The U.S. Department of Agriculture in April announced the termination of its $3 billion “climate smart” program, a grantmaking initiative that was supporting hundreds of millions of dollars in conservation work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

An April 14 USDA press release called the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, which promoted farm conservation measures with climate benefits, as a “slush fund” with high administrative costs and often low payouts to farmers.

It said some of the projects may continue under a new initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers, but only if 65% or more of the project’s funds were going directly to farmers and the work aligns with Trump administration priorities.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Biden administration’s climate smart program was designed to “advance the green new scam” and benefited nongovernmental organizations more than farmers.

“We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity,” Rollins said.

The climate smart program was launched in 2022 as part of a “once-in-a-generation investment” that would enable universities, businesses and nonprofits to work with farmers to promote conservation measures that would help them adapt to climate change and market the products they produced.

Most projects did not begin until 2023 or later because of delays in paperwork, and some had just started up last year.

But the USDA froze funding for the program in January, leaving organizations that had incurred costs unable to recoup their expenses. In its announcement, the department clarified that it would honor eligible expenses incurred prior to April 13, 2025, but would review existing grants to determine whether they could continue.

Some working with the program said it appeared they would be able to successfully reapply under the new program, but others were unsure.

Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, was managing a $59 million climate smart grant that supported work it was carrying out with a dozen other organizations on farms from Maine to South Carolina. With funding stalled, it laid off 60 employees in early April, leaving it with fewer than 10.

“We are honestly not sure what the announcement means for our project,” said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director. “They said we can reapply, but we don’t know if that means for our current project or a completely new project under the new program.”

Smith-Brubaker said Pasa’s project did not meet the 65% farmer payment threshold because the USDA was not counting costs of providing technical assistance to farmers for planning, implementing and maintaining projects.

She said about 45% of the project’s funding went directly to farmers, but if the technical assistance were included, farmer support under the grant would be between 75%-85%.

Richa Patel, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, also said it was “disappointing” that the department was not counting technical assistance as part of the farmer support funding.

With the USDA already reducing its own staff, she said, “the administration must take every opportunity going forward to increase access to technical assistance and support the staffing levels necessary to provide efficient and dependable customer service for our farmers — those working directly with USDA and those working with the farmer-serving organizations it partners with.”

Lack of technical support is considered a major impediment to widespread adoption of conservation measures by farmers.

Mike Lavender, the national coalition’s policy director, said he welcomed the ability to continue some projects under the new initiative, but said the USDA did not provide any clarity about whether grant recipients can make modifications to meet the new criteria.

As a result, he said the announcement brings “unnecessary hardship nationwide to farmer-serving organizations and likely farmers as a result of USDA changing program requirements and cancelling projects midstream.”

Nationwide, the climate smart initiative made awards to 140 organizations, businesses and institutions, which were supposed to benefit more than 60,000 farms and cover more than 25 million acres of farmland. The USDA estimated that, if successful, the work would sequester an amount of carbon equivalent to removing more than 12 million gas-powered cars from the road.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of that work was to have taken place in the Chesapeake watershed, managed by nonprofit organizations, universities, agribusinesses and others. The five-year program was one of the largest investments ever made in support of conservation measures on farmland in the Bay region.

It supported many traditional conservation practices such as nutrient and manure management techniques that reduce emissions of nitrous oxides, a powerful greenhouse gas. It also supported measures that curb runoff, such as cover crops, stream fencing and no-till farming. Those measures also help build organic matter in the soil, which allows it to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Smith-Brubaker noted that just a 1% increase in organic matter in a farm’s soil absorbs 22,000 more gallons of water per acre, keeping it from washing nutrient-laden runoff into local streams.

The climate smart program also promoted monitoring efforts to quantify how well the conservation efforts were 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.

By Karl Blankenship, Bay Journal