Pennsylvania Groups Affected as USDA Cancels Climate-Smart Program (2025)

USDA has canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program and plans to use the funding for projects it likes more.

Mid-Atlantic ag groups had planned to use millions of dollars to support farmers in the region.

Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said theprojects, funded under President Joe Biden, had excessive administrative fees and ambiguous goals, and in some cases provided less than half of their funding to farmers.

The program was never intended to fund farms exclusively. It supported coalitions of companies, universities, nonprofits and farms in researching and implementing projects to mitigate climate change.

USDA may continue projects from the partnerships if at least 65% of their federal funding will go to farmers. Projects must have enrolled and paid at least one farm by Dec. 31, 2024.

USDA said it will contact current partner organizations about participation in the successor program, Advancing Markets for Producers. The agency said it will honor all eligible expenses incurred before April 13.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said changing the program midway through would cause hardships for farmer-serving organizations and likely for farms as well.

It’s not clear if grant recipients will be able to modify their projects to meet the new criteria, the group said.

The farmer participation requirement could create problems even for farmer-focused efforts.

In a $55 million project, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture supported farmers through stipends, technical support and marketing support that amounted to 85% of project costs.

But under the new rules, USDA apparently is only counting farmer stipends. Those are 45% of the project’s budget, said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director.

At farmers’ request, Pasa had taken care of the technical and marketing pieces. That spared the farmers from paying the costs themselves and being reimbursed later, reducing complexity and cash-flow concerns.

“We agreed to do this on their behalf to eliminate extra hoops for them to have to jump through. Now our farmers are being penalized,” Smith-Brubaker said.

Pennsylvania-based Pasafurloughedmost of its staff after USDA froze the climate-smart project, which supported farmers across the East Coast.

A project involving Penn State and the Center for Dairy Excellence has paid one farmer so far, but it has more than 60 other dairies lined up to implement conservation practices.

Progress was delayed, even before the Trump administration took office, as organizers waited for USDA to clarify paperwork issues.

If other projects have had the same problem, they may not meet the successor program’s requirement to have already paid a farmer.

“The delays on the USDA side could cause really good projects like ours that actually do support farmers to not be able to continue,” said Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence.

Soon after the program cancelation was announced Monday, Sebright did not know whether USDA would consider continuing her group’s project.

The New York Department of Agriculture and Markets, which was part of another climate-smart grant, is assessing what the cancellation means for its farmers and partners.

The state remains committed to helping farmers improve water quality and climate resiliency, said Hanna Birkhead, an agency spokeswoman.

The climate-smart program was created by then-Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack using funding from the Commodity Credit Corp., over which the ag secretary has broad discretion.

This program was particularly vulnerable because it was not directly authorized by Congress. The Trump administration has been hostile to climate change mitigation policies.

The climate-smart program has also been criticized by environmentalists.

The Environmental Working Group said last year that USDA inflated the program’s claimed climate benefits by counting conservation practices that haven’t been proven to mitigate climate change.

Biden’s USDA said that evaluation lacked nuance and was based on incorrect assumptions.

This story has been expanded since its initial posting.