Farm conservation work in Chesapeake region hit hard by federal funding freeze

Amanda Lee-Milner was looking for a way to get her goats something more to eat and help them get a bit of shade.

She didn’t think it was part of a radical left-wing agenda.

She was hoping to convert a 10-acre woodlot on her sheep and goat farm in Adams County, PA, into a series of fenced paddocks where the animals could graze among the trees.

Lee-Milner even envisioned it becoming a place where other farmers could learn about “silvopasture” techniques, which are gaining interest as a way to buffer farms against drought and rising temperatures.

In late January, she got the go-ahead from the nonprofit group Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, which helped plan and design the project. Then, she said, “I got another call saying that they were not going to be able to move forward.”

Pasa had learned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had halted funding for the organization’s multiyear, $59 million grant to work with farmers from Maine to South Carolina on “climate smart” projects. Suddenly, there was no money.

“It’s very frustrating,” Lee-Milner said. “The broken promises are the worst — the fact that the federal government isn’t following the process and didn’t keep their word.”

The funding freeze is dramatically impacting Pasa. The organization was planning to furlough about 60 staffers in early April, leaving it with fewer than 10.

Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director, called the action “heartbreaking” because so many farmers were interested in participating. “It’s disenfranchising these farmers from the ability to improve their situation,” she said.

Pasa is hardly alone. The fate of billions of dollars in farm conservation funding that was to be spent over the next several years, including hundreds of millions of dollars in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, is in limbo as the USDA reviews its programs and grants.

In February, newly installed USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said the department would honor its commitments to farmers but would not support diversity and “far-left climate programs.” 

It is one of a series of actions that, in a matter of weeks, has upended USDA conservation programs.

Besides freezing grants for dozens of nonprofit groups, businesses and universities, the USDA is not funding much of its own conservation work and has cut back its conservation outreach staff, which was already shorthanded.

Many organizations and farmers are in limbo, with no clear indication of what criteria the USDA is using to make funding decisions — or when they will be made.

Smith-Brubaker said she contacts USDA staff weekly, only to be told, “We don’t know anything more than you do.” She has no idea whether funding will be restored or terminated.

In frustration, Pasa and several other groups joined a suit March 19 against Trump administration officials, contending that they are illegally holding up money already appropriated by Congress and ignoring signed contracts.

The freeze and potential loss of funding has huge environmental implications. Runoff from farms is the largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution to streams across the nation and to the Chesapeake Bay.

And USDA programs are the largest single source of funding to address the problem.

“Anyone that’s done work on the Chesapeake Bay knows progress is highly dependent on the agricultural community’s partnership and work,” said Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. “That takes assistance and help. To lose that is devastating.”

Dramatic reversal

It’s a sharp turnaround from two years ago when the USDA announced it would bolster farm conservation work with nearly $20 billion from the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

That funding, spanning five years, would dramatically increase the agency’s core conservation programs that pay farmers for improved land stewardship, help them take actions such as installing stream buffers and stream fencing, and compensate them for retiring environmentally sensitive land.

To handle the influx of work, the department ramped up its technical support staff who work with farmers to get those projects on the ground.

And it tapped other department funding to launch a $3 billion Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program that helped universities, businesses and non-profits like Pasa work directly with farmers on adapting to climate challenges and marketing the products they produce.

The USDA called those initiatives a “once-in-a-generation investment in conservation on working lands.” While the influx of money was generally aimed at addressing climate change, many of the measures it supported also reduce nutrient-laden runoff — things like stream fencing, improved pasture management, no-till farming and planting cover crops and stream buffers.

But President Trump put the brakes on that work with a series of executive orders aimed at giving administration officials time to review climate-related initiatives, especially those funded under the IRA. A goal, one of the executive orders stated, was to “terminate the green new deal” — a program that doesn’t exist.

The authority of the administration to halt funding was challenged in court in part because the expenditures for this year were already approved by Congress. Several court rulings ordered agencies to resume the funding, but that has largely not happened with agricultural programs.

USDA Secretary Rollins on Feb. 20 announced the freeing of $20 million in conservation funding, but that’s a fraction of the money that has been obligated for its core conservation programs nationwide. In the Chesapeake region, for example, Virginia has $196 million in active USDA conservation projects, Pennsylvania has $185 million and Maryland has $56 million, according to USDA figures.

Most of the money for the climate-smart program, such as Pasa’s grant, remains locked up. The USDA did not reply to a request for comment. Several organizations with those grants contacted by the Bay Journal reported that funding was frozen but declined to discuss the matter publicly, fearing it could hurt chances for their grants being restored. Others declined to speak at all.

Many painted a grim picture for accelerating conservation progress, even if the funds come back.

“I am concerned about the future of federal farm conservation, period,” said a representative of a national farm organization who requested to be unnamed. “Farmers are not known for their incredible trust of the U.S. government. And having a bunch of farmers sign up for projects and feeling like they were promised something that they don’t receive — they’re going to be less likely to participate in these programs in the future.”

Further, instead of increasing staff to help implement the programs, the USDA is cutting back. In February, it fired nearly 6,000 probationary employees, including around 1,700 in its Natural Resources Conservation Service. Many of those were the recently hired staff needed to work with farmers.

In March, the USDA and other federal agencies were ordered to rehire those employees. Most were placed on paid administrative leave, though the department said it would work on a phased return-to-duty. But it is also developing plans for an even broader “reduction in force,” so those employees may be fired again.

The funding uncertainty and sidelined staff come at a critical time when plans were being finalized for 2025 projects. With spring approaching, some won’t happen until next year — if at all.

“The current situation has put a bad taste in a number of farmers’ mouths who have active contracts that have been delayed or halted,” said Kevin Tate, director of conservation with the Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley, which was using several now-frozen USDA grants to work with farmers. “I think there is a very real possibility of projects being abandoned.”

Even if money is restored for this year, Tate noted, it is far from certain that it will be available in the following years, making it difficult to do new outreach with farmers for projects that may never be funded. “These relationships take years to develop,” he said. “It’s not like we just turn the tap on and turn the tap off.”      

Climate-smart program hit

Now farmers like Lee-Milner and organizations like Pasa are wondering whether they will ever see promised funding — and pondering what might have been.

While the bulk of the increased USDA conservation funding was fortifying existing programs, the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities was new.

It supported many traditional conservation practices such as cover crops and no-till farming, which help sequester carbon into the soil, as well as nutrient and manure management techniques that reduce nitrous oxides, a powerful greenhouse gas.

But it also promoted monitoring efforts to quantify how well those approaches are working, and it supported marketing efforts to inform consumers about the environmental benefits of that work — which could increase the value of those products and expand markets.

Nationwide, the climate-smart initiative made awards to 140 organizations, businesses and institutions, which were supposed to reach more than 60,000 farms and cover more than 25 million acres of farmland. The USDA estimated that, if successful, the work would sequester carbon equivalent to removing more than 12 million gas-powered cars from the road. Hundreds of millions of dollars of that work was to take place in the Chesapeake watershed.

The program was also a way to test new approaches, such as the silvopasture project Lee-Milner hoped to create on her farm.

Warmer temperatures and drier summers in recent years have been making it difficult to grow enough hay on the 90-acre farm to support the sheep and goats through the winter.

And, during the hottest summer months, providing enough shade for pasturing animals is becoming more important. The solution, Lee-Milner thought, was to allow some of the animals to graze in a 10-acre area of forest on her farm that isn’t currently in use.

She researched the issue and, working with Pasa, determined that dividing that area into four fenced paddocks would allow goats to be rotated through sections of the woodlot in 5-day increments. That would provide more food and a cooler foraging area for her goats, and the managed grazing would benefit the woods by controlling invasive plants.

Also, soil in the paddocks would retain more moisture during droughts than traditional pastures, all while sequestering climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It would have a steep upfront cost: about $45,000, which was too much for the small farm to afford without some assistance.

And there was another impediment. Despite growing interest in silvopasture systems, they are not supported by NRCS programs. That’s where Pasa’s support was invaluable.

The climate-smart funding gave it the flexibility to work with farmers on newer techniques and assess how they perform. Pasa was using its grant to reach thousands of farmers though its own work and by supporting 13 other organizations from Maine to South Carolina. Those organizations have networks that can often reach farmers who typically don’t engage with NRCS programs, and they could provide technical assistance that could relieve burdens on the understaffed federal agency.

Project staff were actively engaged with monitoring the outcomes, such as taking soil samples to determine how well the practices were sequestering carbon. It’s data that largely doesn’t exist, particularly for smaller farms.

“It’s really valuable information about the real impacts of installing these practices on soil health, on farm viability, on the bottom line for farmers,” said Sarah Isbell, Pasa research director. “We are now completely missing the opportunity to collect it.”

Even if funding is restored, picking up the work would be difficult. Any USDA-funded project that requires significant earth disturbance, such as fencing or tree planting, requires a special certification to ensure that it complies with the Clean Water Act and other regulations.

NRCS normally handles those certifications, but the USDA recognized that projects from the climate-smart program would overwhelm its staff. So, it hired a contractor to conduct that review.

On Valentine’s Day, though, the new Department of Government Efficiency terminated the contract without explanation other than a post on X by Elon Musk, who oversees DOGE: “Roses are red, violets are blue, today DOGE and 10 agencies made 586 wasteful contracts bid adieu.”

Organizations working on the climate-smart programs now have no mechanism to complete those reviews even if funding were restored, especially as staffing at NRCS has been cut.

“We haven’t gotten the green light to go directly to the NRCS office for approval,” said Andrew Currie, who oversees Pasa’s program. Reflecting the frustration of others, he added, “This is exactly the reason why farmers are reluctant to engage with programs like this, even though they might see the benefit.”