Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Tel. 347.563.6408

Comment: Without Investments and Reforms, House Bill Rings Hollow

Washington, DC, March 5, 2026 – The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) released the following statement attributable to Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director, following the House Agriculture Committee’s 34-17 passage of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.

“Almost any farmer will tell you that farm policy is fundamentally broken – but instead of taking real strides toward a better future, the House farm bill doubles down on a system that simply isn’t working. The bill offers unfunded authorizations and more status quo instead of meaningful reforms or bold investments in infrastructure, markets, and proven programs for farmers. We appreciate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who offered amendments to rectify the shortcomings of the bill. But for the countless farmers struggling to make ends meet, the scattered policy improvements in this bill ring hollow without the resources to fuel them. 

The path to a farm bill remains through a true bipartisan process. More than seven years removed from the last farm bill, NSAC encourages Senate and House policymakers to work together toward delivering a new farm bill that invests in healthy communities, levels the playing field for small and mid-sized farmers, equips farmers with the tools and resources they need to build resilient and viable operations, and fosters the next generation of farmers and ranchers.“

Stay tuned to the NSAC blog in the days ahead for deeper analysis of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.

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The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Comment: Without Investments and Reforms, House Bill Rings Hollow appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Despite the winter weather blanketing much of the nation and Washington, DC, an ongoing shutdown, and continued national debates on food and agriculture policy, NSAC’s advocacy work continues. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) held its annual Winter Meeting from February 9 to 12 in Washington, DC. Over 150 farmers and advocates from NSAC’s network gathered to strategize, build community, and bring the voice of sustainable agriculture to policymakers in DC. We gathered this year within the context of the ripple effects the Administration’s actions on immigration, international trade, and foreign policy have had across our entire country, including our food system.

Farmers’ Voices

Our time together included opportunities to plan our strategy for the year ahead. NSAC members talked about shared policy priorities in the political landscape and prepared for our Day of Action, when NSAC members and farmer advocates visit Congressional delegations. Many farmers are experiencing federal policy and programs that fail to meet their needs. This year, NSAC members were joined by nearly 50 farmers who came to share their experiences directly with policy makers in Washington, channeling their frustration into pragmatic, solutions-oriented advocacy, almost doubling farmer participation from recent years.

Policy work can be overwhelming to anyone who is new to it. However, despite that perception, policy aims to codify practices based on the real experiences of people who inform those policy decisions. At NSAC, this includes making sure that policy decisions are informed by the lived experiences of farmers who are working through their practices on building a better food and agriculture system. It is critical that farmers can equitably access opportunities to succeed, and that they have a voice in shaping what those opportunities look like. To that end, for the second year in a row, our Winter Meeting focused on providing opportunities for farmers to voice what has worked and what has not worked for them through storytelling and advocacy. 

Coalition Work

An important aspect of coalition work is strategizing collectively over shared priorities. While our time together certainly does that, it is also an important opportunity to build a stronger community where we can hear everyone’s ideas and concerns. In the end, the ability to work together allows our work to be more impactful during our time together in Washington as well as in our collective action going forward. One way our impact can be measured is in the number of attendees at the meeting and their time spent on the Hill, meeting with members of Congress and their staff, and with decision-makers at USDA. Over 150 coalition members attended the Winter Meeting, likewise logging over 150 meetings with members of Congress, offering practical solutions and opportunities to benefit all farms. Additionally, NSAC members were able to meet with USDA officials across the department to talk about the benefits of the programs available for farmers, and areas where the programs could improve. 

Beyond the numbers, creating opportunities for NSAC members and farmers to meet directly with their elected representatives can have a transformational, long term impact. These conversations strengthen our ability to communicate clearly and persuasively with members of Congress about the changes we would like to see in our food system. That impact can extend beyond numbers as it forms the basis of a representative democracy.

Our Voices Heard

A group of Buddhist monks walking for peace between Texas and Washington, DC, happened to be on Capitol Hill for an additional walk along the National Mall on the same day we held our traditional Day of Action. As

NSAC members and advocates visited Congress to have our collective voices heard, many were able to catch a glimpse of the pious trekkers between their walks to and from the Capitol grounds. The monks, however, were not the only travelers on Capitol Hill that day with a mission. Our day of advocacy has become a fixture of our winter meetings, and is also an opportunity to educate members of Congress about policy solutions that better serve farmers.

As Ed Dubrick of DuChick Ranch, LLC, and NSAC member, the Illinois Stewardship Alliance shared: 

“We came directly to Capitol Hill to educate lawmakers on issues important to our farm and the farms of our neighbors. We shared personal stories that highlight the impact recent and current investments in conservation and local food systems have made in our community and why continued support for these programs is needed.” 

Despite the Administration’s efforts to downplay the diversity of our nation, our food system is as diverse as the people who participate in it. Yet, not everyone has equal access to the opportunities that government programs offer or to the benefits many of those programs were designed to address.

Zach Ben, of Bidii Baby Foods in Navajo Territory, traveled to the Winter Meeting with NSAC member Farm to Table New Mexico. Although he has already had the opportunity to educate members of Congress on the challenges he and his community face as active participants in our food system, he further reflected on the experience:

“Coming from a disenfranchised culture, this is my opportunity to enfranchise our farm because I want to continue using Indigenous knowledge in my farming practices as a traditional baby foods producer.”

As part of our advocacy during our day of action, we also delivered a letter signed by over 500 farmers from across the nation to House and Senate Agriculture Committees leadership urging Congress to provide economic relief for farmers as the farm crisis continues to ravage rural communities, putting farmers at risk of losing their livelihood amid high production costs for fertilizers and equipment, while decreasing access to programs that help farmers implement conservation practices, as well as to domestic market initiatives. The letter calls for the development of more robust domestic markets and local supply chains, and for broad eligibility to maximize its impact. This letter is part of NSAC’s ongoing effort to work with Congress to address the severe challenges farmers are facing in the immediate and longer-term, and we hope its delivery will help Congressional leaders prioritize this in their committee work.

Perennial Advocate Award

Last year, we presented the NSAC Perennial Advocate Award for the first time, and this year, we took the opportunity to honor another champion of our movement. NSAC created the Perennial Advocate Award to honor someone who, through their lifetime, has proven to be a leader through years of dedication, participating in more than one farm bill campaign, providing insight and input in many coalition campaigns, and contributing significantly to policy development through research, grassroots work, advocacy, and thought partnership. The Perennial Advocate Award goes to someone who exemplifies NSAC’s values of integrity, stewardship, collaboration, and justice. 

This year, NSAC was proud to honor Margaret Krome. Margaret served as Policy Program Director at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute before she retired last year. In introducing the award, NSAC Coalition Director Sarah Hackney spoke of Krome’s work as grassroots-led policy advocacy, and reminded the audience of Krome’s constant grounding question in policy advocacy work, “Have you talked to a farmer?”

In receiving the award, Krome expressed gratitude and reframed her role in the sustainable agriculture movement, humbly stating, “I don’t believe in stars, but I believe in constellations.” Her anecdotes of being able to convince lawmakers of the benefits and utility of foundational programs to the movement, like the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE), exemplified in her own words, the tenets of a representative democracy.

As our time together wrapped up, we left as we do every year: exhausted and inspired for the road ahead. Unlike other years, we wrapped up our winter meeting with the news of an upcoming farm bill markup. We left our meeting with the sense that, as our work continues, our time together had been worth it, helping us continue to lay the groundwork for farm policy that invests in healthy communities, levels the playing field for small and mid-sized farmers, equips farmers with the tools and resources they need to build resilient and viable operations, and foster the next generation of farmers and ranchers. While the draft farm bill falls short of these goals, we will carry the momentum from our Day of Action forward and continue pushing for food and farm policy that works across the food system, from the natural resources our farmers steward to the producers and farm workers, and across the supply chain.

The NSAC staff is grateful for all of our members, partners, vendors and donors who help make this work possible, and of course for the farmers on the front lines! Thank you to photographer Ruth Annan for capturing so many special moments from this winter’s Lobby Day!

The post “Have you talked to a Farmer?” NSAC’S 2026 Winter Meeting Recap appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

On Friday, February 13, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA-15) released the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (FFNSA).

The introduction of the bill comes amidst an historic moment in federal food and agriculture policy. More than seven years removed from the enactment of the 2018 Farm Bill, farmers and ranchers are in a moment of crisis, with countless farms on the brink of foreclosure. The past year has also brought unprecedented instability in federal partnerships: farmers have experienced unexpected contract cuts and unpredictable, abrupt trade policy shifts, and the impact of a severely reduced federal workforce. In January 2025, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) began freezing and even terminating the lawfully held contracts of farmers and farmer-serving organizations, disrupting planning for the 2025 planting season. The past year also included a budget reconciliation bill that slashed hundreds of billions of dollars from nutrition assistance for seniors, children, and veterans and directly reinvested $50 billion of that to further increase farm subsidies, abandoning the decades-long bipartisan farm bill coalition in the process. FFNSA should not and cannot be viewed outside of this context – to do so would be a rejection of reality.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) appreciates the inclusion of improvements to local and regional food systems and the removal of a particularly harmful provision that would have fundamentally altered the Conservation Reserve Program for the worse. Yet in the context of propelling American agriculture forward – and when considering everything farmers and ranchers have endured for the past year – FFNSA falls woefully short.

FFNSA does nothing to stabilize USDA. It does not prevent the USDA reorganization from undermining services for farmers; it does not reverse USDA’s shameful ongoing attack on programs that seek to increase opportunity across the food system; and it does not appear to meaningfully support staffing levels so that farmers can access federal programs. Furthermore, in the shadow of a budget reconciliation bill that managed to provide guaranteed funding for tens of billions in new farm subsidies, FFNSA refuses to cobble together guaranteed funding for vital programs or to increase funding for programs that have been at the same level since 2018. Any program in FFNSA that receives flat funding is effectively cut by roughly 20% due to seven years of inflation. 

The following are select provisions based on NSAC’s initial analysis of the full text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026. 

Title 1 – Commodities

While many of the Title I programs – including the Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage programs – were addressed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB, P.L. 119-21), FFNSA includes a few notable changes for specialty crop support and disaster relief programs. First, the bill establishes a permanent framework for future emergency assistance that is specifically designed to support specialty crop producers based on adverse events, including economic crises or market disruptions. The program – which shares some similarities with the Marketing Assistance for Speciality Crops programs, but is not identical – would calculate payments based on sales from the previous market year, and establish a consistent mechanism and methodology framework to distribute emergency aid for specialty crop producers (Section 1003).

While it is vital to ensure specialty crop producers receive necessary aid during an emergency, this provision, as written, does not ensure specialty crop producers of all sizes receive adequate support. The bill includes high payment limits of no less than $900,000 for those deriving at least 75% of their income from farming activities, potentially concentrating any limited funds made available to a smaller number of large producers. The proposed program also fails to provide support to new producers who were impacted by an adverse event but had no recorded sales in the year prior.

FFNSA also gives USDA the authority to administer future disaster programs through state block grants (Section 1004). State administered programs have the potential to offer more tailored support for a state’s unique experience with a disaster. However, in practice, these programs often face significant delays in getting funds into farmers’ hands, establish inconsistent standards across states, and reduce USDA’s ability to ensure compliance across programs and reduce duplicative payments. As written, FFNSA provides few protections to ensure these issues do not hinder relief efforts when administered through state block grants.

Disaster relief programs are often necessary to effectively respond to an unusually damaging event. However, creating additional permanent disaster programs to distribute future ad hoc spending is not a sustainable solution to an insufficient farm safety net. Without proper investments to expand access to and improve risk management tools for the majority of producers, which are absent from FFNSA, farmers and ranchers will continue to struggle with an inadequate farm safety net. 

Title 2 – Conservation 

FFNSA’s conservation title presents a decidedly mixed bag, with several modest positive policy changes alongside some provisions that act as barriers for farmers trying to access popular federal conservation programs.

The bill codifies a minimum Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) payment of $4,000, guaranteeing that producers of all sizes receive a solid baseline level of support when enrolling in CSP (Section 2301). This is an improvement over the $2,500 minimum payment proposed in the last House Farm Bill and in line with NSAC priorities for CSP.

However, FFNSA also siphons off CSP’s limited – and consistently oversubscribed – funding for a new grant program supporting states and Tribes administering soil health programs (Section 2302). While NSAC has championed providing federal support for state and tribal soil health programs, pulling funds from a popular, effective conservation program and thereby limiting farmer access is a non-starter. Currently, only 30% of farmers applying to CSP can secure contracts. It makes little sense to stretch limited resources within such a popular program across new purposes and subprograms. Doing so would only ensure that farmers interested in CSP continue to get left behind. Placing a state and tribal soil health assistance program in CSP makes even less sense, given that other conservation programs, such as the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), are already designed to provide federal support for conservation work led by non-federal partners. NSAC opposes using CSP as the home for this new grant program and encourages Congress to see the wisdom of funding state and tribal soil health programs through RCPP instead. 

Across both the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and CSP, the FFNSA significantly increases support for precision agriculture technologies. NSAC recognizes that precision agriculture has demonstrable benefits for some operations; however, it remains a relatively high-cost conservation solution that does not serve all farmers. Conservation program funding is limited, and providing overly robust support for practices unsuitable for all operations leads to a small set of farms consuming an outsized portion of program resources. This is an irresponsible use of limited public funding, especially when there are size- and scale-neutral management alternatives that serve far more farmers and deliver greater environmental benefits per dollar spent. We were pleased to see Congress recognize the high conservation potential of perennial production systems by including them in the Conservation Innovation Grants program, and these systems, which provide holistic conservation outcomes and are more accessible to a wider range of producers, deserve just as much attention and investment (Section 2204). NSAC calls on Congress to consider a fairer and more balanced approach to supporting precision agriculture in this farm bill.

As a positive change to the cost share offered at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the FFNSA adds greenhouse gas reduction as a purpose to EQIP’s top ten priority practices authority. This authority allows states to select 10 priority practices that receive 90% cost share, as opposed to the standard 75%, focusing more resources on those practices that both work in that state and address the most pressing environmental challenges producers are facing. Adding greenhouse gas reduction as a purpose that these practices can address makes it clear that states can choose to focus EQIP resources on addressing climate change and provide increased support to the producers eager to do that work within their operation.

The FFNSA appears to cut $1.055 billion dollars from EQIPs first five fiscal years of the 10 year budget window. Although the total baseline for the program should remain the same long term, this means that EQIP – and the farmers who depend on it – will lose money in the near term, hampering access to funds that support viability, resilience, and the ability to reduce input costs. Some of these EQIP funds are clearly redistributed to smaller conservation programs, including the Conservation Reserve Programs Transition Incentives Program; however, it is not clear at the time of publishing where all of the funds removed from EQIP have gone, or if they remain part of Title II’s budget authority.

The bill meets the standard, bare minimum of reauthorizing five year payment limits in both EQIP and CSP, at $450,000 and $200,000, respectively. This is a necessary update that has been ignored in recent Farm Bill extensions. NSAC is relieved to see its inclusion here, as payment limits are one of the key tools that help ensure finite program resources are spread around to a larger number of farms, especially smaller and mid-sized operations. However, FFNSA fails to eliminate the separate and lower payment limit in EQIP for producers accessing the Organic Initiative. While it raises the limit from $140,000 to $200,000, continuing to maintain a significantly lower limit for organic perpetuates an unnecessary institutional bias against organic producers. NSAC opposes this separate and lower limit, as organic production has inherent conservation value, and EQIP should not penalize the efforts of producers seeking certification.

FFNSA provides a long overdue, full reauthorization of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), including new funding for the Transition Incentives Program (TIP). The flagship conservation program of the Farm Service Agency (FSA), CRP, has not received the same attention as other conservation programs in major legislation in recent years, leading to uncertainty and programmatic delays. NSAC strongly supports fully reauthorizing CRP and providing funding for TIP, ensuring these tools are available to producers each year. Further, the FFNSA strips problematic reforms to CRP’s eligibility requirements proposed in the previous version of the bill.

Title 4 – Nutrition

Growing bipartisan support for the Local Farmers Feeding our Communities Act embodies the historical collaboration of agricultural committees responding to the needs of both the farm and food coalition. FFNSA draws from this bipartisan proposal to authorize a new food assistance program that builds upon the success of the previous Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program. Its primary focus remains on building reliable markets for small, mid-sized, beginning, and veteran farmers and strengthening local and regional food systems. It accomplishes this by investing directly into states, Tribes, and territories, and it makes improvements to LFPA by directing explicit technical support to producers to obtain food safety training and certification. 

Codification of this program could catalyze long term growth in local and regional markets; however, the success of the program is severely at risk with an authorization of appropriations set only at $200 million. Recent history has demonstrated a limited capacity to sufficiently fund programs such as these through the annual appropriations process, making this provision more mirage than reality. The success of LFPA in providing economic opportunity for small and mid-sized farmers cannot be understated, and has demonstrated sufficient proof of concept to warrant mandatory funding as laid out in the Local Farmers Feeding our Communities Act. 

Title 5 – Credit

FFNSA includes limited improvements to the farm loan programs and access to credit, but leaves out many important changes to protect borrowers and includes detrimental regulatory changes that would inhibit transparency in agricultural lending.

FFNSA would problematically provide sole authority to the Farm Credit Administration to regulate the Farm Credit System (FCS). This provision would remove any regulatory authority from other entities, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and further erode the CFPB’s demographic reporting requirements in Rule 1071 for loans administered through FCS. 

However, FFNSA also includes several provisions that would help producers access capital, including: authorization for USDA to restructure guaranteed loan debt; a reduced experience requirement; a pre-approval pilot for farm ownership loans; an expedited approval process for loans under $1 million; and shifting the burden of proof from farmers onto USDA when appealing a loan denial. It also increases the limits for direct operating, farm ownership, and microloans. It does not, however, raise the total funding authorization that would create room for USDA to make and guarantee these bigger loans, nor does it place guardrails on lending to protect farmers and ranchers from over-collateralization or prevent concentration of funds among fewer large operations. 

Title 6 – Rural Development

FFNSA authorizes a new grant program, the New, Mobile, and Expanded Meat Processing and Rendering Grant Program, which is, in broad purposes, similar to the Processing Resilience Grant Program within the bipartisan Strengthening Local Processing Act. However, FFNSA’s version of the program provides very limited funding – only $3 million in appropriations authorization – for those grants, smaller than many state budget allocations for a similar purpose (Section 6304). The already limited funding is made even less accessible by including state departments of agriculture and public land grant universities as eligible entities, despite these entities often already having these facilities or the budgetary capacity to pursue them.

FFNSA authorizes the Food Supply Chain Guaranteed Loan Program, a valuable resource for needed investments in aggregation, processing, storage, and distribution (Section 6303). Yet, without defined priorities or target recipients, the program may inevitably lend itself to financing large-scale operations rather than serve as a new capital product for small, scaling, or new local operations. 

Finally, FFNSA includes a standard, bare minimum reauthorization of longstanding rural business development programs, such as the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP), Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA), Rural Business Development Grants, and Rural Cooperative Development Grants. The bill also expands the focus of ATTRA to provide tailored assistance to veterans and improves loan options within RMAP. It falls short by not increasing program funding. 

Title 7 – Research

In the past year, farmers and stakeholders alike experienced significant disruptions in research, education, and extension under USDA, including grant terminations in the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) and the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI); significantly delayed funding for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program; no Request for Applications (RFA) for widely popular USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) competitive grants programs like OREI, BFRDP, 2501, the Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP); and several memorandums from US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins that have significantly impeded agriculture research at colleges and universities nationwide. While farmers, ranchers, and researchers across the country continue to face uncertainty and disruptions at USDA, FFNSA offers no solutions to get American agricultural research back on track. 

The Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP), of critical importance to providing training to small and diversified growers constantly contending with new food safety regulations, receives a reauthorization, though without an increase in authorization level; this flat funding ultimately represents a decrease every passing year due to inflation. 

While FFNSA meets the low bar of reauthorizing popular sustainable and organic research programs like the SARE program and OREI, FFNSA does not include additional funding or improvements for either program. Strong investments in research underpin growth in any sector, as all farmers – sustainable, organic, conventional, or otherwise – rely on cutting-edge research to maintain robust and thriving operations.

It is also concerning that the focus on precision agriculture, digital agriculture, and automation across the research title detracts from much needed investments in farmer-led, scale-appropriate research. As noted above, precision agriculture benefits only a limited number of farmers. 

A few bright spots in the research title include:

• Meaningful investments in 1890 land grant universities. The bill increases the authorization of appropriations for extension at 1890 institutions from 20% to an amount not less than 40% of appropriations for the Smith Lever Act and increases the authorization of appropriations for agricultural research at 1890 institutions from 30% to an amount not less than 40% of appropriations for the Hatch Act of 1887. FFNSA also applies some oversight to state governments regarding their matching funds requirement to 1890 institutions.
• Updated Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) priority areas to include language around regionally adapted cultivars and breeding for environmental resilience.

Ultimately, the research title underwhelms, failing to provide the kinds of research investments that farmers need to build viable businesses that can withstand disruption of all kinds.

Title 9 – Energy 

Agrivoltaic systems, where land is used simultaneously for agriculture and solar energy production, offer an important opportunity to reduce farm energy costs while generating additional on-farm benefits. FFNSA directs USDA to study the effects of solar on farmland, including best practices for shared solar and agricultural production, which could provide key insights for advancing agrivoltaic projects. Sections in this bill, however, also limit USDA funding for solar projects that convert prime farmland with narrow exceptions for smaller acreage and prohibit USDA funding for solar components from foreign countries of concern, similar to Secretary Rollins’ August 2025 memo on changes to the Rural Energy for America Program. At a time of high energy costs, these restrictions, as written, may further limit farmers and ranchers’ ability to access solutions that can protect farmland and work for their operations.

Title 10 – Horticulture

Under an Administration where a number of NSAC priorities have been threatened by program termination or significant changes, the new and improved programs set forth in this title of FFNSA are not insignificant. 

In particular, the bill is responsive to the programmatic needs of stakeholders regarding the Local Agriculture Market Program. The turnkey grant opportunities have been extremely popular since their implementation in 2023; however, they have not been available for popular and unmet needs, such as farmers market manager staff time or special purpose equipment. FFNSA creates permanent turnkey grants and expands the allowed activities, yet falls short of eliminating barriers for participation, such as the match requirements. 

FFNSA takes modest steps in strengthening the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production by directing additional support to producers and tailoring technical assistance for urban production. However, it does not include mandatory funding for the Office, which has been a key NSAC priority in the previous few years, given the challenges of sustaining, let alone increasing, funding for this popular program through the appropriations process. The bill’s most significant support for urban agriculture is directing the Farm Service Agency to permanently implement urban county committees beyond their pilot status from the 2018 farm bill, which ensures USDA services and representation in urban areas.  

The bill directs USDA to examine the ways USDA purchases food for nutrition programs to understand barriers for farmers and businesses selling nontraditional, culturally relevant, or local and regional products directly to USDA, and make administrative, regulatory, and legislative recommendations to address barriers. This level of formal assessment is long overdue and a welcome element to the bill. 

With the early sunsetting of the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP), this bill is inadequate overall for organic agriculture, despite some elements of TOPP being included. Giving the National Organic Program (NOP) the authority to provide technical assistance to support transition with no additional funding for TA will increase the burden on an already underfunded program. Additional funding to provide technical assistance, education, and outreach to certified organic farmers and farmers transitioning to organic certification is critical for the continued growth of organic systems that emphasize soil health.

Title 11 – Crop Insurance

Unfortunately, FFNSA fails to meet the moment with any meaningful reforms that would alleviate bureaucratic red tape and streamline access to crop insurance for the small, diversified, and direct-to-consumer farmers and ranchers who are left behind. It requires an annual review of challenges to access Whole-Farm Revenue Protection, but those barriers and corresponding solutions are already well-documented. The bill amends the eligibility definitions for the additional crop insurance premium discounts passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB, P.L. 119-21), including veteran producers for the additional premium discounts. While this is an important investment for beginning and veteran producers, it will have minimal impact if it is not paired with more foundational reforms to streamline paperwork and address the disincentive that agents experience to sell insurance to small and diversified farms.

FFNSA also directs several research initiatives to explore new insurance products, including limited weather based index policies, but few that would benefit producers currently unable to effectively or affordably insure their operations. While failing to address barriers or reduce the costs of crop insurance for many uninsured operations, the bill provides for increased reimbursement rates for administrative and operating costs for private Approved Insurance Providers (AIPs). 

Title 12 – Miscellaneous 

The Miscellaneous Title includes a wide range of provisions; here, we focus on several pertinent to expanding meat processing resources and capacity.

With the decline of avenues for small and very small plants to offer feedback to the Administration and receive guidance (for example, due to a decision to disband the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI)), the inclusion of statutory requirements for further resources in the form of model Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans and validation studies for these processors is welcome (Section 12112). 

While FFNSA does provide for further outreach to state departments of agriculture regarding the Cooperative Interstate Shipping Program, it does not change the federal cost share for that program or the state meat and poultry inspection programs – both of which are key changes needed for the federal food safety regulations to better work with and regulate small and very small meat processors. It also includes a reporting requirement to Congress (Section 12113) 

FFNSA also opens new, potentially anti-competitive methods of ownership that might directly counteract the benefits of other investments in the bill. For example, including the A-Plus Act (Section 12111) would likely create more vertically integrated markets, where the stockyard is also the only meat processing operation in an area.

The post At a Crossroads, House Farm Bill Falls Unmistakably Short appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Comment: In Moment of Need, House Farm Bill Underdelivers with Empty Promises

Washington, DC, February 14, 2026 – The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) released the following statement attributable to Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director, in response to the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, House Agriculture Committee Republican’s draft farm bill text released yesterday:

“More than seven years since the last farm bill, and in a moment of need for farmers, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act lacks the robust investments and reforms necessary to propel American agriculture forward. The bill takes no meaningful steps toward building a fair, responsible, and accessible farm safety net while needlessly siphoning funding away from popular and effective conservation programs. 

It does, however, create opportunities for important steps forward, particularly for local and regional food systems – by connecting local farmers to nearby communities and expanding meat processing capacity. Unfortunately, these investments lack mandatory funding, severely stunting their potential to improve farmer viability and community health.

Moreover, dozens of critical programs, including those that support beginning farmers and ranchers, organic agriculture, and vital farmer-driven research, are both unimproved and level-funded, representing a roughly twenty percent cut due to seven years of inflation. NSAC will continue its review of legislative text in the days ahead. Farmers deserve a farm bill that delivers a fair farm safety net, builds climate resilience, and invests in strong local supply chains – anything less would fall short of what American agriculture actually needs.”

Stay tuned to NSAC’s blog for deeper analysis and coverage of the farm bill reauthorization, including the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. 

Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Comment: In Moment of Need, House Farm Bill Underdelivers with Empty Promises appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Release: Farmers and Advocates Converge in DC for NSAC Lobby Day 

Washington, DC, February 12, 2026 – Yesterday, nearly 150 farmers, ranchers, and food system advocates from Alaska to Florida, joined the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) in Washington, DC to press for action on federal agriculture and food policy. Participants held more than 150 meetings with members of Congress, congressional staff, and USDA, nearly doubling farmer participation from recent years and underscoring mounting frustration across farm country.

Farmers and ranchers representing a wide range of regions, production types, and farm sizes met with decision-makers to share firsthand accounts of how they’re leveraging federal programs to build thriving farm businesses and feed their communities.  

“We came directly to Capitol Hill to educate lawmakers on issues important to our farm and the farms of our neighbors. We shared personal stories that highlight the impact recent and current investments in conservation and local food systems have made in our community and why continued support for these programs is needed” said Ed Dubrick of DuChick Ranch, LLC and the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, an NSAC member. 

Participants emphasized the need for a farm bill that meets the moment by making long overdue, robust investments in farmers and their communities. They called on Congress and USDA to restore stability to and funding for federal food and agriculture programs that support conservation efforts, local food access, and the economic health of farmers and the communities they call home.

“Storytelling has the power to bridge divides, change minds, and inspire real progress. Today, we saw this power in action as 50+ farmers took precious time away from their farms and families to travel to DC and share how federal food and farm policies have hit home. These farmers aren’t just articulating hardships they’ve faced, they are offering Congress a roadmap for practical solutions and opportunities that would benefit all farms,” said Stef Funk, NSAC Grassroots Co-Director. 

Earlier in the day, a letter signed by 500 farmers and ranchers from across the country, some of whom attend NSAC’s Lobby Day, was delivered to key members of Congress urging immediate action to address the ongoing financial crisis facing America’s farmers and ranchers. The letter outlined the severe challenges facing farmers, including high production costs, volatile markets, low prices, and overproduction, and warns that without meaningful congressional action, more farmers will be forced out of business, putting rural communities at risk.

NSAC has been a leader in agricultural policy for more than 35 years and has been instrumental in helping to develop some of our nation’s most successful agricultural programs for conserving natural resources, advancing the next generation of farmers, supporting agricultural research, and creating sustainable market connections. 

NSAC is grateful to all of the farmers and advocates for taking time out of their busy lives to join Lobby Day, as well as the Senators, Representatives, USDA officials, and staff members.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. 

Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: Farmers and Advocates Converge in DC for NSAC Lobby Day appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Washington, DC, February 11, 2026 – Today, a letter signed by 500 farmers and ranchers from across the country was delivered to key members of Congress urging immediate action to address the ongoing farm crisis.

The letter outlines the severe challenges facing farmers, including high production costs, volatile markets, low prices, and overproduction. Signatories warn that without meaningful congressional action, more farmers will be forced out of business, putting rural communities at risk.

“Farmers want an honest opportunity to build their business while supporting their community. Congress can provide that opportunity by making urgently needed farm assistance investments that build reliable domestic markets and local supply chains for wholesome food, and expanding access to conservation practices that help farmers reduce persistently high input costs. As these investments take root, financial assistance should be designed to stave off foreclosures and reflect a farmers’ expected revenue,” said Mike Lavender, Policy Director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

In the letter, farmers call on Congress to deliver comprehensive farm and ranch assistance that keeps producers on the land, strengthens domestic markets and local supply chains, expands access to conservation practices that reduce costly inputs, and prevents another wave of farm foreclosures. The letter emphasizes that short-term relief alone is insufficient and urges investments that support long-term viability and resilience.

Read the full letter here.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities.

Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: 500 Farmers Urge Congress to Act Amid Growing Farm Crisis appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Tel. 347.563.6408

Comment: Farm Assistance Framework Signals Need and Opportunity to Build More Robust Support 

Washington, DC, January 15, 2026 –  Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) issued the following comment in response to the House Agriculture Committee Minority’s unveiling of a farm assistance framework, attributable to Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director.

“The past year has brought unprecedented uncertainty, pushing countless farmers and ranchers to the brink. The Farm and Family Relief Act gets the urgency of this moment right – robust financial relief is long overdue. NSAC urges Congressional leaders to build on this framework toward an outcome that delivers for farmers and families. This includes making sure any financial assistance is available to all farmers who need it, keeping farmers on the land by providing additional loan support, preventing foreclosures, and offering broad eligibility to actively engaged farmers. Still, this immediate financial relief is not enough to break the cycle: we also need investments that build reliable domestic markets and expand access to conservation practices that help farmers reduce persistently high input costs.”

In November 2025, NSAC published Keeping Farmers on the Land, an in-depth analysis of the current challenges facing farmers and ranchers and the solutions needed to support them in the immediate and long term. NSAC continues to advocate for Congressional farm financial assistance that includes these comprehensive solutions.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. 

Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/

The post Comment: Farm Assistance Framework Signals Need and Opportunity to Build More Robust Support  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Editor’s Note: This post is a guest blog authored by Mia Keady, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Soil & Environmental Sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and is part of our ongoing series on USDA staffing. Her research focuses on soil health, land stewardship, and conservation incentives. She’s passionate about finding solutions to environmental degradation and understanding soil processes in response to land management. Mia grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she was first introduced to the prairie. Her work spans grassland ecology, microbial ecology, and conservation biology. She completed her bachelor’s in biology at Nebraska Wesleyan, master’s in biology at George Mason University, and Ph.D. in Environment and Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

‘Conservation requires management’ was a key takeaway from my undergraduate studies; dispelling naive ideas about letting the land heal itself without stewardship. During my academic journey, I’ve learned how humans are a part of nature and have shaped ecosystems for millennia and that contemporary conservation solutions will likewise require human interventions. The last century and a half of tilling up the once rich prairie has depleted soils and created many environmental problems including declining surface and ground water quality, increased flooding, biodiversity loss, and contributing to climate change.

Recognizing this difficult reality, can we reshape the impact of modern agriculture? Can we steward our agricultural lands to protect and enhance ecosystem services? What can we learn from the prairies to inform our stewardship? What strategies advance perennial agriculture that builds soils, retains nutrients, and provides habitat if managed well?

My research addresses these questions by examining soil change in the once-prominent but now threatened prairies of Southern Wisconsin, the influence of federal conservation funding across the state, and the critical role played by staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and county conservation districts.

In this post, I will discuss the important role that perennial agricultural systems can play in supporting ecosystems and how perennial practices are supported by conservation staff, using Wisconsin as an example. My research shows that the number of NRCS and county conservation staff corresponds to federal conservation dollars spent in counties and that passionate and highly-skilled conservation staff are essential to supporting the adoption of perennial agricultural systems. 

What can agriculture learn from prairies?

Prairies provide key ecosystem benefits like clean ground and surface water, reduced flooding, critical habitat, and soil protection (Zhao et al., 2020). How can we mimic these benefits on farms? Perennial agricultural practices, including managed grazing of pasture, forestry, agroforestry, or grassland restoration, mimic the prairie ecosystem and bring many of these ecosystem services into agricultural systems. Peer-reviewed studies consistently show that perennial agricultural systems build or maintain soil organic matter, reduce nutrient and sediment runoff compared to annual row crops, and provide more resilient agroecosystems under climate stress (Culman et al., 2013; DeHaan et al., 2023; Dietz et al. 2024; Kreitzman et al., 2022; Mosier et al., 2021; Picasso et al. 2022; Soto-Gómez and Pérez-Rodríguez, 2022; Sprunger et al. 2024). Perennial agricultural practices that mimic the prairie ecosystem should be prioritized to maximize the environmental benefits of conservation investments.

Do conservation dollars support ‘prairie-like’ agriculture?

Even though perennial agricultural systems deliver substantial long-term environmental benefits, my research finds that they receive only a small portion of the federal agricultural conservation spending in Wisconsin (Keady, 2025). 

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers voluntary, cost-share conservation programs to support farmers implementing conservation and nudge land management towards improved ecosystem services. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), administered by the NRCS, is the largest such federal conservation program in terms of total spending. To participate in EQIP, farmers and land managers work directly with NRCS staff and technical service providers to plan, apply for, and implement a range of approved conservation measures on private lands. In my research, I assessed EQIP spending from fiscal years 2014 through 2024 across Wisconsin to ask: Where do federal conservation dollars flow in Wisconsin and what influences where they go? In particular, I examined how much EQIP spending went to perennial agricultural conservation practices.

In Wisconsin, an average $29.7 million per year in EQIP support flowed to farmers in the 11-year period, with ~20% supporting agriculture that ‘acts like a prairie’ (that is, perennial practices including managed grazing of pasture, forestry, agroforestry, and habitat restoration), while ~60% supported interventions within annual row crop and livestock confinement systems such as cover crops and waste storage facilities (see full report here). The remaining 20% was used for multi-system practices such as heavy use areas, or practices that didn’t fall within these categories including dams and streambank protection. These results beg the question: is this the ‘best’ distribution of these dollars? Should we support interventions into systems well-known for environmental degradation to make them a bit less degrading, or should we invest in practices that help transform farms to perennial agriculture that ‘acts like a prairie’? 

The Important Role of Conservation Staff

 My research explored what county level factors shaped where EQIP dollars flowed. The strongest predictor of where EQIP dollars were spent was the number of conservation staff in a county, both federal and county employees (Figure 1) (Keady 2025). Local and federal conservation staff are critical to helping farmers access support for conservation practices. County conservationists in Wisconsin are members of Wisconsin Land and Water, also referred to as conservation district staff. Federal conservationists are NRCS field staff located within counties. Conservation staff work with farmers to find on-farm solutions and help navigate the application process (with grueling paperwork).Yet, NRCS staff has declined by over 30% over the past two decades, even before the devastating job cuts of 2025. In a time of intense environmental degradation, society desperately needs to support agricultural transitions to perennial systems that maintain soil carbon, produce food, and protect critical ecosystem services. Supporting well-trained and inspired conservation staff is critical to this equation.

Figure 1. NRCS staff (A) and county conservation district staff (B) correlate with the amount of conservation EQIP spending in Wisconsin counties. 

How do we transform agroecosystems? Passionate and Skilled Conservation Staff

Transitioning to perennial agroecosystems takes more than increasing conservation staff numbers, it also takes passion. Sauk County conservationist, Serge Koenig spent 30 years working with landowners, and the last 10 years inspiring and supporting transitions to managed rotational grazing. Serge sees grazing as the “most bang for your buck” – a financially viable farming option that provides solutions to environmental issues rather than interventions that slow the problem. His message has been convincing: Sauk County receives the most EQIP dollars in Wisconsin for grazing-related practices (Keady 2025). Serge credits this success to a combination of interpersonal skills, supervisory support, and most importantly – wanting to be the change. The interpersonal skills come naturally to Serge, but he’s adamant these are skills technicians can and should learn. Working with farmers requires “trust, sincere curiosity, and knowing when to listen, when to comment, and when to make suggestions,” he says. Supervisory support that encourages conservation staff to lean-in to their passion and expertise when working with farmers is key. Finally, conservationists want and need access to specialized training in grassland restoration, agroforestry, forestry, silvopasture, and grazing management. The heart of moving the needle towards perennial conservation comes from recognizing the ecological value of a perennial system and making it a priority to advocate for stewardship that makes our world a better place for farmers and society as a whole. 

Perennial systems such as well-managed rotational grazing, forestry, and agroforestry can mimic the prairie in protecting and enhancing ecosystem services. Perennial plants protect soil, clean water, and provide habitat – and should be a key tool for conservation programs, including NRCS’s EQIP. Conservation staff are critical to working with landowners and getting conservation on the ground. We desperately need to support their passion and ability to advance land-management and provide benefits to both the farmer, land, and society at large. 

The post Guest Post: Thinking like a prairie – strategies for perennial conservation appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

This is the final post in the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)’s series documenting the ongoing staffing crisis across the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The scale and pace of staffing losses across the USDA, combined with the uncertainty introduced by a sweeping USDA reorganization plan, have weakened the Department at the very moment farmers face rising production costs, unstable markets, and climate-driven disasters. As the series comes to an end, the data show a workforce under extreme strain and an urgent need for renewed investment in the staff that make the People’s Department function.

 A Year Defined by Unprecedented Staffing Losses

Beginning in January 2025, USDA experienced historic staff losses. Nearly 3,000 employees separated from the agency in the first quarter alone, according to the Office of Personnel Management. These early losses included both career staff, many with 20 years or more of institutional knowledge, and recent hires who had not yet completed their first year of service. 

The truly unprecedented staff losses followed soon after, with roughly 15,173 USDA employees who accepted Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) buyouts. 94% of the USDA staff who left via the DRP were located outside of the Washington, DC area. All of the staff who accepted the DRP officially separated from the agency on September 30, 2025. 

Figure 1: Location of USDA Staff Who Left Via DRP

The consequences of these losses were immediate.

• Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), already struggling to meet rising farmer demand, lost planners, conservationists, and program technicians whose expertise cannot be easily replaced. Promising conservationists like Gretchen Troutman and Josh Hardin are no longer there to help farmers design conservation plans and get funding to protect and enhance the resources that ensure their farm’s viability.

• Farm Service Agency (FSA) lost staff responsible for administering farm loans, disaster assistance, and commodity programs—programs that require precise and timely processing to keep farms solvent. FSA offices like the Oklahoma office where Kevin Dale used to work have had their staff cut in half or are fully vacant, even as work demands increase with the need to allocate 30 million new base acres and administer an additional $12 billion in farm financial assistance. 
• Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) lost experienced inspectors, veterinarians, and scientists, threatening on-the-ground food safety capacity.
• Rural Development offices lost staff with an average of 13.5 years of service, with losses concentrated among both the most junior and most experienced employees, leaving gaps in both institutional memory and the future of the agency. These Rural Development staff administer programs like the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) to help grow rural economies.
• The research agencies Economic Research Service (ERS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) lost economists and scientists whose research supports federal decision-making, weakening USDA’s capacity to produce market forecasts, evaluate rural well-being, and administer competitive research grants.

Taken together, the federal workforce responsible for serving farmers and supporting rural communities shrank dramatically in a matter of months.

 A Reorganization Plan That Accelerates Risk

In July 2025, USDA announced a major reorganization plan, drafted without public input, that would relocate thousands of jobs, consolidate field offices, and restructure core program functions. Early details suggest the relocation of up to 2,600 headquarters and regional staff, along with the consolidation or closure of field offices across NRCS, FSA, Rural Development (RD), and other agencies. US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has publicly stated that she expects up to half of the staff to leave the department rather than relocate.

For agencies already operating with gutted staff and the loss of institutional knowledge, this reorganization introduces additional uncertainty. Staff have been given limited details about timelines, office closures, reassignments, or new reporting structures. Farmers and stakeholders have been offered no clarity on how service delivery might be affected. During their adhoc public comment period on the reorganization, the USDA received nearly 47,000 emails. Their own analysis concludes that 82% of the responses expressed negative sentiment and concerns. 

The risks of USDA reorganization are clear. The deepest staffing losses occurred in agencies already stretched thin and struggling to meet farmer demand, leaving many USDA programs operating with minimal capacity at a time when farmers are facing a worsening financial crisis. Farmers rely on these agencies for conservation planning, loan processing, and disaster assistance. Any reorganization risks amplifying service gaps precisely when farmers need USDA support the most.

 The Shutdown and Reopening

When the government shut down on October 1, 2025, the incredible importance of USDA staff and services became even more evident. Outreach events were canceled, conservation planning stalled, and loan processing halted.

Farmers like Lindsay, from Tourvaille Farm in Ohio, could not get their conservation contracts paid on time because staff were furloughed. Others like Celeste, a farmer from Washington, didn’t receive their much-needed farm loans and safety net payments. These and the hundreds of other stories of American farmers and rural communities unable to access the resources and services they depend upon made visible the often-overlooked importance of USDA staff. 

The bill to reopen the government – passed on November 13, 2025 – included several provisions that shape the future of USDA staffing and services:

• First, the bill provided full-year funding for USDA, ensuring that USDA staff will not be furloughed for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year.
• Second, Congress inserted new oversight requirements that could limit USDA’s ability to move forward with large-scale reorganizations, relocations, or office closures. This represents one of the first meaningful checks on the reorganization since its announcement.
• Third, the legislation stabilized funding for research and scientific programs. These investments protect programs critical for research and economic forecasting, areas where staff was already thinned due to the 2025 staff losses.

However, the shutdown bill did not reverse the staffing losses the USDA has already endured. It did not pause the reorganization, only slowed it and perhaps established some guardrails. And it did not provide any emergency hiring authorities or explicitly additional staffing budgets that agencies desperately need to rebuild.

Charting a Path Forward for Federal Agricultural Capacity

The USDA staffing crisis of 2025 makes clear that the department’s capacity has been compromised at a moment when robust federal support for farmers is most essential. If these staff losses are not addressed, access to USDA services will become more uneven and core missions of the USDA, from conservation to farm resilience, food safety, and rural development, will suffer.

NSAC urges the Administration and Congress to rebuild staffing across all USDA mission areas and pause the reorganization until a transparent and iterative process is laid out to meaningfully integrate stakeholder input. USDA must prioritize immediate hiring in NRCS, FSA, RD, and other agencies suffering acute shortages. No USDA reorganization and structural change should proceed until USDA conducts a transparent impact assessment, engages meaningfully with farmers and frontline staff, and demonstrates that proposed changes will strengthen, not weaken, service delivery.

The past year has shown how deeply USDA’s ability to serve the public depends on a strong and stable workforce.

The post USDA Staffing Crisis: A Year of Losses and the Road Ahead appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

A Year Like No Other

As 2025 comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting on a year that reshaped the food and farm policy landscape: from major disruptions in federal agencies to stalled policymaking in Washington, farmers and communities continue to feel the impacts. The historic government shutdown this fall was just the most recent situation to put our food and farm system under strain. Stable federal programs are critical for farmers and families across the country, and funding delays and terminations, shifting agency decisions, and the loss of experienced staff at USDA have created hardship for millions, especially those who already faced systemic barriers to accessing USDA programs and services. 

At NSAC we are always guided by our members and the federal policy priorities we set together – this year those included strengthening the farm safety net, advancing climate resilience in food and agriculture, and building strong local and regional food systems that benefit farmers and families.  We moved quickly and creatively to introduce bills in Congress designed to carry reforms and investments forward, we supported farmers and nonprofits navigating agency funding disruptions and terminations with guidance and peer support, and we organized our coalition to speak out in hundreds of channels nationwide – from social media to radio to local and national news – to elevate farmers’ and families’ stories about what was happening on the ground. This blog post reflects on that work, the progress made, the setbacks we faced, and the resolve that carried our coalition through a year marked by both instability and extraordinary collaboration.  

Building Better Policies in Washington for the Farm Bill and Beyond 

Congress failed to pass a full five-year farm bill again this year – leaving everyone who relies on this critical major legislation stuck for another year without an opportunity for real policy reforms or investments. NSAC and nearly 600 national, state, and local organizations delivered a joint letter to Senate and House leadership, as well as Agriculture Committee chairs and ranking members, urging Congress to advance not only an overdue farm bill but one that truly supports family farmers, strengthens rural communities, expands healthy food access, and more. The letter also called on Congress to correct harmful provisions enacted through the recently passed budget reconciliation bill.  

We still saw some legislative wins this year:  we helped draft, refine, and introduce nearly a dozen “marker bills” this year that together will build better farm and food policy in a future farm bill.  

Farm Safety Net

• Save Our Small (SOS) Farms Act – modernizes federal farm safety net programs to make crop insurance and disaster assistance more accessible for small, specialty, and beginning farmers, helping them stay on the land despite economic and climate challenges.
• Crop Insurance for Future Farmers Act – makes crop insurance more affordable and accessible for new and veteran farmers by increasing the premium‑subsidy support and extending the time they’re eligible. 
• Farm Ownership Improvement Act – establishes a five‑year pilot program allowing farmers and ranchers to get pre‑qualified or pre‑approved for direct farm‑ownership loans to make it easier for new and beginning farmers to secure land. 
• Capital for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Act – creates a multi-year FSA loan pilot to help new farmers access flexible capital for startup costs, infrastructure, and management systems, addressing high barriers to entry and supporting the next generation of farmers.
• Withstanding Extreme Agricultural Threats by Harvesting Economic Resilience (WEATHER) Act of 2025 – modifies the federal crop-insurance program to create a new type of coverage that pays farmers quickly and automatically when severe weather hits their area, giving them a simpler and more reliable safety net as extreme weather and natural disasters become more common.

Local and Regional Food Systems 

• Strengthening Local Food Security (SLFS) Act of 2025 – helps small and mid-sized farmers sell more locally grown foods to schools and community programs, boosting farmer income while giving families better access to healthy food.
• Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act – helps small and mid-sized farmers sell more local food through state and tribal programs, creating stable markets for producers while improving access to fresh, nutritious food for families in need.
• Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) – standing challenges in the livestock and poultry supply chain. It advances a more resilient, competitive, and regionally rooted meat processing sector by updating the Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) program, increasing size eligibility, improving state cost shares, and requiring FSIS outreach. Together, these reforms would enable small and mid-sized processors to expand sales across state lines and strengthen regional food systems.

Climate Resilience

• Agriculture Resilience Act – would adapt the farm bill to today’s realities by investing comprehensively across  conservation, research, renewable energy, and rural development to help producers build resilience, boost profitability, and achieve net-zero agricultural emissions by 2040.
• Strong Farms, Strong Futures Act – strengthens the Conservation Stewardship Program by creating region-specific climate mitigation practice bundles and higher cost-share incentives, giving producers more options and greater support to build complex and resilient conservation systems.
• Support the WEST Act – strengthens key USDA conservation programs by boosting cost-share for water-saving and drought-resilient practices, expanding support for perennial systems, and enhancing soil-health outreach and testing to better serve producers in Western arid regions.
• Organic Science and Research Investment (OSRI) Act – strengthens USDA’s organic research and data programs by boosting funding, coordination, and support for organic and transitioning farmers so that innovations in soil health, climate resilience, and sustainable production can benefit all producers and bolster rural economies.
• Innovative Practices for Soil Health Act – strengthens USDA conservation programs to better support farmers adopting perennial and agroforestry systems, enhancing technical assistance, research capacity, and incentives to improve soil health, resilience, and long-term sustainability across US agriculture.
• Converting Our Waste Sustainably (COWS) Act of 2025 – offers incentives for livestock and dairy farms to manage manure sustainably by funding practices and composting methods that cut greenhouse‑gas emissions and improve soil and water quality. 

The government shutdown resolution package passed in November included a one-year extension of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 – the farm bill. This extension is largely “clean” – meaning without major changes to the 2018 bill – but it does have one problematic change that NSAC is fighting to remove in future bills: the bill removes key payment limits and income eligibility rules for EQIP and CSP, effectively enabling the largest operations to access unlimited conservation funding, shifting conservation resources away from smaller and mid-sized producers, and exacerbating existing trends where demand far exceeds available resources, shutting out access to these popular programs. 

Protecting Federal Investments in Sustainable, Equitable Policy

This year’s federal budget process, shaped by a major reconciliation package and competing House and Senate spending proposals, set in motion decisions that will influence conservation, farm viability, and community resilience for years to come.

The spring and early summer centered on the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBB), a major reconciliation package that folded remaining Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) conservation dollars into the permanent farm bill baseline, securing long-term funding but removing the climate guardrails that ensured those dollars supported climate friendly practices. OBBB shifted significant resources away from nutrition assistance programs and toward commodity programs, putting vulnerable communities at risk while abandoning programs that support the vast majority of farmers and rural communities. Overall OBBB represented a mixed outcome: a long-term win for conservation funding, but a failure to invest in long-term solutions that promote markets and invest in production systems that build all farmers’ autonomy and self-determination.

Appropriations debates intensified through the summer. The House advanced a $25.5 billion FY26 agriculture bill along party lines with major cuts to conservation, research, and local food systems programs, along with several harmful policy riders. The Senate, in contrast, passed a bipartisan $27 billion bill that largely preserved funding for core farmer- and community-serving programs. With no agreement in place by September 30, the government entered the shutdown that lasted from October 1 to November 12.

The FY2026 agriculture appropriations bill included in the shutdown resolution reflected continued funding cuts to several important USDA programs. While some programs maintained their current funding levels, others saw reductions, limiting USDA’s capacity to provide technical assistance, support innovative production, and strengthen local and regional food systems at a time when farmers need those services most.

Pressing USDA to Better Serve Farmers

With the start of the new Trump Administration came major shifts in USDA leadership and direction. Throughout the year, NSAC challenged the agency’s harmful program terminations, staffing cuts, and policy reversals, while lifting up farmer stories and working to advance our coalition’s priorities wherever possible. NSAC and partners worked extensively to secure funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 for critical conservation and rural energy programs this year. Delays and cancellations in payments by the Trump Administration left tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers without funds that were already contractually committed by the federal government. Despite over $2.3 billion in signed contracts nationwide, these interruptions forced farmers to cover project costs out of pocket, threatening farm viability and undermining trust in federal programs. Across all of our campaign priorities, our coalition worked to ensure USDA hears from the producers most affected by its decisions and remains accountable to the communities it is meant to serve.

Proposed USDA reorganization: In July, USDA announced a reorganization proposal with little detail and no meaningful input from farmers. NSAC submitted extensive comments outlining how the plan could destabilize critical functions, from agricultural research to conservation programs to components of the farm safety net. We also mobilized farmers, advocates, and partner organizations to weigh in, despite USDA’s failure to follow the standard Federal Register comment process for a proposal of this scale.

USDA staffing crisis: This year revealed the depth of USDA’s ongoing staffing crisis. Through our multi-part blog series, we highlighted how the loss of more than 18,000 staff positions, and additional reductions expected under proposed restructuring, has already weakened the agency’s ability to deliver conservation assistance, research, technical support, and other essential services. By documenting impacts across key agency mission areas, especially at NRCS, we helped policymakers and the public understand the stakes and the urgent need for a transparent, farmer-informed process to rebuild USDA’s capacity. 

With these agency-wide challenges in view, our campaigns worked on multiple fronts to hold USDA accountable and push to safeguard the programs farmers rely on.

Farm Safety Net 

• NSAC recently published a major analysis of the current farm crisis, highlighting rising production costs, collapsing crop prices, and unprecedented instability in federal programs. NSAC has continued to press USDA to take immediate action to restore program stability, provide revenue-based relief and loan protections, and strengthen the farm safety net so that farmers can weather this crisis and stay on their land.
• In early December, USDA announced the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program to address the economic impacts of tariffs and provide needed economic relief. NSAC, in partnership with the National Young Farmers Coalition, provided a swift analysis of the announcement and the limited program details that were released. NSAC highlighted the importance of FBA as a first step in providing economic assistance to farmers, but underscored the need for additional action to repair and expand the safety net to support all farmers. 
• 2025 marked ten years since the first Whole Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) crop insurance policies became available for producers. Since the introduction of this new risk management option in the 2014 Farm Bill, NSAC continues to advocate for improvements via legislation and regulatory changes at USDA that would make the product more accessible and functional for a broader set of producers. 
• USDA has continued to distribute disaster relief funding through the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP) throughout this past year. Prior to the announcement of SDRP Stage 2 in late November, which specifically provides assistance for non-insured crop producers, NSAC provided guidance to Farm Service Agency (FSA) leadership on how to ensure accessibility to program funds for those producers. These recommendations included streamlined and reduced paperwork, clearer instructions in USDA documentation, and exemptions to the requirement for crop insurance enrollment among others. NSAC continues to provide support to our members as Stage 2 of SDRP applications remain open through April of 2026. 

Local and Regional Food Systems

• Early in the year, USDA abruptly paused and then later terminated the Local Food Purchase Agreement (LFPA) program, a nationally popular program with bipartisan support that helped farmers grow and sell produce into local schools, hospitals, and institutions. NSAC swung into action in partnership with  National Farmers Union to deliver a letter with more than 1,000 signatures urging the program’s reinstatement. We helped over 100 farmers share their stories about why this program matters for their communities and businesses in press stories nationwide and raised the alarm on Capitol Hill, hosting briefings and meetings led by affected farmers, which led to bipartisan support for legislative solutions for the future of this program. 
• This year, NSAC focused on deepening stakeholder engagement around the FDA Food Traceability Rule, working closely with the Reagan-Udall Foundation to explore new possibilities for future food safety improvements and gather industry insights to inform more practical, effective implementation.
• In October, USDA’s Beef Strategy Report offered modest wins for small and very small processors, such as reduced fees for overtime and holiday inspections. But limited funding in the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program underscored the need for continued advocacy to ensure these processors can access the resources they need.

Climate Resilience 

• At USDA, shifting priorities in the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) and the Rural Development Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loan programs created uncertainty for farmers seeking to adopt renewable energy. An August memo from USDA deprioritizing larger ground-mounted solar projects and raising questions about whether grants can be used to purchase solar technologies manufactured outside of the US, left producers with few clear answers, even as NSAC pressed USDA for needed guidance.
• NSAC opposed EPA’s proposal to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding, as removing the scientific and legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases undermines climate protections. The proposal leaned on a discredited draft claiming climate change is “neutral or beneficial” for most agriculture, contradicting decades of research and farmers’ experience on the ground.
• In September, NSAC worked for weeks both behind the scenes and in the press to persuade USDA to open its SARE funding pool, which helps farmers and researchers address sustainability and profitability concerns on farms. We helped coordinate a letter with more than 500 farmer signatories urging USDA to ensure the timely release of SARE funding. While we succeeded in seeing the RFA released, the delay until September 11 left host institutions little time to secure awards before the fiscal year ended, jeopardizing farmers’ access to regionally specific research. 

Stronger Together

One of NSAC’s longtime coalition sayings reminds us that “No one knows everything. Together we know a lot.” Our coalition is at its strongest when we lean into our shared values and practice relationship-centered, collaborative advocacy. This felt especially true in a year as complex as 2025.

In February, nearly 100 member organizations and more than 30 farmers from 17 states gathered in Washington, DC for our winter meeting and lobby day, one of our largest to date. Meetings were held with roughly 150 lawmakers to share farmer stories and underscore the critical importance of federal agriculture programs. Despite funding freezes and political chaos, our coalition’s collective voice made it clear that Congress must ensure USDA fulfills its commitments.  In August, NSAC coalition members from across the country attended our summer meeting in Stowe, Vermont, to ground ourselves in shared strategy – and of course visit amazing local farms and eat lots of maple creemees.

After many years of planning, NSAC completed a new 5-year strategic plan and has begun a new 2-year policy priority-setting process to be ready for 2026-2028 and beyond. Earlier this year, NSAC also developed an interactive time of our coalition’s history.

Looking Ahead to 2026

2025 presented steep challenges, requiring us to defend decades of hard-won progress while continuing to push forward. This year reinforced the importance of being resourceful and creative in a rapidly changing policy landscape – and we’ll keep it up next year too. Farmers, ranchers, and families nationwide all deserve a food and farm system that nourishes people, stewards our environment, and builds strong economies: we believe this is a future everyone can help create. Here’s a preview of what’s to come from us in 2026:  

• We will continue to campaign around the priorities our members and their thousands of farmer and community leaders bring to our shared table: reforming the farm safety net, bolstering resilient local and regional food systems, and fostering climate change resilience. We’ll bring these priorities to appropriations, to a potential new farm bill, to USDA, and everywhere in between here in DC. 
• We’ll gather in person together with our members and farmer leaders as always: in DC this winter and out in the field in August. This time together helps us build our strategies and strengthen our relationships as we learn from one another and advocate together. 
• Our analysis – always free and available to the public here on our blog – will continue. We will continue to highlight what’s happening in DC, what it means for farmers and eaters, and lift up ways for all of us to be heard on the issues that matter for food and farms. 

Throughout 2026, we will continue mobilizing grassroots action, delivering timely analysis, and supporting our members and partners as we build momentum for a sustainable, resilient, and equitable farm and food future. 

The post Chaos, Collaboration, and Courage: A Look Back at 2025 appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.