. Their original goal in applying for Climate-Smart Commodity funding, she explained, was to ensure organic agriculture had a place in the national climate discussion.
“It was largely to put kind of a stake in the ground for organic, because organic is climate-smart agriculture,” she said. The organization wanted to help farmers grow small grains and cover crops between corn and soybeans to reduce erosion, improve soil health and create new market opportunities for them.
After an initial email from the USDA about restructuring the program, Marbleseed received a follow-up stating that their grant no longer met the new standards. The abrupt shift left them uncertain about next steps, with no reimbursement offered for completed work.
“It would seem like they made this announcement without much of a plan,” Stern said. “But I don’t know.”
Currently, Climate-Smart Commodities is one of two of the organization’s federal grants that are frozen, both originally awarded as five-year projects. That timeline gave Marbleseed the confidence to build lasting programs and partnerships, but now, all that’s been undermined. Their Climate-Smart work had only been active for about a year, with 12 farmers enrolled and many more waiting to join.
“No one is required to farm organically. This is a choice that farmers make and a commitment that farmers make, and it’s harder,” Stern said.
Although the official notice of cancellation of their Climate-Smart money was difficult to take, Stern said the long silence beforehand was worse. Against that backdrop, even bad news was welcomed.
“You know, is it disappointing? Is it frustrating? Is it, I mean, all of those things? Absolutely, and yet at the same time, it’s nice to at least know something,” she said.
Still, the lost momentum and stalled contracts have reached far into the organization’s operations, resulting in five positions being reduced in the past week.
Stern defended her team’s work, emphasizing that they offered technical assistance and partnered with an organic grain marketing co-op to host field days that foster peer-to-peer learning. These services are typically out of reach for many without grant support.
She is concerned about the shift toward direct funding for farmers, particularly as the USDA closes Natural Resources Conservation Service offices and resources continue to dwindle. Stern emphasized the vital role of small and mid-sized farms, which help combat food insecurity.
“We need farmers,” she said. “We need farmers that are growing food — healthy food — food that is going to sustain us and nourish us. Those are the farmers I get to work with all the time and who our project was working with.”
For Smith-Brubaker’s part, that need underscores how deeply many producers care about their role in mitigating climate change. People underestimate the value of their work, she said, at their own peril.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “The seasons won’t pause, the climate won’t wait — and farmers are doing all they can. But isn’t the whole point of government to act in the public’s best interest? And this, to me, feels like the opposite.”
