We asked Precious Tshabalala and Omanjana Goswami, co-authors of the new UCS report Less Fertilizer, Better Outcomes, about the factors at play and one solution that would bring farmers some relief while protecting public health and the environment.

Q: Despite farmers’ support for President Trump, his administration (both now and in his first term) has pursued policies such as trade wars and targeting immigrant workers that have harmed farmers. The administration has responded by giving farmers a handout. This approach doesn’t make a lot of sense—what do you think is behind it?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: Tariffs have often been used as leverage in trade negotiations and to reduce trade deficits, but in this case, farmers end up being collateral damage in the process. Since they’re key constituencies politically, the administration gives them bailouts to keep them from escaping bankruptcy. The farmer aid packages helped during the president’s first term, but now, with an estimated bumper corn harvest and significant market losses through tariffs and cuts to foreign aid, many farmers are at risk of a crisis. Only half of farms will turn a profit this year, farmer bankruptcies have doubled, and the United States is experiencing a historic agriculture trade deficit. The new $12 billion aid package will not be sufficient to offset these losses.

Q: The Trump administration’s tariffs seem to hurt farmers in two ways: by lowering the price of their products while driving up the costs of inputs such as fertilizer and equipment. Is this a fair assessment?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: Yes. Tariffs led to retaliatory tariffs and trade measures from other countries, then drove down the price of commodity crops. China, for example, which is a major US export market, imposed tariffs on agricultural products and suspended soybean imports from the United States, seeking alternative sources such as Brazil. Reduced export demand means there is excess supply in the US market and, in turn, prices plummet.

While commodity prices fell, tariffs have simultaneously increased the cost of agricultural inputs. For example, between 25% and 30% of nitrogen fertilizer is imported into the United States, and almost all phosphorus and potassium is imported. Consequently, input costs have increased well above commodity prices, and farmers are operating at a loss even after receiving support from USDA subsidy programs.

Q: The rising cost of one type of input in particular—fertilizer—brings us to your recent analysis that shows farmers are applying much more fertilizer than they need to. Can you elaborate?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Fertilizer overuse is a pervasive problem in today’s agricultural systems, especially on farms that engage in monoculture of commodity crops like corn and soybean. Our report highlights that in 2022, 78% of all cropland in the country—roughly 236 million acres—received synthetic fertilizer input of some kind. Plants cannot use all of that fertilizer, so it remains behind in the soil, leading to environmental damage through runoff, soil degradation, and breakdown into heat-trapping gases that directly contribute to climate change.

In our analysis we highlight that recent peer-reviewed scientific publications show as much as 50% of fertilizer is applied in excess. Agriculture often isn’t associated as a direct source of pollution; our brains automatically think of pristine green and rolling fields when we imagine farms. But despite that beautiful picture, agriculture is actually a major source of pollution in the United States, and overuse of synthetic fertilizer is creating a multi-pronged pollution crisis. It’s not that farmers want to pollute and cause environmental damage—they see themselves as stewards of their land. But farmers are caught in a system that is hard to escape, locking them into cropping patterns that demand more fertilizer.

Q: But don’t farmers know what’s best for their operations? Are they being misinformed?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Farmers overapply fertilizer as an insurance policy to make sure their crops have enough nutrients when needed. Today’s agricultural systems and markets are set up in a way to maximize yield, which puts pressure on farmers to apply more fertilizer. There are no penalties that come with fertilizer overapplication—besides of course the higher costs.

Farm consolidation is also responsible for the overapplication problem. Fertilizer manufacturers and agribusiness corporations aggressively lobby to influence agriculture policy, and their profits rise when producers are dependent on high application rates. Most fertilizer application recommendations for the Midwest come from retailers who sell fertilizer and who stand to profit the most, not from independent institutions that have no conflict of interest.

Q: Fertilizer overuse obviously wastes money that farmers can’t afford to lose given their extremely tight profit margins, but how else does it hurt farming operations?

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: With heavy use of fertilizer, the soil’s ability to store water and replenish nutrients is depleted, keeping farmers in a vicious cycle of fertilizer overapplication.

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Soil that can’t hold water loses its sponge-like quality and becomes hard and cement-like. This is why once farmers hop onto the fertilizer treadmill it is almost impossible to hop off; they need to supply nutrients from synthetic sources that soils have lost the ability to store naturally.

Q: And besides the impact on farmers, what are the other consequences of fertilizer overuse?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Nitrogen runoff from excessive fertilizer use wreaks havoc on the environment. When washed into lakes and streams, this runoff helps algae multiply very quickly and create massive algal blooms that consume dissolved oxygen in the water, creating low- to no-oxygen areas in aquatic ecosystems called “dead zones,” where nothing can survive. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that appears every summer and spans thousands of square miles has been directly attributed to fertilizer runoff from midwestern farms that is carried down the Mississippi River. It is perhaps the best example of how far-ranging the impact of nitrogen pollution can be.

Nitrates from fertilizer runoff also pollute groundwater sources and often end up contaminating drinking water supplies, threatening communities and affecting human health.

Fertilizer overuse is also a major contributor to the climate crisis. Unused fertilizer is transformed by soil bacteria into nitrous oxide and released into the atmosphere, where it is 273 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in capturing heat. In the United States, fertilizer mismanagement on agricultural soils is the largest unmitigated source of nitrous oxide, responsible for about 75% of the total emissions.

PRECIOUS TSHABALALA: The cost of fertilizer overuse is not only environmental but economic too. Taxpayers are on the hook for pollution cleanup costs and public health expenditures. Additionally, the tourism industry loses approximately $1 billion in income due to water bodies being contaminated by nutrient pollution and algal blooms, and the total annual impact of nitrogen pollution on health care, water treatment, and recreational opportunities is estimated to be a staggering $157 billion. These costs are not sustainable in the long run, and action should be taken immediately.

Q: What is likely to change farmers’ behavior?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: Farmers need robust policy instruments to ensure they have the right financial and technical incentives to adopt and implement practices that improve fertilizer application and management. Several conservation-focused practices, such as no-till, cover crops, buffer strips, wetlands restoration, and managed grazing have been shown to reduce fertilizer use, improve soil resilience, keep nutrients in place, and build long-term soil health.

Voluntary USDA conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) provide farmers with financial and technical assistance to implement these practices. CSP and EQIP are backed by decades of scientific evidence and farmer experience, and they are pretty popular among farmers, but they are chronically underfunded and oversubscribed, so only about one-third of eligible applications are approved.

Q: You recommend that this funding be incorporated into the new food and farm bill, but we have been waiting almost three years for Congress to pass it. What is holding it up and how likely are we to see the situation change this year?

OMANJANA GOSWAMI: The food and farm bill has been extended three times in the last few years, so essentially we are still operating under the framework of the 2018 bill. Party-line disagreements on critical provisions have prevented a new bill from being passed. Several versions of the bill have been introduced in prior years, but lack of bipartisan support did not allow full consideration of the bill in both chambers of Congress. A new draft of the bill was introduced by the House Agriculture Committee in February, and it passed out of committee last month.

Since 2022, UCS has been advocating for a transformational food and farm bill that creates a fair and equitable food and farming system for all. This would include an expansion of voluntary conservation programs that allows more farmers to adopt practices that retain farm productivity while preserving air and water quality and soil health.

We are yet to see whether these provisions can be negotiated into the current version of the bill, whether the bill can be signed into law with bipartisan support, or whether it will fall on its face and we’ll get another extension instead.

Among its many components, conservation policy has become one of the most important pillars of the farm bill since its inception. Farmers and ranchers are not only producers of food and fiber, but are also stewards of the nation’s soil, water, land, and natural resources. Conservation programs have become central tools for supporting both environmental management and farm viability—especially as unpredictable and extreme weather patterns intensify, land degradation increases, and rural communities face mounting economic challenges.

Yet farm conservation policy did not emerge overnight. It was shaped through decades of economic crises, environmental disasters, and political compromise. It is essential to understand where conservation policy came from, and its farm bill evolution, to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the current iteration that recently passed out of the House Agriculture Committee and now sits before Congress.

A brief history of conservation policy

In 1933, during the height of the Great Depression when the unemployment rate was at 25 percent, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed, and Congress passed, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which would pay farmers subsidies to not overplant. Subsequently, in 1935, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act to mitigate the environmental degradation that led to the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl.

However, the Supreme Court found a new tax on processors that would pay for the subsidies in the AAA to be unconstitutional. In response, Congress passed a new law, the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, that combined agricultural production management with soil conservation by providing direct payments to farmers who would reduce their planting of crops that were depleting the soil of its vital nutrients.

Throughout the next 20 years, conservation priorities were sidelined, first to increase production to meet the needs of World War II. Then, even though conservation programs were created as a part of the Agricultural Act of 1956, the USDA once again emphasized increased production to meet alleged demand. Such expanded production led to the 1980s farm crisis but brought a renewed spotlight on conservation policies.

Subsequently, the 1985 farm bill not only included new programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program but also established conservation compliance standards under new provisions known as Swampbuster and Sodsaver that addressed draining wetlands and the plowing of native sod, respectively. This farm bill was the first to include a dedicated section specifically for conservation purposes. The most notable programs today are the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which help incentivize farmers to adopt conservation practices by underwriting some of their up-front costs, but both are oversubscribed and underfunded.

Despite decades of conservation policy, many of the same challenges persist: Soil erosion continues to degrade farmland and contribute to dangerous dust storms at nearly twice the intensity of the peak Dust Bowl era, agricultural runoff fuels the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone, and excess fertilizer contaminates drinking water and contributes to the climate crisis.

What’s in the proposed farm bill?

In February, the House Agriculture Committee passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (FFNSA) with a 34-17 vote. The proposed legislation does provide needed updates and policy changes, but sadly, it fails to make the changes needed to address the crisis farmers—and the food supply chain—have felt over the past eight years since the last farm bill was passed in 2018.

The Good: The FFNSA provides many environmentally beneficial provisions that would expand and prioritize nutrient management and soil health in agricultural research, and it includes practices related to soil health, heat-trapping emissions, and carbon sequestration. Specifically, the FFNSA would also allow states to select 10 priority practices that would be reimbursed up to 90%, but only if each practice “increases carbon sequestration or reduces greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions of methane and nitrous oxide.”

The Bad: Precision agriculture—the use of technology such as GPS, sensors, and drones to tailor how fertilizers and other inputs are applied on farms—can be effective at addressing conservation through innovation that makes farms more efficient. The FFNSA allows increased payments for up to 90% of the costs of adopting precision agriculture practices and acquiring the technology. At face value, this addition has positive environmental benefits such as increased profits and reduced application of crop inputs like fertilizer, herbicide, fuel, and water. However, it presents various barriers to conservation programs.

While large farms benefit from economies of scale, with savings on fuel, labor, and inputs, small farms can experience higher per-acre costs for precision technology. Innovations in seeds and precision agriculture have improved efficiency and yields, but they have also contributed to rising production costs and structural pressures that can favor larger-scale operations over smaller and midsize farms.

The costs of precision agriculture would likely increase demand for EQIP and CSP. These programs have thousands of farmers willing to adopt conservation practices but are turned away each year due to insufficient funding. If Congress decides to keep precision agriculture in the farm bill, it needs to ensure there is targeted support for small-scale, socially disadvantaged, and limited-resource farmers. Mandatory funding must be increased to provide these farmers with reliable profitability, and the funding must not be at the discretion of appropriators.

The Ugly: The FFNSA claims that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the federal government should have the sole authority to create uniformity in EPA-approved pesticides labeling using their rigorous, science-based review process. However, this would take away state governments’ authority to regulate additional pesticides that the federal government has not yet regulated or is not willing to regulate, even if the pesticides contain carcinogens.

The implications of this provision extend far beyond labeling. For decades, states have often stepped in when federal regulation lagged behind emerging science or public health concerns. Preempting state authority could limit the ability of states to respond to new research on pesticide exposure, environmental contamination, and farmworker safety.

Envisioning a better farm bill

Beyond the good, bad, and ugly, the broader concern with this farm bill iteration is that it largely preserves the status quo. Farmers across the country have experienced a multitude of disruptions since the last farm bill was passed, including supply chain breakdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, increased input costs, extreme weather and natural disasters, consolidation in private land ownership, and increased food prices and hunger resulting from geopolitical conflicts. Yet the FFNSA does little to fundamentally restructure the policy framework that shapes how federal resources reach farmers and communities.

At a moment when many producers—especially beginning farmers, small and midsize limited-resource producers, and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers—are struggling to remain viable, the farm bill should be an opportunity to rethink how federal programs support regeneration and resilience. Though the proposed legislation includes marker bills that would strengthen local and regional food systems and continues authorization of many programs, the funding streams for these programs are not mandatory, putting their authorizations at the whim of the appropriations committee. It also completely fails to include any support for, or even the recognition of, food and farm workers.

The next farm bill must recognize that conservation and economic viability are not competing goals but are mutually beneficial. Healthy soils improve productivity, reduce input costs, increase water retention, and help farmers withstand droughts and floods. Policies that support regenerative practices, diversified cropping systems, and conservation for small-scale farming can simultaneously improve farms’ economic viability and environmental outcomes.

Ultimately, the farm bill is more than a piece of agricultural legislation. It is the single largest food and agriculture policy framework in the United States, shaping everything from what farmers grow to what families eat and how land is managed for future generations. A truly forward-looking farm bill would invest in farmers as stewards of the land, strengthen rural economies, expand opportunity for the next generation of producers, and ensure that conservation remains at the heart of US agriculture.

As Congress debates the FFNSA, the challenge is clear: to move beyond incremental changes and build a transformational farm bill that reflects the realities farmers face today and are likely to face in the future, creating true food and farm security.

In what might be a first, I agree with Rollins . . . in a way. I think it’s a good idea to connect these disparate subsidy programs, currently run by different agencies within the USDA and tracked using separate systems. But while it may be true that the IT systems are clunky and redundant, a much bigger problem is that the aims of the programs are so disconnected that they often work at cross purposes and fail to deliver lasting benefits to farmers, farm economies, taxpayers, and the public. Rather than just a superficial linking of farmer data and application forms, we need true synergy of program goals and outcomes, and Rollins’ plan won’t do anything about that.

Moreover, I’m deeply concerned about how this administration is going about overhauling these information systems in the name of efficiency—in particular, contracting with Palantir Technologies, one of today’s most notorious and antidemocratic corporations, to do the work (more on that later).

US agriculture depends heavily on taxpayer support

First, let’s back up and take a look at what the USDA programs in question have in common: distributing public money to farm operations. While many farmers and observers like to think of agriculture as a free-market system, that is far from the truth. Farming is heavily subsidized—based on USDA data, USAFacts estimates that federal agricultural subsidies since 1933 have averaged 13.5 percent of net farm income.

The USDA administers a wide variety of farm payment programs, but they generally fall into three major categories:

• Crop insurance and disaster assistance. The USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) oversees the Federal Crop Insurance Program, which insures farm operations against crop losses and underwrites the cost of insurance premiums. The RMA also operates programs including the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program, which provides additional compensation to crop insurance policyholders for losses related to qualifying natural disasters.
•  Commodity price supports. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) administers programs including Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, which provide payments when farm revenue or covered commodity prices fall below set levels. These outcomes can be spurred by all kinds of economic forces and events, including some we’re seeing today: tariffs and trade wars, for example, and rippling disruption from a literal war.
• Conservation incentives. The largest voluntary programs that compensate farmers for undertaking conservation and pollution reduction practices on working farms are operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). These include the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program.

In 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed all the programs that distribute taxpayer dollars to farmers and ranchers and tallied a total of $161 billion over the prior five years—an annual average of $32 billion.

Recent crises have spurred more farm payments, but distribution has been unequal

The GAO report found that more than 40 percent of farmer payments during fiscal years 2019 through 2023 addressed damage to farm income due to international trade disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters. In 2018 and 2019, for example, the USDA distributed some $28 billion through a new Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to bail out farmers hit by retaliatory tariffs on soybeans, pork, and other agricultural commodities in the wake of the first Trump administration’s ill-conceived trade war with China.

The largest farm subsidies have disproportionately gone to the largest, most industrial operations. As the libertarian Cato Institute put it recently, “Most welfare programs are for low-income families, but farm welfare is for high-income families.” This was borne out starkly during the first Trump administration: A 2020 analysis of USDA data by the Environmental Working Group showed that more than half of all MFP payments went to the top 10 percent of farms by income. Similarly, the USDA directed nearly a quarter of payments from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, created by Congress in 2020 to help farmers struggling during the pandemic, to just the top 1 percent of farm operations.

By the end of 2020, nearly all of the US Treasury’s gain from tariffs on China went to farmer payments. Yet despite all that spending, farm bankruptcies spiked 20 percent in 2019 and stayed high through 2020.

USDA payments to farmers are skyrocketing

Recently, the USDA’s Economic Research Service tallied annual direct payments to farmers from all programs since 2022 and forecast the trajectory of spending through 2026. As illustrated in the graph below, conservation payments have remained flat, while price support payments and all other payments, after declining somewhat since the pandemic’s effects eased, are expected to balloon this year.

Linking subsidies to pollution prevention would have wide-ranging benefits

This brings me back to the USDA’s One Farmer, One File initiative. In a recent interview (paywalled), a USDA undersecretary said the effort seeks to streamline paperwork such as program application forms and eligibility documents across agencies and update internal software and data collection systems. The initiative, which is expected to be fully implemented by 2028, aims to reduce administrative time spent by both farmers and USDA staff.

That’s good, but what would be revolutionary is if the missions of the programs themselves were linked and their dollars collectively created lasting value and sustainability for farmers. That’s not happening today, and it’s not going to result from just an overhaul of data systems.

Take the interplay of the NRCS’s farm conservation programs and the RMA’s crop insurance. Science has shown that conservation practices that work with nature rather than against it—including planting cover crops and perennial crops, expanding crop rotations, and producing a wider array of crops and livestock on a farm—create healthy, spongy soils and buffer farmers from flooding, drought, and other events that commonly lead to insurance payouts and drive up premiums. A January 2023 GAO report examined options to link conservation, climate resilience, and crop insurance policy incentives, and later that year the Biden administration’s USDA took steps to make crop insurance rules work better for farmers using resilience-building practices.

But much more action is needed to bring about a fully integrated and self-reinforcing policy framework that requires higher levels of soil, water, and climate stewardship by all producers as a condition of receiving farm subsidies (as I proposed in this blog post in 2024). Such an integrated policy should also expand existing technical and financial support to ease the transition for farmers who have been locked out of conservation programs or have been reluctant to try them.

If we did this, it would be good for farmers of all kinds, who would begin to see the benefits of reduced reliance (and spending) on fertilizers and other inputs, greater flood and drought resilience from healthier soil, and more profitability. (See, for example, the story of an Iowa farmer who voluntarily adopted conservation practices and documented benefits that added up to an improved bottom line.)

Benefits would also accrue to taxpayers (decreased crop insurance costs from extreme weather), local water utilities and their customers (lower costs for removing agricultural pollution from drinking water, and better health outcomes), commercial fisheries (smaller dead zones), hunters and outdoor enthusiasts (cleaner rivers and streams for swimming and fishing, more waterfowl habitat), and consumers (better food access from diversified farms).

But . . . the USDA’s contractor raises the specter of authoritarian surveillance

Fundamentally linking farmer assistance programs in the way I’ve described is a long-term goal. In the meantime, streamlining these programs’ IT systems must be done carefully and with attention to participant privacy and data security. As much as Secretary Rollins talks about “putting farmers first,” I was surprised (okay, not really) to hear that the USDA had contracted with Palantir—an AI-based company that has been called “the most dangerous corporation in America”—to develop the One Farmer, One File system.

Palantir’s founder is Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist, Trump donor, and Jeffrey Epstein correspondent who has frequently expressed anti-democratic ideas and decried diversity. And Palantir is at the center of the Trump administration’s highest-profile and most controversial data-gathering and surveillance efforts—from its contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to its work with the Internal Revenue Service and the Pentagon. Many observers have expressed alarm about Thiel’s and Palantir’s role in the rise of an authoritarian surveillance state and threats to human rights worldwide.

So now Palantir is being handed the keys to USDA farmer data. What could possibly go wrong?

Finished nitrogen and phosphorus (P) fertilizer products like urea, ammonia, and phosphates produced by several nations in the Middle East also pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Cumulatively, the closure of the strait has led to major disruptions in the global fertilizer market and created a bottleneck for these fertilizer products as demand exceeds supply.

The United States is not insulated from this double fertilizer and energy crisis

The United States produces a majority of its nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer products domestically, but imports a quantity of several important fertilizer products like potash (K) and some of the fossil fuel that powers domestic production. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the United States imported more than 3.5 million metric tons of fertilizer (including some raw materials) in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The annual fertilizer export for 2025 was around 25 million metric tons.

As of the morning of March 13, the market price of urea was reported at $594 per metric ton, sharply rising about 26 percent from about $469 per metric ton on February 27. The retail prices of major fertilizer products have also increased. With no end to the war in sight, and the quantity of imports severely restricted, the price of fertilizer products is likely to keep increasing.

Global crises show how brittle agricultural supply chains are

The cost of fertilizers spiking because of a global crisis is nothing new. The COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to the agriculture supply chain. In 2022 fertilizer prices reached historic highs, reaching a record-breaking $1,600 per metric ton for anhydrous ammonia and exceeding $1,000 per metric ton for urea. That year, I wrote about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a dual global energy and fertilizer crisis that hurt farmers.

Layered on top of these acute crises that farmers have faced since 2020 is the added problem of a severely consolidated fertilizer industry. Four companies dominate more than 75 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer market, and play a big role in the prices farmers pay. The Department of Justice has recently launched an antitrust investigation to evaluate whether leading fertilizer manufacturers colluded to limit supply and raise prices. While agribusiness consolidation is a common attribute of the US food and farming system, lack of competition means farmers face the added pressure of higher input costs, reduced bargaining power, and tighter profit margins.

So how will the war affect farmers?

Farmers are dealt the short end of the stick every time a new geopolitical crisis affects food and farming supply chains. In 2024, according to data from the USDA, farmers spent $33.8 billion on fertilizer costs, accounting for about 7 percent of total farm expenditures. In 2022 when fertilizer prices were higher, farmers spent $36.6 billion, accounting for about 8 percent of overall farm expenditures.

For 2026, pre-war USDA forecasting predicted fertilizer costs for farmers of about $35.8 billion, which will likely increase if prices of major fertilizer products remain high or even increase in the coming weeks and months. In 2023 (the latest data available), the United States consumed 2.9 million metric tons of urea and 3.2 million metric tons of urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), most of which were applied to corn. As per International Fertilizer Association consumption data, ammonia, urea, and UAN approximately constitute 25 to 27 percent of applied nitrogen fertilizer. Any price increase of these products is likely to hit farmers hard.

Nitrogen Fertilizer Consumption in the United States

Source: IFA 2025

Let’s use the example of urea as a simplistic case study to evaluate how farmers can be affected by the increased cost of fertilizers.

Of the $35.8 billion farmers were expected to spend this year on fertilizer, about 60 percent is nitrogen, which amounts to about $21.5 billion. As per the breakdown of US fertilizer consumption, about 25 percent is urea, so farmers will spend an estimated $5.4 billion on urea alone.

If urea prices were to stay at the recent increased peak of about $594 per metric ton, farmers would end up spending $6.7 billion on urea alone, pushing total fertilizer expenditures close to $37 billion. This is a simplistic estimate demonstrating how the increase in price of a single line item affects farmers’ input expenses. In reality, fertilizer price and consumption scenarios are nowhere near as simplistic as that. Several farming inputs are seeing higher costs—including other fertilizer products like phosphates, and energy inputs like diesel, gasoline, and methane gas—and farmers are gearing up for spring fertilizer application, with crops like corn and spring wheat demanding the most nitrogen fertilizer now.

Corn farmers will take a hard hit if fertilizer prices keep increasing

Corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, so this is one of the biggest expenses in corn production, accounting for more than one-third of operating costs. With increasing costs for nitrogen fertilizer and fuel, the cost of growing corn will likely increase, reducing farm profitability.

In a recent conversation I had with corn and soybean farmers from Illinois, they expressed concern regarding the high price and availability of nitrogen fertilizer for field applications starting next month when spring planting days approach. Because they made plans and purchased fertilizer before the war started, there isn’t enough supply to fulfill orders that farmers have already paid for. They worry that if the war and the Strait of Hormuz closure continue, their fertilizer may not be available for delivery in time for spring application.

Usually when fertilizer prices increase, some farmers switch to other nitrogen sources or lower their application rates. There are also reports that farmers might switch some acreage from nitrogen-hungry corn to soybeans, which don’t need nitrogen fertilizer. Soybean is a phosphate-hungry crop, and the price of diammonium phosphate fertilizer is on a slow rise. And soybean farmers are facing their own set of market loss and financial crises because of the Trump administration’s tariff wars, so making this switch won’t fully immunize farmers against market volatility and risks.

Industrial agriculture has other impacts felt far and wide

It is important to remember here how global our food supply chains are. The Strait of Hormuz offers passage to almost one-third of the global fertilizer trade. Any crisis affecting US farmers is also felt globally, and is often compounded, especially in nations where fertilizer and fuel are mostly imported from other nations. The United States also imports food from other countries that are also in the midst of an identical crisis and witnessing fertilizer and energy price increases. But one takeaway is crystal clear: Increased fertilizer and other input costs will mean higher food prices for consumers.

US agriculture’s overdependence on fertilizers also results in emissions of heat-trapping gases that have a direct impact on global climate change; 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to fertilizer use in the United States alone, according to a recent Union of Concerned Scientists report.

While projecting fertilizer price and consumption scenarios is complicated, it is clear that President Trump’s war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will cost US farmers billions of dollars this year. This is why farmers need an off-ramp to transition away from the current system that emphasizes commodity crops (grown largely for animal feed) to a system that grows food and is not reliant on inputs of excessive synthetic fertilizer and agrichemicals.

My colleague Dr. Kate Anderson recently offered some insights into how farmers can jump off the fertilizer treadmill. We need commonsense solutions that help farmers thrive and turn a profit while building resilient farming systems—not the current situation that hurls farmers towards a new crisis every time global supply chains are disrupted.

This is not just a story about one more price spike. It is a story about fertilizer dependence.

A costly high-input model

We are at a crossroads. Many of the solutions now being advanced by the agrichemical industry and its allies to stabilize fertilizer costs would double down on the current model by using public policy to keep fertilizer flowing—from military protection for shipments to new domestic fertilizer manufacturing capacity that would lock in our fossil fuel dependence for years to come. The smarter path is not to build a bigger version of the same vulnerable system; it is to help farmers reduce unnecessary fertilizer dependence over time. That would be better for farmers, better for taxpayers, better for public health, and better for our soil, water, and climate.

For decades, US farm policy and agribusiness have pushed farmers toward a model built on purchased inputs such as fertilizer, a few commodity crops like corn and soybean, and high exposure to volatile global markets. That model is often defended as efficient. But it is not truly efficient if farmers are left vulnerable to every geopolitical shock, and if taxpayers have to pour huge sums into subsidies every year to keep the system afloat. That vulnerability is not insignificant: fertilizer accounted for 33 to 44 percent of corn operating costs and 34 to 45 percent of wheat operating costs in recent years, making price shocks a direct threat to farm finances. The real problem is that too many of the incentives in US agriculture still push in the wrong direction.

Solutions already exist

This dependence is not inevitable. Farmers do not need to stay on a treadmill that keeps them buying vast quantities of agricultural chemicals—and that subjects all of us to the devastating pollution problems those chemicals cause.

The off switch to this treadmill already exists. The available solutions are practical, proven, and within reach. Some are efficiency improvements, using less fertilizer and wasting less of it: applying it at the right times and matching rates more closely to what the crop and soil need. Other practices can make the whole system less dependent on purchased fertilizer in the first place. Currently, more than 95 percent of US corn acres receive nitrogen fertilizer, and corn accounts for 78 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied to major US field crops. Legumes such as peas, beans, clover, and alfalfa can help supply nitrogen naturally. More diverse crop rotations can break pest cycles, improve soil fertility, and reduce the need for heavy chemical use. Cover crops can hold nutrients in place, reduce erosion, and build soil health. And bigger changes like adding perennial crops or reconnecting crops and livestock can help shift farms toward a fundamentally lower-input model with lower costs and stronger profitability. These approaches—often described as agroecology—are not futuristic ideas; they are practical strategies already being used on real farms.

That matters because the public conversation too often treats fertilizer dependence as if it were unavoidable. It is not. What is unavoidable is that farmers need support to make good transitions at scale. The real question is whether federal policy will help farmers use the off-ramps that already exist.

Congress is making this choice right now

That question is not abstract. Lawmakers are answering it in real time through the farm bill and annual appropriations.

First, Congress is writing a new food and farm bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the current House draft would cut about $1 billion in budget authority over the next four fiscal years from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). That would mean pulling back support from one of the main federal programs that helps farmers conserve soil and water, reduce pollution, and manage input use more effectively. And this is not a niche program: In 2024, EQIP and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which helps farmers sustain and expand conservation practices, together enrolled about 30 million acres, serving about 160,000 participants through $3.7 billion in contracts.

These programs should be strengthened substantially, not cut back. Even with added Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding, they are grossly oversubscribed: In 2024, only about 44 percent of EQIP applicants and 54 percent of CSP applicants received contracts. That was up by roughly 18 percentage points for EQIP and 23 for CSP from pre-IRA levels, underscoring both how much the added funding helped and how much unmet demand remains.

At the same time, the House draft would channel scarce public dollars toward expensive, proprietary “precision ag” systems that are sold as solutions that target fertilizer where it is needed most in a field. But the evidence is mixed, the savings are far from guaranteed, and the technologies are inaccessible to all but the largest operations. At best, they fine-tune—but reinforce—high-input industrial agriculture, and certainly don’t help farmers move beyond it. That is the wrong direction. Farmers need support for a real transition.

Second, Congress is setting annual appropriations. House appropriators opened the FY27 request process on February 25, and those decisions will affect whether the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has the technical assistance and research funding needed to help farmers move toward lower-input systems successfully.

The network of Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) offices—staffed with highly trained scientists and technical experts with deep regional and on-the-ground knowledge—is supposed to help make that transition workable. But that infrastructure has recently been weakened by deep staffing cuts and field-office losses, with staff numbers falling from 11,715 in 2025 to an estimated 8,000 in 2026. So even before Congress talks about cutting or reshuffling funding, the baseline problem is that transition support is nowhere near the scale of the need.

Then there is the research side. If farmers are going to have off ramps from fertilizer overdependence, scientists say they need publicly funded research, extension, and technical support focused on lower-input systems that can maintain profitability and resilience. Yet a Union of Concerned Scientists analysis of USDA external research grants found that just 15 percent of funding went to projects with any agroecological component, only 5 to 10 percent went to projects with an overall agroecological emphasis, and only 4 percent supported the more transformative combination of agroecological practices plus socioeconomic supports.

That is a striking mismatch. Farmers are living through repeated fertilizer and energy shocks, but USDA research funding does far too little to build and scale systems designed to reduce fertilizer dependence in the first place. Instead, too much public research remains geared toward helping farmers function inside the same high-input model: maximizing yields in fertilizer-dependent systems instead of food security and farm profitability, optimizing synthetic fertilizer use rather than replacing it, and advancing technologies that deepen dependence on agribusiness-controlled products and services.

Resilience is the fiscally smarter path

The choice is not between spending and not spending. The public is already paying for the current system by subsidizing the wrong kinds of farm risk and propping up a model that remains highly dependent on expensive and polluting inputs. The choice is between paying a little now to reduce risk or paying much more for volatility and pollution later. That makes investing now to reduce fertilizer dependence the fiscally smarter choice.

For example, in Iowa State’s long-term Marsden rotation study, three- and four-year rotations that added small grains and forage legumes to corn-soybean rotations used 86 percent and 91 percent less mineral nitrogen fertilizer and 96 percent and 97 percent less herbicide than a standard two-year corn-soy system. Corn yields averaged 4 percent higher, soybean yields 16 percent higher, and spring nitrate concentrations in drainage water were 57 percent lower in the more diverse systems. Those kinds of systems can also help reduce water pollution cleanup costs. In other words, more diverse systems did not just cut pollution and purchased inputs; they also held up agronomically and economically.

So, another energy-driven fertilizer shock should not become a pretext for deepening dependence—it should be a catalyst for funding the transition away from it.

Americans set few everyday expectations for science, but they are fundamental: We expect the weather forecast to be right, we expect science and technology that allow weather hazards to be anticipated within reason, and we expect public services to protect our lives and livelihoods from such hazards—floods and fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  

Well, the fulfillment of those expectations is in real doubt now that the Trump administration plans to dismantle the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally funded institution that underpins critical science that Americans rely on. Administration officials have argued that NCAR’s work can simply be redistributed to other institutions without loss. But NCAR is not just another research center. It is a purpose-built critical infrastructure, designed to integrate observations, modeling, supercomputing, and applied research in ways that no single university, agency, or contractor can replicate on its own. 

Although Congress rejected the administration’s proposed funding cuts to NSF, the most recent spending bill did not include explicit language protecting NCAR as a unified entity.  

As a result, the center remains vulnerable—not through outright defunding, but through fragmentation. The administration could try to cut interagency contracts that NCAR relies on to fund its staff, lay off staff, and relocate critical capabilities. NSF has already outlined plans to restructure NCAR, including moving its supercomputer to another site and transferring or divesting research aircraft it operates. These risks would hollow out the institution itself, breaking apart integrated teams, disrupting continuity in projects, and weakening the unique collaborative model at NCAR that accelerates scientific progress in weather, water, climate, and space weather.  

This distinction matters. NCAR’s value does not lie solely in the science it produces, but in how that science is organized, sustained, and shared across the nation.  

Here are five of the many ways Americans will lose the benefits of scientific research if plans to dismantle NCAR unfold, and two ways we can work to prevent it.  

1. Air travelers will lose protection

Every day, millions of Americans board airplanes expecting to arrive safely at their destinations. What most passengers never see is the science working behind the scenes to keep flights safe through better understanding of atmospheric conditions such as turbulence and microburst winds. 

Turbulence alone is the leading cause of injuries on US commercial flights and cargo operations, and NCAR research has played a central role in reducing that risk by improving how turbulence is detected, predicted, and avoided. NCAR scientists helped develop advanced forecasting techniques that allow pilots and dispatchers to reroute aircraft away from dangerous air currents before passengers are ever put at risk.  

In addition to safety, NCAR research has reduced the $100 million financial strain severe turbulence costs the US aviation system every year through aircraft damage, inspections, medical costs, and delays.  

NCAR’s contributions to aviation safety extend well beyond turbulence. In the 1970s and 1980s, NCAR scientists led research that identified and explained microbursts, a poorly understood weather phenomenon consisting of powerful downdraft winds produced by thunderstorms. Microbursts had caused multiple fatal airline crashes during takeoff and landing, and NCAR findings convinced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and international aviation authorities to develop radar warning systems to detect these threats. Since these tools have been deployed, fatal US airline crashes caused by microbursts have effectively been eliminated. 

Dismantling NCAR and moving this work elsewhere would break the integrated system that makes aviation safety research effective in the first place. NCAR uniquely brings together long-term observational data, advanced modeling, specialized instrumentation, and direct operational partnerships with agencies like the FAA under one roof. Fragmenting that capacity across multiple institutions would disrupt decades of trusted, public-service relationships with the aviation community, making it harder and slower to translate research into real-world protections for pilots and passengers. With millions of people in the sky every day, this is not a risk we should take. 

2. Food security and the US agricultural economy will be at risk

Agriculture contributes hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the US economy, and food security remains a national priority, making NCAR’s research crucial to this weather-sensitive sector. Drought, heat waves, and floods are recurring stresses that impact what crops farmers can grow, as well as food prices for consumers.  

NCAR research is directly relevant to food security. For example, NCAR scientists are working in conjunction with universities in Kansas and Nebraska, and the US Department of Agriculture, to develop CropSmart, a next-generation system that aggregates weather forecasts, crop data, soil conditions, and other inputs into actionable, decision-ready information for farmers, agribusinesses, and agricultural officials. Early projections from CropSmart suggest that if advanced decision support systems like this were adopted on even half of irrigated farms in a state like Nebraska, farmers could save up to 1 billion cubic meters of water and $100 million in irrigation energy costs annually while also cutting about a million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. 

If NCAR is broken up, we lose this economic opportunity and the myriad ways it supports US agriculture. NCAR’s long-standing collaborations, integrated modeling and computing capacity, and role as a trusted public-service institution are what allow farmers to rely on consistent, decision-ready information year after year.  

All the agricultural tools housed, supported, or innovated by NCAR would be put at risk, leaving farmers with fewer early warnings, less reliable guidance, and greater exposure to weather extremes. These losses would translate to the food on our tables having a higher price tag, which inevitably increases food insecurity, already a significant problem in the United States.  

3. US national security and military readiness will be weakened

The US military depends on weather and climate intelligence to operate safely, effectively, and strategically. From flight operations and naval deployments to training exercises and base infrastructure, weather conditions shape nearly every aspect of defense readiness. When forecasts are wrong or incomplete, missions can be delayed, equipment can be damaged, and personnel and our national defense are put at risk. 

NCAR’s research and operational tools provide the environmental intelligence that defense planners, operators, and test authorities rely on to keep us safe. Accurate, NCAR-enhanced forecasts have saved the US Army millions of dollars by reducing weather-related test cancellations and avoiding needless mobilization costs. NCAR weather forecasting tools have been used for defense-related purposes including anti-terrorism support at the Olympic games, protection of the Pentagon, support for firefighters, and analysis of exposure of our military personnel to toxins. 

The strategic value of this work is reflected in the breadth of defense agencies that rely on NCAR today. NCAR maintains active partnerships and contracts with the Air Force, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Ground Intelligence Center, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Army Test and Evaluation Command. These relationships exist for a simple reason: Accurate environmental intelligence reduces risk, lowers costs, and strengthens national security. 

Dismantling NCAR is a national security threat. Defense agencies rely on specialized, mission-critical environmental products and expertise that are developed, maintained, and refined through streamlined, long-standing relationships with NCAR scientists. These capabilities cannot be replaced quickly without disruption, and even short gaps in trusted weather and environmental intelligence would increase operational risk for current and future missions. Protecting NCAR is an investment in military readiness, operational efficiency, and the safety of those who serve. 

4. Americans in disaster-prone areas will have less time to prepare for, and evacuate from, extreme weather

Since 1980, weather hazards have cost the United States thousands of lives and more than $3.1 trillion. In 2025 alone, disasters cost nearly 300 lives, and $115 billion in damages to homes and businesses. And these weather hazards are expected to worsen because of our changing climate.  

A 2010 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study found that public weather forecasts and warnings deliver roughly $31.5 billion in annual economic benefits in the United States. These gains in preparedness and economic benefit would not have been possible without sustained scientific research from NCAR. 

Hurricane forecasting provides a clear example of how NCAR research has secured the safety and mitigated the economic losses to residents and businesses. Since 1980, hurricanes have caused nearly $3 trillion in damages in the United States.  

For decades, NCAR scientists have worked to develop and refine instruments and methods to collect real-time hurricane observations and improve our understanding of storm behavior. By the 1980s, data and modeling advances emerging from NCAR research were being used operationally by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), contributing to a roughly 20%–30% improvement in the accuracy of hurricane track forecasts compared to earlier decades.  

NCAR continues to enhance forecasting capabilities for hurricanes, and as well as their associated flood risks through the center’s sophisticated flood risk model. Today, the model is used operationally by the National Weather Service in more than 3,800 locations serving 3 million people. 

If NCAR’s role in advancing forecast science is weakened by dismantling, these gains in disaster preparedness will be put in jeopardy. Forecast improvements do not happen automatically; they require sustained research, coordination, and testing. If NCAR’s research capabilities to develop and improve weather forecasting disappear, the United States will face a major public safety risk. 

5. Americans lose a unique source of national pride

NCAR was never designed to serve a select few. It was built with public investment to serve the nation as a whole. From its founding, NCAR embraced the idea that understanding the Earth system—its atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice—requires collaboration across institutions, disciplines, and generations, not isolated efforts working in parallel.  

That collaborative model is embedded in how NCAR operates. It is stewarded by a consortium of more than 120 colleges and universities across the United States, representing a wide range of regions, institutional types, and scientific strengths. This structure allows knowledge, tools, and expertise to flow across the country, connecting large research universities with smaller institutions, federal agencies with academic scientists, and fundamental research with real-world applications for the public and private sectors. The result is a shared national capability that no single institution could sustain on its own. 

There is something deeply American in that collaborative vision, a belief that publicly funded science should be openly shared, collectively advanced, and used to strengthen the common good. NCAR represents what is possible when a nation chooses to invest in science as a public good. 

For more than six decades, NCAR has shown that open, collaborative science can save lives, support economic resilience and national defense, and expand opportunity across generations. Preserving and celebrating NCAR is choosing a future where shared knowledge, innovation, and public-serving science continue to thrive. 

What we must do now

This moment demands more than concern, it requires action.  

First, NSF is requesting feedback from the public regarding its intent to restructure NCAR. Feedback “will be used to inform NSF’s future actions with respect to the components of NCAR and to ensure the products, services, and tools provided in the future align with the needs and expectations of stakeholders to the extent practicable.”  

Respond, and inform NSF on the value and benefits of all of NCAR, not only its constituent parts. Readers can submit comments by March 13. 

Second, Congress ultimately holds the authority to fund and protect NCAR, and lawmakers need to hear clearly that dismantling NCAR would put the health, safety, and financial stability of Americans at risk. By October 2026, Congress will address the funding of NSF for next year; we must actively and consistently reach out to our congressional representatives now and throughout the year.  

Readers can contact their members of Congress through easy-to-use resources provided by AGU and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Fertilizer provides nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus that crops need to grow and thrive. But today’s agricultural system, shaped by a powerful fertilizer industry and other corporate interests, pressures farmers to plant more acres and apply far more fertilizer than crops can use. In fact, only about half of the fertilizer applied to fields is actually used by plants. The rest can build up in soil, pollute the air, leach into groundwater, or wash into streams where it becomes “nutrient pollution.”

From plant food to water pollution

Most synthetic fertilizers contain forms of nitrogen like ammonia or urea, which can be transformed into nitrate by bacteria in soil. Nitrate dissolves easily in water, and agricultural runoff has led to nitrate contamination of local waterways.

But nitrate pollution doesn’t just impact waters near fields where fertilizer is applied. Instead, it can travel hundreds of miles through streams, rivers, groundwater, and other connected water bodies. This water-to-water pathway is how fertilizer overuse in the Midwest ultimately leads to nutrient pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive “dead zone” where a suffocating overgrowth of algae sucks up oxygen and kills fish and other aquatic life.

Health risks from nitrates in drinking water

When nitrate pollution reaches drinking water supplies through connected waterways, it creates health risks. Decades of research have identified links between nitrate exposure and disease including colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and dangerously low oxygen levels in infants. Other potential health risks of nitrate exposure include bladder and gastric cancers, ovarian cancer, and birth complications like low birth rate and preterm birth. A 2019 study estimated that nitrate contamination in drinking water may contribute to as many as 12,500 cancer cases in the United States each year, costing Americans up to $1.5 billion annually in medical expenses.

The clear association between nitrate exposure and health risks is why the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets federal drinking water standards for nitrate. Public drinking water systems must keep nitrate levels below this standard, which is 10 mg/L. However, the federal nitrate standard was set decades ago and doesn’t consider newer evidence showing health risks from long-term exposure to lower levels of nitrate. So despite federal drinking water standards, nitrate pollution from fertilizer overuse remains a significant public health concern.

Nitrate pollution threatens communities

In the agriculturally dense Midwest, nitrate contamination has left many communities with unsafe water. In Kansas, nitrate pollution has forced small cities like Pratt to abandon wells that provide water to much of the population.

Researchers in Nebraska, a state with some of the highest rates of pediatric cancer in the country, have found higher childhood cancer rates in watersheds with elevated nitrate levels, even when those levels were below EPA standards.

In Wisconsin, excess fertilizer and poorly managed manure account for more than 90% of nitrate pollution in state waters. That pollution may start on farmland, but downstream residents and municipalities are stuck paying more than $116 million to remove it from their drinking water.

In Minnesota, where nearly three-quarters of water utilities with high nitrate levels serve residents with incomes below the state average, environmental groups have sued state agencies over nitrate pollution. In response, a judge ordered the state’s pollution control and agriculture agencies to assess whether current rules adequately protect Minnesotans from nitrate exposure in drinking water.

And in Iowa, where agriculture is responsible for about 80% of nitrate contamination in rivers and lakes, nitrate pollution has made its way into the drinking water supply. Nitrate levels in Iowa’s public water systems have risen since 2012, and private wells, which aren’t subject to EPA oversight, often show even higher concentrations. Nitrate exposure may be a factor in Iowa’s climbing cancer rate, already the second-highest in the nation after adjusting for age.

To help address the health risks from agricultural nitrate pollution, Iowa adopted a nutrient reduction strategy in 2013 aimed at cutting nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 45%. But more than a decade later, significant nitrate pollution persists in places like Des Moines, which had to temporarily ban lawn watering in the summer of 2025 because of high nitrate levels in source water.

Removing nitrate from the water supply is extremely expensive. Des Moines Water Works estimates it costs $16,000 per day to run its nitrate removal system. Previous research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that nitrate removal could cost between $41 and $333 million over five years in Iowa, with most of the expense hitting small and rural communities.  

The combination of expensive cleanup costs and high nitrate levels means that communities in rural areas that more often rely on small, underfunded water systems or private wells are disproportionately affected by nitrate pollution. One study found significantly higher nitrate exposure among low-income residents, older adults, very young children, and people of color in Iowa. This is why nitrate pollution from fertilizer overuse is not just a public health threat; it is also an issue of environmental justice.

Protecting public health through better farming practices

Much of the cost of nitrate pollution currently falls at the faucet, as communities and households pay high prices to remove it from their drinking water. But preventing nitrate pollution at the field before it enters the water supply is the most effective way to reduce the public health risks of nitrate pollution.

Agricultural practices can dramatically decrease the amount of fertilizer that runs off fields and pollutes rivers, streams, and groundwater with nitrate. For example, planting strips of native prairie plants on just 10% of farm fields can reduce nitrogen runoff by 85%. Crop rotation and diversification can decrease fertilizer needs, improve soil, and maintain crop profitability. Other practices such as planting cover crops and protecting or restoring wetlands can also reduce fertilizer runoff and prevent nitrate pollution.

Voluntary US Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation programs offer farmers valuable tools and incentives to adopt these kinds of sustainable practices that improve soil health, reduce fertilizer use, and protect water from agricultural pollution. These programs deliver strong financial returns, too: a 2018 study by UCS found that every dollar invested in the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) generated almost $4 in benefits.

USDA conservation programs are popular with farmers, who see them as a way to protect the environment while reducing their reliance on expensive chemical fertilizers (and the giant corporations that make them). But current program funding is insufficient to meet demand: between 2010 and 2020, only 42% of CSP applicants and 31% of Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) applicants received contracts, largely due to limited funds.

New federal policies are needed to prevent nitrate pollution

Voluntary programs can make a difference, but persistent nitrate pollution demonstrates that existing programs do not prevent fertilizer and other farm runoff from contaminating our water. Combining voluntary conservation programs with federal subsidy rules that require soil- and water-friendly farming practices could further reduce fertilizer overuse and protect water quality.

Existing conservation compliance programs already tie federal subsidies to environmental safeguards. For example, the federal wetland conservation provision known as “Swampbuster” requires farm operators to refrain from converting wetlands to cropland in order to qualify for crop insurance, disaster payments, and other USDA benefits. Wetlands in agricultural areas can trap fertilizer and other runoff and keep it from polluting waterways and drinking water supplies. (They also play an important role in flood prevention: my previous research estimated that the 30 million acres of nontidal wetlands in the Upper Midwest provide almost $23 billion in residential flood mitigation benefits each year.)

Expanding and fully funding programs like Swampbuster can help farmers adopt sustainable practices while keeping their operations productive. Effective conservation compliance, combined with robust and well-funded voluntary programs, can curb fertilizer runoff, reduce nitrate pollution, protect our water, and provide real public health benefits for our communities.

Crucially, this system harms farmers themselves—raising their input costs, degrading their soil over time, and locking them into cropping patterns that are hard to escape.

Fertilizer overuse is accelerating the climate crisis

The problem is not that farmers use fertilizer—plants need it to grow. Rather, the problem is how much farmers use and how much land our current system devotes to continuous production of nitrogen-intensive crops.

Research shows that as much as 50% of applied nitrogen fertilizer is in excess of what crops need and is unused by plants. A portion of the excess unused fertilizer gets converted into gases like nitrous oxide (N₂O) by soil microbes and released into the environment. Nitrous oxide is a potent heat-trapping gas: 265 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to its warming potential. In 2022, N₂O accounted for 6% of all heat-trapping emissions in the United States.

Agriculture is the United States’ undisputed largest source of N₂O, with agricultural soil management responsible for as much as 75% of the country’s N2O emissions. N₂O also comes from other sources like burning fossil fuels, manufacturing nitric acid, and manufacturing fertilizer. In agricultural soils, use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers accounts for the majority of N₂O emissions. To reduce these emissions, fertilizer overuse must come down. But it’s important to recognize that farmers often shoulder the financial and environmental burden of trying to manage risks in a system that incentivizes overapplication.

Fertilizer overuse pollutes our water and degrades our soil

Nitrogen overuse wreaks havoc in the environment because the runoff from unused fertilizer contains a vast amount of reactive nitrogen in the form of nitrates. When washed into lakes and streams, this reactive nitrogen helps algae multiply very quickly and create algal blooms. Algal blooms consume dissolved oxygen in the water, creating low- to no-oxygen areas in aquatic ecosystems called “dead zones” where nothing can survive. Farmers themselves are often frustrated by these outcomes, knowing that the fertilizer they paid for is literally washing away and causing damage downstream.

The impacts of nitrogen runoff reach far and wide and can harm aquatic ecosystems thousands of miles away. The best example of this is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which returns every summer and stretches thousands of miles. In 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the size of this dead zone at 4,402 square miles—roughly the same area as that of Connecticut. Nitrogen fertilizer runoff from the Midwest is one of the major contributors to the Gulf dead zone, estimated to cost $2.4 billion in lost livelihoods.

Nitrogen in the form of nitrate also leaches into groundwater sources and can end up contaminating drinking water supplies. Nitrate contamination is a widely reported problem in agriculture-heavy states like Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Exposure to nitrate is linked to a variety of serious health problems, as my colleague UCS Research Director for the Food & Environment program Stacy Woods writes. This means farming families—who are often on private wells—can be among the first harmed when nitrogen pollution reaches groundwater. Fertilizer overuse also harms the soil itself.

High doses of synthetic nitrogen acidify soils and disrupt the microbial communities that make nutrients naturally available to plants. Over time, this reduces soil biodiversity, suppresses beneficial fungi, and even harms earthworm populations that keep soils aerated and fertile. Instead of building living, resilient soils that are like sponges, heavy fertilizer use can leave land more degraded and make soils cement-like, dependent on ever-higher chemical inputs to provide the required plant nutrition. This soil degradation hurts farmers’ long-term profitability, trapping them in a cycle of needing ever more fertilizer just to maintain yields.

What is the nitrogen cycle?

Nitrogen is a classic example of something that’s good—essential for life on Earth—in small quantities, but you can have too much of a good thing. Natural biogeochemical cycles are slow processes. It takes microbes time to convert nitrogen and make it available for plants. But human-induced nitrogen cycle disruption has vastly altered how nitrogen moves and behaves in the environment, and created several short cuts that make a vast trove of reactive nitrogen ready for plant uptake.

To understand why we need fertilizers, we first must understand how nitrogen moves in the environment through a series of biogeochemical processes collectively called the nitrogen cycle.

As I mentioned earlier, the most abundant form of nitrogen is atmospheric gaseous nitrogen (N₂), which plants are unable to absorb. For nitrogen to become available for plants to use, it has to be converted into chemical forms like ammonium, nitrates, and nitrites that can then be absorbed through plant roots. This process is called nitrogen fixation.

Nitrogen fixation: The first step of the nitrogen cycle involves nitrogen reacting with hydrogen to form ammonia. Ammonia (NH₃) is an intermediate form of nitrogen that can then be converted into nitrates and nitrites. Gaseous nitrogen is an extremely stable molecule with strong bonds, and large amounts of energy are required to break this bond and react with hydrogen to form ammonia. In nature, this energy comes from lightning, and also occurs naturally in leguminous plants which have a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) relationship with Rhizobium soil bacteria that transforms N₂ into ammonium for plant uptake. In the human-derived fertilizer manufacturing process, this process is shortcut and the energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels in what is known as the Haber Bosch process

Nitrification: The next step in the nitrogen cycle is the conversion of ammonia into reactive forms of nitrogen like nitrites and nitrates. This process is called nitrification and is almost exclusively performed by various microbes in the soil. Microbes convert ammonia into forms like nitrates and nitrites that can be easily absorbed by plant roots. Plants then use these nitrates and nitrates for essential functions like synthesizing protein.

Denitrification: Nitrates that remain behind in the soil after plants have absorbed what they need are then converted back into N₂ and nitrous oxide (N₂O) by microbes through a process called denitrification. This allows for excess plant-available nitrogen in the soil to be released back into the atmosphere, maintaining a healthy level in the soil.

Ammonification: A second type of nitrogen conversion occurs when plants or other organisms excrete waste or die. Plant and animal tissues contain organic nitrogen in the form of proteins, amino acids, hormones, and DNA. Microbes in the soil help break down the tissue and convert the organic nitrogen to be released back into nature as ammonia. This process is known as ammonification.

Industrial agriculture has hijacked the natural nitrogen cycle

Today’s agricultural systems focus on growing vast acreages of nitrogen-hungry commodity crops like corn and soy in astonishing density—an amount of land that by itself drives enormous fertilizer demand, even if every acre were managed efficiently. These commodity crops require vast amounts of nitrogen (along with other nutrients like phosphorus and potassium) to support crop development and yield.

This is why fertilizers are added: to supplement the nitrogen in nature that plants can quickly absorb. Human activities like the use of synthetic fertilizers, livestock farming, and burning fossil fuels (with the associated emissions) have disrupted and altered the way nitrogen moves in the environment. Today’s environment has been overloaded with reactive nitrogen, which has serious implications for ecosystems, polluting air and water, and harming human health. Farmers are often acutely aware of these impacts, but deviating from the dominant system can bring real financial penalties. They haven’t chosen this system—policy, market concentration, and industry influence channel them toward high-input, high-volume production, even when it undermines long-term soil health and profitability.

What is the way forward in reducing nitrogen pollution?

The overreliance on costly agrichemical inputs and overdependence on fossil fuel fertilizers is a major driver of the climate crisis. Much of today’s fertilizer demand comes from how and where it is used—that enormous acreage devoted to continuous production of nitrogen-hungry commodity crops, especially corn. Reducing this acreage will require reforming market-distorting subsidies, particularly federally subsidized crop insurance, which rewards cultivation of nitrogen-intensive commodity crops and encourages planting, even on vulnerable land.

The first step in tackling nitrogen pollution is to prevent fertilizer overapplication. For farmers that means testing soil and applying fertilizer only where and when crops need it, and avoiding practices like blanket applications in the fall when plants do not need fertilizer and most of what is applied is wasted. Other on-farm fertilizer management practices include carefully managing irrigation of soils, since excess moisture increases N₂O emissions, limiting applications to the spring, and using precise placement to maximize uptake. The logical starting point is to equip farmers with funding and technical assistance to optimize the application of fertilizers.

But neither efficiency improvements and precision, nor acreage reductions alone can deliver the scale of change required. Moving away from subsidies that encourage the overproduction of commodity crops would help transform current agricultural systems, as would investing more in US Department of Agriculture programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which are backed by decades of science and farmer experience and can reduce reliance on costly synthetic fertilizers, thus improving soil health, protecting habitat, and improving water and air quality.

The bottom-line is clear: We need a large-scale shift to farming practices based on the science of agroecology, which treats farms like natural systems. Agroecological practices such as cover crops, buffer strips, restored wetlands, and managed grazing further help keep nutrients in place and build long-term soil health.

Our goal at UCS is to support farmers—not blame them—by helping reshape the system so they can thrive financially while reducing nitrogen pollution. There is plenty of clear scientific evidence that US agriculture needs to shift towards a model of agroecology for a healthier environment and climate.

To induce a system-wide transition to agricultural practices that build soil health and allow farmers to reduce costly inputs, UCS is tackling the problem of fertilizers. We aim to shine a light on how corporate entities keep farmers hooked on this treadmill of costly fertilizer and pesticide inputs, ultimately reducing their overreliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. We continue to advocate for a transformational food and farming system that is more equitable and resilient, and that works for farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and our environment.

I have been working on biofuels policy for almost 18 years, and the issue of indirect land use change (ILUC) from biofuels has been a central focus that whole time. My colleagues and I have defended ILUC as a vital safeguard to address land use change from biofuels. I sent countless technical comments, I’ve written technical articles, and helped organize letters from scientists on this topic to the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and environmental policymakers in the European Union. But the approach we’ve defended is not working as well as it should, and it is time to think about how to make land use protections stronger.

This week the CARB is holding a workshop to consider the latest science on land use change from biofuels. This is overdue, since the analysis in California’s fuel regulations has not been updated in a decade. Recent analyses find important flaws with the GTAP economic modeling framework CARB used to develop its current ILUC estimates, and an important new analysis from Chen, Sexton and Smith finds that the global growth in vegetable oil-based fuels has accelerated deforestation with very large climate impacts. Despite concerns about land use change, recent actions of the Congress and the Trump administration are poised to dramatically increase consumption of vegetable oil-based fuel in the United States. The bottom line is that land use change remains a very real problem for biofuels.

In addition to the consideration of these scientific and modeling questions, I find myself thinking about lessons learned for policy design. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) framework relies on adjusting lifecycle carbon intensity (CI) scores based on ILUC analysis to send market signals to discourage deforestation. This ILUC accounting framework is complex and controversial, and it has not been universally embraced by other jurisdictions. The challenges are both technical and political. The complex and opaque collection of models required to assign emissions to specific fuels leaves ample opportunity to manipulate the process to get politically motivated results. And the high stakes and political power of the relevant interests mean they can and have shaped the outcomes of the analysis. As a result, ILUC determinations are often made on political rather than technical grounds.

The lesson I take is that the complexity and opacity of the existing ILUC framework are undermining its efficacy as a land use safeguard. Studies like the one from Chen, Sexton and Smith tell us that the expansion of vegetable oil-based fuels from 2002 to 2018 was very harmful, and the most direct way to address this harm is to check further expansion of these fuels. Going forward, directly regulating the amount of vegetable oil or other resources used to make biofuels may be a more effective way to structure a policy safeguard than the current ILUC framework of adjusting CI scores.

Background

On November 6^th, CARB is holding a public forum on biofuels and land use change. This workshop is a follow-up to the 2024 amendments to the LCFS. The workshop was called for in a board resolution, issued as part of the process of board approval of the 2024 amendments to the LCFS. The resolution calls for a public forum covering two major topics:

1. Review the latest science on land use change and relevant models, and
   
2. Consider how to mitigate risks of harmful land use change or food market conflicts for future updates to the LCFS.

This workshop will only tackle the first part of the board’s direction, reviewing the latest science on land use change and relevant models. The question of how best to mitigate risks, including potential changes to policy design, will have to wait for another day (hopefully soon). I’m disappointed by this omission, because policy changes are needed to effectively mitigate the harm caused by the massive ongoing expansion of biofuel use.

The LCFS relies on lifecycle analysis to address concerns about land use change

The primary LCFS safeguard to address concerns about land use change is the inclusion of an estimate of land use change emissions (called indirect or induced land use change emissions or ILUC) in the carbon intensity (CI) assigned to crop-based biofuels. When this approach was initially proposed in 2007 by Alex Farrell and Dan Sperling[1], it was offered as a short-term measure until an “internationally accepted methodology for accounting for land use change” could be developed. Unfortunately, no consensus on methodology has been reached, and it appears increasingly unlikely it ever will.

In 2010 CARB convened an expert workgroup, on which I served, which informed updates to CARB’s ILUC calculations that were finalized in 2015. CARB’s ILUC analysis is based on the GTAP model, and a different version of the same model was subsequently used by the Argonne Lab to create an ILUC module of the GREET model, which projects ILUC emissions that are much lower than the original CARB study. The GTAP framework has been criticized for many technical deficiencies, and comparisons with other models suggest the GTAP approach substantially underestimates ILUC emissions.

In 2022, I served on a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that reviewed Current Methods for Life-Cycle Analyses of Low-Carbon Transportation Fuels in the United States. My experience on this committee reinforced that there is not now, nor will there ever be, a consensus approach in the expert community on how to do lifecycle analysis of transportation fuel. One important finding of the committee was that CI scores used for policies like the LCFS combine two dissimilar kinds of lifecycle analysis, one focused on attributing responsibility for emissions to individual actions and actors in the biofuel supply chain (called an attributional analysis), and a second that evaluates the global consequences of a policy or change (called a consequential analysis). The resulting CI score is a hybrid that does not answer any well-defined question. An alternative approach that resolves this methodological problem is to use different types of analysis for different elements of the policy, with a CI score based on attributional analysis used to shape decisions of fuel producers, and a consequential analysis used to inform safeguards that directly mitigate risks or problems the analysis identifies.

New analysis points to a major problem with vegetable oil-based fuels

Much of the debate since 2008 over land use change has focused on corn ethanol. But for the last decade, most of the growth of biofuel consumption in the US has been from vegetable oil-based biofuels like biodiesel and renewable diesel. A new analysis by Chen, Sexton and Smith from UC Davis and Berkeley finds that that using vegetable oils for biofuel accelerates tropical deforestation and increases carbon emissions. This new analysis takes a different approach than GTAP, relying more heavily on empirical data to reduce the dependence of the results on assumptions and model structure. They find that the global expansion of bio-based diesel made from vegetable oil has fueled massive deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. The extent of deforestation and associated emissions outweigh any climate benefits from replacing petroleum fuels.

A key finding of the analysis of Chen, Sexton and Smith is that the extent of deforestation is largely independent of which specific source of vegetable oil is used to make biofuel. This is not surprising, because vegetable oils are all close substitutes in the global food market. But this finding is in tension with the structure of ILUC implementation, which assigns differentiated ILUC scores to specific types of feedstock. For example, the LCFS assigns ILUC emissions of 71.4 g CO2e/MJ to palm oil, 29.1 g CO2e/MJ to soybean oil, and 14.5 g CO2e/MJ to canola oil and zero to inedible corn oil, used cooking oil or animal fats like tallow. These different ILUC scores create differentiated incentives that have had a big impact on the fuel market, as biofuel producers supplying California have scoured the globe to secure feedstocks with the lowest CI scores[2].

Not surprisingly, biofuel and vegetable oil producers reject the finding that using any source of vegetable oil has a similar impact on global markets. They argue it is unfair to hold midwestern soybean oil accountable for palm oil related deforestation in Indonesia. They have been successful at persuading federal policymakers to change the parameters of federal biofuel policies in a manner that favors major US crops, first by pressuring regulators to reduce ILUC values assigned to these crops and most recently by excluding consideration of ILUC from federal tax credits and restricting biofuel incentives to domestic fuels and feedstocks[3]. The resulting incentive structure of federal policies could have a big impact on California fuel markets in years to come. The strategies California has used to discourage the use of vegetable oil fuels will become less effective because of these changes in federal policy.

Fixing biofuel policies depends on the federal government, but California can help

The federal government bears the primary responsibility for the global harm caused by US biofuel policies. Federal policy has expanded the use of vegetable oil-based fuels to levels that far exceed the availability of US feedstocks to produce those fuels, with large and counterproductive impacts on global trade and land use. The result is that an increasing share of US biofuels have been coming from imported feedstocks or fuels. The administration wants US biofuel policies to focus on US fuels and feedstocks, but rather than scaling back biofuel mandates in line with domestic feedstock availability, they have proposed enlarging the mandates and layering on incentives for domestic feedstocks that will lead to costly and counterproductive shuffling of feedstocks and fuels.

I’ve called on the Environmental Protection Agency to scale back its biofuel policy proposal in line with a realistic assessment of feedstock availability. I also explained in a recent talk (video and slides) that because biofuels have a bigger impact on agriculture than transportation, biofuel policies should be designed with agriculture in mind. In particular, the ambition of US biofuel policies should be based on a realistic assessment of domestic feedstock availability and safeguards should ensure biofuels don’t exceed this level and expand the footprint of agriculture in the US or around the world.

California can’t fix problems caused by federal policies, but it can provide an essential laboratory for policy innovation, which is even more critical with federal science sidelined by the Trump administration. California’s LCFS model has been adopted by other states and will hopefully someday inform federal fuel policy reform. The LCFS wisely recognizes that shifting to renewable electricity for transportation is vital to phasing out petroleum and encourages all fuel producers to reduce their supply chain emissions. But before the LCFS can be a scalable model for federal fuel policy reform, California needs to grapple with the land use change challenge that has hung over the LCFS since its inception.

Learning from failed experiments, building safeguards that work in the real world

Scientists often learn more from failed experiments than they do from successes. But to learn these lessons one must acknowledge when an experiment has failed. California’s LCFS is an elegant policy that has a lot to recommend it, but its efforts to safeguard against harmful land use change have struggled. ILUC adjustments to CI scores are uncertain, technically complex, and prone to political interference. And with multiple overlapping policies affecting markets, adjustments to CI scores have an indirect and uncertain impact on land use.

The essential question policy makers must answer is how much of the vegetable oil, corn, animal fat, and other resources that can be used to make biofuels should be made available for fuel use. This requires an examination of resource availability, competing uses, impacts on land use, deforestation and food markets. With safeguards in place to avoid excessive diversion of these resources to fuel use, the LCFS can create an incentive structure that supports transportation electrification, encourages all fuel producers to reduce emissions and requires steady progress from the transportation fuel sector as a whole.

[1] Farrell, A. E, & Sperling, D. (2007). A Low-Carbon Fuel Standard for California, Part 1: Technical Analysis. UC Davis: Institute of Transportation Studies. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6j67z9w6. Farrell, A. E, & Sperling, D. (2007). A Low-Carbon Fuel Standard for California, Part 2: Policy Analysis. UC Davis: Institute of Transportation Studies. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8ng2h3x7

[2] The Chen, Sexton and Smith study considered the major vegetable oils, which make up the large majority of global biofuel consumption, but they did not examine fuels made from secondary fats and oils like tallow, used cooking oil or inedible corn oil. The availability of these secondary sources is much lower than vegetable oil on a global scale, and the data on their production and use is limited. But these feedstocks make up a large share of the California bio-based diesel market. The substitution that links primary vegetable oils will also occur with tallow, used cooking oil or inedible corn oil, but not in precisely the same way. These secondary fats and oils are used to make soaps and detergents or as animal feed, and when they are diverted to fuel production, they will be replaced with other resources. Over the last few years, consumption of these feedstocks for biofuel has grown so large that the indirect impacts of their use merit further study.

[3] For more details, see EPA’s Proposal to Focus Biofuel Policy on Domestic Fuels Doesn’t Add Up.

That’s because the United States relies on California as its top producer of agricultural products. Meanwhile, growing industrial agribusinesses have worsened pesticide pollution while draining the state’s water supply. Agriculture uses about 80% of California’s water, and it’s unsustainable.

There are solutions, though, and they involve strategic land use planning and repurposing to address California’s social, ecological, and water challenges, especially for its most disadvantaged people.

Ángel S. Fernández-Bou, bilingual senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has spent part of his career studying the problems facing California’s land, including farms, farmworkers, and people. He has devised several solutions that can protect people and help them prosper. They start, he says, with listening to and respecting community and Indigenous knowledge.

Ángel and UCS analyst Erin Woolley, with partner Dezaraye Bagalayos from Allensworth Progressive Association, published a guide last month called Working with Nature to Protect California’s Agricultural Regions: How Nature-Based Solutions Can Build Resilience, which details these plans and shares case studies where communities are already thriving by putting them into practice.

AAS: What worries you most about California’s environmental future?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: My biggest concern is the intersection of multiple crises—groundwater depletion, worsening air quality, and intensifying climate extremes, and especially how these affect vulnerable communities, farmers, and the environment.

The San Joaquin Valley has the worst air quality in the country, and we are depleting groundwater reserves faster than they can be replenished. If we don’t act now, we may lose the opportunity to transform California into a global model of agricultural sustainability and socioenvironmental justice.

AAS: What is this new guide you’ve published about?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: This guide presents a range of nature-based solutions with multiple benefits to address California’s socioenvironmental and water challenges. It demonstrates how we can work with nature—rather than against it—to create more resilient agricultural systems, protect vulnerable rural communities, ensure water security, and achieve social, environmental, and economic sustainability for the future. And nature-based infrastructure is often cheaper and more resilient than what is called “gray infrastructure,” that is infrastructure based on concrete.

The central approach of nature-based infrastructure is to combine strategic cropland repurposing with other multibenefit projects that can include aquifer recharge, wildlife corridors, solar energy, and buffer zones around disadvantaged communities. These projects can reduce unsustainable water use, improve air quality, create better-paying jobs, and generate new economic opportunities, all while protecting the health of rural communities.

This guide is based on the findings from our recent publication Cropland repurposing as a tool for water sustainability and just land transition in California: review and best practices that presented a framework informed by practitioners and affected groups (communities, farmers, farmworkers, the environment, the economy) for best practices in land transition implementation.

AAS: How do you imagine your recommendations being implemented in different geographic areas of California?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Implementation should be tailored to specific local challenges using different types of nature-based solutions:

For example, floodplain restoration projects can be implemented in areas experiencing flooding, ecosystem imbalance, lack of parks and recreation, or upstream of communities needing natural flood protection. Places like Stockton, California, can benefit from flood protection thanks to the Dos Rios restored floodplain, the newest California state park. The way floodplain restoration works is that it reestablishes the natural connections of rivers with their historical floodplains. As a result, natural river processes safely accommodate floods while infiltrating water to replenish aquifers and maintain steadier river flows over extended periods

Another solution is stormwater basins, which can become parks with multiple benefits that collect stormwater after heavy rains in the wet season while providing recreation in the dry season as green areas. Places like Fairmead, where I helped with a multibenefit stormwater basin project, can benefit from this type of project.

We also have multibenefit aquifer recharge projects, which replenish overextracted aquifers to increase groundwater levels and achieve water security are ideal for regions with groundwater depletion, especially if they have clean and sandy soils and are near rivers or canals. These projects balance out water pumping and water replenishment while achieving other benefits, such as flood control, creating green areas and recreation, improving drinking water quality, restoring ecosystems, and supporting other activities like clean energy generation in ecovoltaics or tourism for bird watching. Places like Teviston in Tulare County, which have excellent recharge potential thanks to their soil texture and have suffered well failures, are perfect candidates.

Wildlife corridors and habitat restoration can connect fragmented ecosystems, improve biodiversity, provide natural pest control for agriculture, and create buffer zones around disadvantaged communities exposed to pesticide drift. I love to go to the Merced Wildlife Refuge near where I live, and there is an effort at present to create wildlife corridors to connect it with the foothills of the Sierra Nevada near Yosemite.

Agrivoltaic systems—which combine solar energy production and agriculture (i.e., crops or livestock) simultaneously on the same piece of land—work well in areas with high solar potential, where farmers need income diversification, or where land repurposing from agriculture is necessary due to water constraints. These allow continued agricultural production while generating clean energy. People can learn more from our fact sheet about agrivoltaics and ecovoltaics.

Agricultural transition to agroecological practices can be implemented where soil health is degraded, synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use are excessive, or communities are experiencing health impacts from conventional agriculture—helping create better-paying, safer farmworker jobs. Some examples of agroecological practices include no-tillage, no toxic pesticides, cover crops, mulching, sustainably integrating livestock, and composting, while treating farmworkers and the environment with respect. Our friends from Allensworth (Tulare County) are implementing this vision.

These and other solutions can address specific local challenges while creating multiple benefits for communities, agriculture, and the environment.

AAS: How can people access resources to put your guide into practice?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: There are several funding sources for projects. My colleague Erin Woolley, who coauthored the guide, is our in-house expert.

First, there are federal funds available. The Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provide historic opportunities for climate and environmental justice projects. There are also state programs in California like the Land Repurposing Program, Strategic Growth Council funds, and other resources for disadvantaged communities. Lastly, there are public-private partnerships through which companies can invest in renewable energy and clean industry projects that benefit local communities.

AAS: What obstacles might the implementation of these solutions encounter in California?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: My main concern for implementation is the inertia of business as usual. We have the solutions, we have examples of successes, and we have amazing people working on this. What we need is the political will to provide more funding and incentives, and the social push to advocate for the best solutions as informed by local people who are affected first-hand by these changes. Community knowledge and needs first, along with farmers’ perspectives, are the best ways to strengthen local economies and restore our environmental health.

The key is developing specific plans with strong local leadership—like we see in Allensworth—and seeking technical assistance to navigate funding application processes.

AAS: Can you share some success stories for these nature-based solutions you’re proposing ?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Yes, we’re seeing promising examples of success:

Allensworth is an inspiring example where the Allensworth Progressive Association is developing an agroecology hub that will create local jobs, improve food security, create a safety buffer/revitalization zone, and strengthen the community economy.

Multibenefit aquifer recharge projects have demonstrated we can effectively store water during wet years for drought use. There is a good example in Okieville that we explain in the guide, but multibenefit aquifer recharge is a very promising solution that is generating a lot of interest.

Agrivoltaic systems are also a very hot topic these days. Outstanding scientists, like Professor Sarah Kurtz from UC Merced, are diving into this kind of work, and many farmers are starting to see how these systems can benefit them.

The Dos Rios floodplain restoration has been the largest floodplain restoration in California so far, transitioning around 2,000 acres of dairy land into a beautiful state park that honors Indigenous peoples with a 3-acre Indigenous garden.

These pilot projects are providing the scientific and economic evidence needed to scale solutions regionally.

AAS: If people take away just one message from your guide, what should it be?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Working with nature is environmentally right, economically smart, and socially just.

This guide demonstrates that we can create better-paying jobs, stronger economies, and healthier communities while restoring our ecosystems and securing water for the future. We don’t have to choose between economic prosperity and environmental health—we can have both if we do things right.

California’s future depends on our ability to reimagine how we use land and water to be sustainable. The solutions exist, many communities are ready, farmers know they need them, and funding is available. That’s what we’re working out now.

As we’ve learned from past civilizations, preserving the natural resilience of the land is what allows societies to thrive for millennia. California can be the example for how the world can build a truly socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable future.

Esto se debe a que Estados Unidos depende de California como su principal productor de productos agrícolas. Mientras tanto, las agroindustrias han empeorado la contaminación por pesticidas mientras agotan el suministro de agua del estado. La agricultura usa alrededor del 80% del agua de California, y es insostenible.

Sin embargo, hay soluciones, y estas involucran planificación estratégica del uso de la tierra y reúso para abordar los desafíos sociales, ecológicos y del agua de California, especialmente para las personas más desfavorecidas.

Ángel S. Fernández-Bou, científico climático senior bilingüe de la Unión de Científicos Conscientes, ha dedicado parte de su carrera a estudiar los problemas que enfrenta la tierra de California, incluyendo la agricultura, los trabajadores agrícolas y las comunidades. Ha ideado varias soluciones que pueden proteger a las personas y ayudarlas a prosperar. Estas comienzan, dice él, con escuchar y respetar el conocimiento local e indígena. Angel y la analista de UCS Erin Woolley publicaron el mes pasado una guía llamada Soluciones basadas en la naturaleza para crear resiliencia en regiones agrícolas de California, que detalla estos planes y comparte estudios de caso donde las comunidades ya están prosperando al ponerlos en práctica.

PauC: ¿Qué te preocupa más sobre el futuro ambiental de California?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Mi mayor preocupación es la intersección de múltiples crisis: el agotamiento de aguas subterráneas, el empeoramiento de la calidad del aire y la intensificación de los extremos climáticos, y especialmente cómo estos afectan a las comunidades vulnerables, los agricultores y el medio ambiente.

El Valle de San Joaquín tiene la peor calidad del aire del país, y estamos agotando las reservas de aguas subterráneas más rápido de lo que pueden reponerse.

Si no actuamos ahora, podríamos perder la oportunidad de transformar a California en un modelo global de sostenibilidad agrícola y justicia socioambiental.

PauC: ¿De qué trata esta nueva guía que acabas de publicar?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Esta guía presenta una variedad de soluciones basadas en la naturaleza con múltiples beneficios para enfrentar los desafíos socioambientales y del agua en California. Muestra cómo podemos trabajar con la naturaleza—y no contra ella—para crear sistemas agrícolas más resilientes, proteger a las comunidades rurales vulnerables, garantizar la seguridad del agua y alcanzar una sostenibilidad social, ambiental y económica para el futuro. Además, la infraestructura basada en la naturaleza suele ser más económica y resiliente que la llamada “infraestructura gris”, es decir, la infraestructura de concreto.

El enfoque central de la infraestructura basada en la naturaleza es combinar el reúso estratégico de tierras de cultivo con otros proyectos multibeneficios que pueden incluir recarga de acuíferos, corredores de vida silvestre, energía solar y zonas de amortiguamiento alrededor de comunidades desfavorecidas. Estos proyectos reducen el uso insostenible del agua, mejoran la calidad del aire, crean empleos mejor pagados y generan nuevas oportunidades económicas, todo mientras protegen la salud de las comunidades rurales.

Esta guía se basa en nuestra publicación reciente El reúso de tierras de cultivo como herramienta para la sostenibilidad del agua y una transición justa de la tierra en California: revisión y buenas prácticas (artículo científico en inglés), donde presentamos un marco informado por quienes trabajan en esto y por los grupos afectados—comunidades, agricultores, trabajadores agrícolas, el medio ambiente, la economía—para guiar las buenas prácticas en la implementación de la transición de tierras.

PauC: ¿Cómo imaginas que tus recomendaciones se implementen en diferentes áreas geográficas de California?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: La implementación debe adaptarse a los desafíos locales específicos usando diferentes tipos de soluciones basadas en la naturaleza:

Por ejemplo, los proyectos de restauración de llanuras de inundación pueden implementarse en áreas que experimentan inundaciones, desequilibrio del ecosistema, falta de parques y recreación, o aguas arriba de comunidades que necesitan protección natural contra inundaciones. Lugares como Stockton, California, pueden beneficiarse de la protección contra inundaciones gracias a la llanura de inundación restaurada de Dos Rios, el parque estatal más nuevo de California. La forma en que funciona la restauración de llanuras de inundación es que restablece las conexiones naturales de los ríos con sus llanuras de inundación históricas. Como resultado, los procesos fluviales naturales acomodan las inundaciones de manera segura mientras infiltran agua para reponer los acuíferos y mantener flujos fluviales más constantes durante períodos prolongados.

Otra solución son las cuencas de aguas pluviales, que pueden convertirse en parques con múltiples beneficios que recogen aguas pluviales después de lluvias intensas en la temporada húmeda mientras proporcionan recreación en la temporada seca como áreas verdes. Lugares como Fairmead, donde ayudé con un proyecto de cuenca de aguas pluviales multibeneficio, pueden beneficiarse de este tipo de proyecto.

También tenemos proyectos multibeneficios de recarga de acuíferos, que reponen acuíferos sobreexplotados para aumentar los niveles de aguas subterráneas y lograr seguridad hídrica, ideales para regiones con agotamiento de aguas subterráneas, especialmente si tienen suelos limpios y arenosos y están cerca de ríos o canales. Estos proyectos equilibran el bombeo de agua y la reposición de agua mientras logran otros beneficios, como control de inundaciones, creación de áreas verdes y recreación, mejora de la calidad del agua potable, restauración de ecosistemas y apoyo a otras actividades como la generación de energía limpia en ecovoltaicos o turismo para observación de aves. Lugares como Teviston en el Condado de Tulare, que tienen excelente potencial de recarga gracias a la calidad de su suelo y han sufrido fallas de pozos, son candidatos perfectos.

Los corredores de vida silvestre y la restauración de hábitat pueden conectar ecosistemas fragmentados, mejorar la biodiversidad, proporcionar control natural de plagas para la agricultura y crear zonas de amortiguamiento alrededor de comunidades desfavorecidas expuestas a la deriva de pesticidas. Me encanta ir al Refugio de Vida Silvestre de Merced cerca de donde vivo, y actualmente hay un esfuerzo para crear corredores de vida silvestre para conectarlo con las estribaciones de Sierra Nevada cerca de Yosemite.

Los sistemas agrivoltaicos—que combinan la producción de energía solar y la agricultura (es decir, cultivos o ganado) simultáneamente en el mismo terreno—funcionan bien en áreas con alto potencial solar, donde los agricultores necesitan diversificación de ingresos, o donde el reúso de tierras desde la agricultura es necesario debido a las limitaciones de agua. Estos permiten la producción agrícola continua mientras generan energía limpia. Las personas pueden aprender más de nuestra hoja informativa sobre agrivoltaicos y ecovoltaicos.

La transición agrícola hacia prácticas agroecológicas puede implementarse donde la salud del suelo está degradada, el uso de fertilizantes sintéticos y pesticidas es excesivo, o las comunidades están experimentando impactos de salud por la agricultura convencional—ayudando a crear empleos agrícolas mejor remunerados y más seguros. Algunos ejemplos de prácticas agroecologicas incluyen labranza cero, sin pesticidas tóxicos, cultivos de cobertura, mulching, integración sostenible de ganado y compostaje, todo ello respetando a los trabajadores del campo y al medio ambiente. Nuestros amigos de Allensworth (Condado de Tulare) están implementando esta visión.

Estas y otras soluciones pueden abordar desafíos locales específicos mientras crean múltiples beneficios para las comunidades, la agricultura y el medio ambiente.

PauC: ¿Cómo pueden las personas acceder a recursos para poner tu guía en práctica?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Hay varias fuentes de financiamiento para proyectos. Mi colega y coautora Erin Woolley es nuestra experta interna.

Hay algunos fondos federales disponibles. La Ley de Reducción de la Inflación y la Ley de Inversión en Infraestructura y Empleos proporcionan oportunidades históricas para proyectos de justicia climática y ambiental. También hay programas estatales en California como el Programa de Reúso de Tierras, fondos del Consejo de Crecimiento Estratégico y otros recursos para comunidades desfavorecidas. Por último, hay asociaciones público-privadas a través de las cuales las empresas pueden invertir en proyectos de energía renovable e industria limpia que beneficien a las comunidades locales.

PauC: ¿Qué obstáculos podría encontrar la implementación de estas soluciones en California?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Mi principal preocupación para la implementación es la inercia del status quo (el “business as usual” en inglés). Tenemos las soluciones, tenemos ejemplos de éxitos, y tenemos personas increíbles trabajando en esto. Lo que necesitamos es la voluntad política para proporcionar más financiamiento e incentivos, y el impulso social para abogar por las mejores soluciones según lo informado por las personas locales que son afectadas de primera mano por estos cambios. El conocimiento y las necesidades de la comunidad primero, junto con las perspectivas de los agricultores, son las mejores formas de fortalecer las economías locales y restaurar nuestra salud ambiental.

La clave es desarrollar planes específicos con un liderazgo local fuerte—como lo vemos en Allensworth—y buscar asistencia técnica para navegar los procesos de solicitud de financiamiento.

PauC: ¿Puedes compartir algunas historias de éxito de estas soluciones basadas en la naturaleza que estás proponiendo?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Sí, estamos viendo ejemplos prometedores de éxito:

Allensworth es un ejemplo inspirador donde la Asociación Progresista de Allensworth está desarrollando un centro de agroecología que creará empleos locales, mejorará la seguridad alimentaria, creará una zona de amortiguamiento de seguridad y revitalización que fortalecerá la economía comunitaria.

Los proyectos multibeneficios de recarga de acuíferos han demostrado que podemos almacenar agua eficazmente durante los años húmedos para uso en sequía. Hay un buen ejemplo en Okieville que explicamos en la guía, pero la recarga multibeneficios de acuíferos es una solución muy prometedora que está generando mucho interés.

Los sistemas agrivoltaicos también son un tema muy candente en estos días. Científicos destacados, como la Profesora Sarah Kurtz de UC Merced, se están sumergiendo en este tipo de trabajo, y muchos agricultores están comenzando a ver cómo estos sistemas pueden beneficiarlos.

La restauración de la llanura de inundación de Dos Rios ha sido la restauración de llanura de inundación más grande en California hasta ahora, que ha transicionado alrededor de 2.000 acres de una lechería en un parque estatal muy hermoso que honra a los pueblos indígenas con un jardín indígena de 3 acres.

Estos proyectos pilotos están proporcionando la evidencia científica y económica necesaria para escalar las soluciones regionalmente.

PauC: Si los lectores solo se llevan un mensaje de tu guía, ¿cuál debería ser?

ÁNGEL S. FERNÁNDEZ-BOU: Trabajar con la naturaleza es ambientalmente correcto, económicamente inteligente y socialmente justo.

Esta guía demuestra que podemos crear empleos mejor remunerados, economías más fuertes y comunidades más saludables mientras restauramos nuestros ecosistemas y aseguramos el agua para el futuro. No tenemos que elegir entre la prosperidad económica y la salud ambiental—podemos tener ambas si hacemos las cosas bien.

El futuro de California depende de nuestra capacidad de reimaginar cómo usamos la tierra y el agua para ser sostenibles. Las soluciones existen, muchas comunidades están listas, los agricultores saben que las necesitan, y el financiamiento está disponible. Ese es nuestro trabajo ahora.

Como hemos aprendido de civilizaciones pasadas, preservar la resiliencia natural de la tierra es lo que permite que las sociedades prosperen durante milenios. California puede ser el ejemplo para el mundo de cómo construir un futuro social, ambiental y económicamente sostenible.

Given current demand, I estimate corn producers could have broken even, instead of losing money as they are today, had they planted about 11 million fewer acres. The associated reduction in synthetic nitrogen fertilizer would have avoided a tremendous amount of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions—17,000 metric tons of this lesser-known but powerful heat-trapping pollutant, or about what 1.1 million cars emit in a year. It also would have kept 170,000 metric tons of nitrate from making the water in many rural wells unsafe to drink.

High input costs and weak export markets—both distorted by tariffs—get the blame for the weak farm economy, but the bigger problem is structural. Back in the spring, when farmers put seed in the ground, they already knew they were headed for a big surplus.

Behind the headlines, two things are terribly wrong in farm country that most people don’t know about: First, farmers rarely make a profit on corn. Most years, their revenues don’t cover their production costs, and taxpayers make up the difference.

Second, most corn production exacts a heavy environmental toll. Many people know that the dominant production methods harm pollinators (like bees) and other beneficial organisms, contaminate drinking water, and make lakes, rivers, and downstream coastal waters hazardous. But corn also releases a staggering amount of N₂O, largely from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applied to fields.

These are consequences of chronic overproduction. And agricultural economists point to one straightforward solution: plant less corn on fewer acres.

Every farm counts

We’ve already lost far too many farming families, and each one that disappears is a loss for rural communities and our food system. This year’s farm economy is pushing many growers to the brink, with mounting debt and collapsing prices threatening a wave of bankruptcies in the months ahead.

Policy should aim to keep every single farm family thriving—and grow their numbers. That means making farm economics work, not through endless subsidies or externalized environmental costs, but through a fair and functional market.

How does too much corn cause too little profit for farmers?

The answer is simple: supply and demand. Livestock, ethanol, and products like sweeteners and oils all require a large but relatively stable amount of corn. When farmers collectively plant more than that demand, oversupply drives down the price. (While not my focus here, the ethanol and livestock sectors also exhibit substantial market distortions and environmental costs.)

Based on recently released USDA numbers, I estimate that the large amount of surplus corn drove 2025 farm revenues down to about $159.50 per acre below the break-even point. In other words, corn prices would need to rise 22% just to cover farmers’ costs. (See my calculations below.)

This means production overshot demand by roughly 2.0 billion bushels—about the output of 11 million acres. Had those acres not been planted, prices would have been higher and average corn production revenues would have covered costs.

Surplus acres, surplus pollution

Planting less corn wouldn’t just mean fair pay for farmers and avoided taxpayer bailouts—it would also save billions in environmental damage.

Looking only at the pollution from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use, I estimate that planting corn on those 11 million acres emitted about 17,000 metric tons of N₂O (4.7 MtCO₂e), moving us farther away from climate goals and likely causing around $940 million in damages. This is a conservative estimate; recent research suggests that soil microbes in US row crop fields convert synthetic nitrogen fertilizer into N₂O at a rate three times higher than standard factors suggest.

In terms of water pollution, this excess corn leached about 170,000 metric tons of nitrate into water supplies, making drinking water unsafe and harming aquatic ecosystems.

And remember: That’s the pollution just from the surplus acres of corn. It doesn’t count the damage from the other more than 80 million acres planted nationwide.

Why don’t farmers just plant less?

Partly because they can’t—because of something agricultural economists call “the treadmill of production.” Unlike Apple, which carefully forecasts demand and produces iPhones to match, farmers act individually. Suppliers and grain buyers—feedlots, ethanol refineries, exporters—are few and powerful, while farmers are many and disconnected. This imbalance means farmers can’t collectively reduce supply to stabilize prices.

Another reason is—you guessed it—subsidies. As I said above, farmers knew they were planting too much and wouldn’t break even again this year. Yet instead of being able to coordinate supply with demand—or having the government help them do so, as once was the case before agribusiness interests reshaped the system—today’s farm policy leaves them little choice but to plant as much as possible. Programs like crop insurance, price loss coverage, and marketing loans guarantee that taxpayers will shoulder the losses, creating incentives that perpetuate chronic overproduction of corn while disadvantaging alternative markets.

That’s why cooperatives and coordinated supply management matter (not that either is a silver bullet). As a member-owned cooperative, for example, Organic Valley has kept thousands of family dairy farms afloat by projecting demand and coordinating supply so that prices cover the true cost of production.

Smart farm policy has a role too, as it once did with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA). By paying farmers to cut acres, the AAA reduced oversupply, raised farm incomes, and provided critical relief during the depths of the Great Depression. Ironically, today’s farm bill—the AAA’s descendant—flips that logic. Instead of stabilizing markets, its subsidized crop insurance, direct payments, and other subsidies, together with ethanol mandates under the Renewable Fuel Standard, now fuel the very overproduction the law was meant to stop.

Of course, food is different from iPhones—because it nourishes people. But here’s the irony: Most US corn doesn’t actually feed people. About a third is burned as ethanol and much of the rest is fed to livestock and processed into sweeteners and oils. If Apple made iPhones the way we grow corn, it would be flooding stores with devices no one asked for, then selling them at a loss while taxpayers covered the difference.

This is the simple supply story. The real story is even more devastating. Once the United States locked itself into chronic corn surpluses, markets and policy evolved to soak up the excess. Ethanol emerged as a policy-enabled outlet and livestock systems intensified and consolidated to capitalize on low-cost feed. Advertising campaigns like “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” and “Got Milk?” are efforts to manufacture demand for mountains of surplus meat and dairy raised on unnaturally cheap grain.

A smarter path forward

The solution is as simple as it is difficult: stop overproducing. If we planted fewer acres of corn, farmers could earn a fair return without taxpayer bailouts, while pollution would drop dramatically. Real change will take time, but it starts with understanding the problem and uniting behind farmer-led solutions that restore both land and livelihoods.

Yes, feeding a growing global population is a real concern. But we’re far from that problem today. Right now, our crisis is overproduction—making society and the environment sick while driving skilled farmers out of business.

This isn’t radical. It’s how every healthy sector of the economy works. No car company produces unlimited vehicles just because it can. It projects demand, sets supply, and prices accordingly. Agriculture deserves the same rationality and fairness.

Because at the end of the day, every single farm matters. And if we want more farm families—not fewer—we need policy that makes that vision real.

Showing my work

Here’s the math for estimating oversupply and its consequences for farm income and the environment.

Step 1: Farmers’ bottom line. According to the USDA’s 2024 Costs and Returns data, it costs an average of $887.63 per acre to grow corn when you include full economic costs (not just out-of-pocket expenses). In 2024, average gross revenue was only $757.48 per acre, leaving farmers with a loss of ~$130 per acre. To estimate the net profit for 2025, we have to use the 2024 costs estimates until the USDA releases the new numbers in January. Costs are expected to rise (especially fertilizer) this year, so this will be a conservative estimate. On the revenue side, for 2025, the USDA’s September WASDE report projects yields of 186.7 bushels/acre at a price of $3.90/bushel, which equals ~$728 per acre. That’s a predicted shortfall in 2025 of ~$160 per acre.

Step 2: What price would farmers need? To break even, farmers would need that extra $160/acre in revenue. Spread across 186.7 bushels/acre, that means prices would have to rise by $0.85/bushel, or ~22% (from $3.90 to $4.75/bushel).

Step 3: How much would supply have to shrink? Prices rise when supply drops, but by how much depends on demand elasticity. For corn, -0.548 is a reasonable average based on published estimates (like this and this). (This means a 10% rise in price cuts demand by ~5.5%.) Using that elasticity, to get a 22% price increase, supply would need to shrink by roughly 12%. On a national corn crop of 16.8B bushels, that works out to about 2.0B bushels of excess supply, or the output of ~11M acres.

Step 4: N₂O emissions from the excess corn. Corn farmers apply an average of 151.8 lb of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer per acre on the ~95% of corn acres that receive fertilizer. Multiply by 11M acres and that’s about 1.6B lb of nitrogen (N) applied to acres we didn’t need.

• Field emissions: In the United States, ~1.3% of synthetic N applied is released directly as nitrous oxide (N₂O-N), which equals ~20M lb N₂O-N. That 1.3% comes from higher rates in wetter fields (1.6% on ~74% of corn acres) and lower rates in drier fields (0.5% on ~26% of acres) but is often considered too low.
• Water emissions: The IPCC estimates that 24% of applied N leaches into water (~370M lb N). Of that, the IPCC estimates 1.1% is released as N₂O-N, adding ~4.1M lb.
• Total N₂O-N (from field and water): 20M + 4.1M equals ~24M lb.
• Total N₂O: Converted to N₂O itself, that’s ~38M lb, or ~17,000 metric tons N₂O. When converted to CO₂-equivalent using the IPCC’s global warming potential (273), that’s ~4.7 MtCO₂e.
• With the EPA’s social cost of N₂O at $54,000 per tonne, those climate damages add up to roughly $940M.

Step 5: Nitrate pollution. The 370M lb of N lost to water as nitrate (NO3-N) (~170,000 metric tons) is a staggering load of nitrate flowing into rivers, lakes, and drinking water.

The report cancellation was announced in a brief press release from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Saturday (apparently in response to an internal leak of the cancellation decision) that spouted nonsense about its Household Food Security Reports. Conveniently for the current occupant of the White House and his enablers, the USDA will only release food insecurity survey data for 2024, the last full year of the Biden administration, and nothing beyond that.

It’s the latest sign that the president and his allies are hell-bent on eliminating science and data that don’t support their political agenda.

What is food insecurity?

To understand the significance of this development, you need to know that food insecurity is not the same as hunger, but it’s related. The experts at Feeding America define it in simple terms: “It’s when people don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal will come from.”

The Economic Research Service (ERS), the USDA unit that issues the Household Food Security Reports, further defines two distinct levels of food insecurity.

• Low food security (old label = food insecurity without hunger): Reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
• Very low food security (old label = food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.

In 2023, 47.4 million people lived in food-insecure households. But rates of food insecurity are not intractable and unchanging. Instead, food insecurity goes up and down as economic conditions and food prices change, and in response to changes in food assistance programs that help low-income households afford food. According to the USDA’s most recent Household Food Security Report, the share of US households experiencing food insecurity increased from 12.8% in 2022 to 13.5% in 2023. It was the second annual increase in a row and a reversal of the previous trend—rates had hit a two-decade low in 2021 following congressional action to increase food assistance and other benefits for families with children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a measure of individual or community well-being, food security/insecurity is limited. As a former colleague wrote back in 2023, “While current food insecurity rates may be shocking, they likely do not reflect the true scale of hunger and poor nutrition in this country. Our government only measures how much we eat, not whether what we eat is good for us, our communities, and our environment.”

That said, it’s the measure we have, and our national nutrition outlook won’t be improved in any way by discontinuing it. Instead, eliminating future reporting of food insecurity in the United States will only hide the cascading impacts of many of the policies President Trump and his allies are pursuing right now.

Why are food prices going up?

That brings me to the reasons for recent rising food prices, which anyone who goes grocery shopping regularly is familiar with. New data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index show that food prices increased by 0.5% from July to August, the fastest monthly change in three years. And compared to August 2024, last month’s overall grocery prices were up almost 3%. If this trend continues, it won’t be long before many previously food-secure households will start to have trouble affording enough food.

And sadly, it may well continue. When you start looking at all the policies coming out of the current White House, it’s not hard to see why.

A food industry analyst interviewed by CBS News named three drivers of high food prices: tariffs on imported food items, climate change, and a shortage of agricultural and food workers. In each case, the policies pursued by the president and his allies in Congress are exacerbating these problems rather than solving them.

Take the president’s ever-changing and steep tariffs, many of which kicked in recently. These are driving up the cost of common imported foods including bananas, coffee, and seafood, along with staples like oatmeal, rice, and sugar. As winter arrives in the Northern Hemisphere in just a few months, more of the fruits and vegetables we eat will be imported from countries like Mexico and Peru, and if Trump’s tariff policies continue, they will be more expensive.

Food prices will also rise in response to extreme weather driven by climate change. A recent study examined 16 examples of extreme heat, drought, or heavy precipitation around the world between 2022 and 2024, to see how they affected food prices in the short term. In one example, after a summer of extreme western US drought in 2022, the price of vegetables in Arizona and California shot up 80% compared with the previous November. But the president and his cronies continue to deny the science and impact of climate change.

As for the shortage of food and farm workers, that is playing out the way many of us predicted, only worse. ICE raids on US farms and food processing facilities have arrested and scared off immigrant workers, leaving crops unharvested and straining capacity at meat and poultry plants.

And there’s another action the Trump enablers in Congress have taken that will surely worsen food insecurity in the months and years ahead. The infamous One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed on partisan lines earlier this year, took an axe to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). The nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which studies the SNAP program, estimates that “approximately 4 million people in a typical month will lose some or all of their SNAP food benefits once the changes are fully implemented.”

If an administration and Congress were trying to make more people hungrier, they’d be hard-pressed to take a combination of actions that would do it more effectively than the Trump playbook.

Having more data is never a bad thing

The move by the USDA to cancel its food insecurity survey comes as efforts to suppress inconvenient science are intensifying across the federal government. At the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other agencies, scientists, economists, and statisticians are being muzzled and their findings buried.

In the case of the food insecurity study, the Trump loyalists now running the USDA justified its cancellation by calling it “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.” Let’s take those one at a time.

How are the data redundant? The USDA survey serves as the official data source of national food insecurity statistics. There is no secondary or alternative report with that information. Without it, we simply won’t know.

Costly? Compared to what? The entire budget for the ERS, which produces the food security reports along with many, many other studies, was $310.5 million in FY 2024. That’s a mere 0.2% of the entire USDA budget, which itself is just 3% of all federal spending. It’s a tiny price to pay for data and analyses that inform a broad swath of food, farm, and rural policies. What’s really costly is food insecurity itself. Research from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that US food insecurity levels in 2016 led to approximately $52.9 billion in unnecessary spending on health care—about 4% of total annual health care expenditures.

Politicized? The ERS has produced these reports for three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In charging politicization, the Trump administration is yet again making an accusation that is actually a confession. Canceling studies that highlight problems you don’t want to solve—and are actively making worse—is the epitome of politicization.

And extraneous? How? Understanding trends in the ability of people to afford enough food seems deeply relevant to a healthy, functioning society. It’s relevant to the stated mission of the USDA itself: to “provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science, and effective management.”

We the people deserve the truth

According to a new report from colleagues here at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the current Trump administration carried out a mind-boggling 479 attacks on science in just its first seven months. That’s about as anti-science as you can get. And when it comes to burying inconvenient data, the intent is clear: If we don’t measure or report [FILL IN THE BLANK], we can say it isn’t happening.

To make matters worse in this case, new Wall Street Journal reporting suggests that USDA leadership is retaliating against ERS employees accused of alerting the media and the public to this study cancellation.

In its hastily issued statement last weekend, the USDA said its food insecurity reports “do nothing more than fearmonger.” But the truth is that people in this country are already afraid for the future, and with good reason.

We don’t need to have bad news withheld—we need to know exactly what problems our country is facing, and what our government is doing to solve them.

Rollins designated her deputy, Stephen Vaden, to fill in the details and implement the plan. Not coincidentally, Vaden presided over a damaging, discriminatory, and likely illegal relocation of USDA research staff in the first Trump administration in 2019, when he was the department’s General Counsel. The USDA cannot afford a repeat of that debacle.

Already, Rollins has done serious damage in just over six months. After giving a speech to employees about public service on her first day at the USDA back in February, she made a mockery of those words, canceling grants, burying science, and abetting Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in driving out more than 16,000 USDA employees. A recent White House budget request, if passed by Congress, would cut billions from the USDA, further chipping away at its ability to support farmers, protect our food supply, and ensure that everyone in this country can eat.

With this reorganization plan, Rollins seems committed to finishing the job of dismantling the department she is supposed to serve.

Of course, all of this isn’t happening in isolation. Across the government, the Trump administration has been cutting other valuable government functions indiscriminately and treating highly skilled federal employees as “waste” to be eliminated from agency balance sheets. At the Union of Concerned Scientists, we’ve written about how we’re all put at risk from efforts to fire scientists and dismantle science at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now it’s apparently the USDA’s turn to take the hit.

After stakeholders including members of Congress from both parties reacted to the Rollins reorganization memo with surprise and alarm, she indicated that the department would accept public comments on the plan through late August. It appeared to be an afterthought, and it bypassed the normal notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Senators have continued to object to the rushed and secretive nature of the process and have called for more time and transparency for public review and input. The USDA quietly extended the comment deadline to September 30, but comments from stakeholders—likely including many Big Ag corporations and lobby groups—remain hidden from public view.

Although the USDA’s invitation for feedback appears more symbolic than substantive, we submitted the following comments and are sharing them here to put our concerns on record.

August 26, 2025

The Honorable Stephen Vaden
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave SW
Washington, DC 20250

Dear Deputy Secretary Vaden:

On behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and its more than 600,000 supporters nationwide, I am writing to comment on the USDA reorganization plan laid out by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in Secretary Memorandum: SM 1078-015on July 24, 2025.

We urge USDA to:

1. Withdraw SM 1078-015 and suspend further staff relocations or reductions in force.
2. Engage stakeholders transparently, including Congress, farmers, and USDA employees, in any future reorganization discussions.
3. Prioritize mission-critical capacity—including science, technical assistance, and inspection—over arbitrary cuts.

Farmers, rural communities, and consumers depend on USDA’s expertise. Relocations that drive out seasoned scientists and other skilled staff weaken the department’s capacity, undermine its mission, and shortchange taxpayers. We urge you to change course before more damage is done.

UCS is a national science-based non-profit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. We combine independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

We value the mission of the USDA to support farmers, protect our food supply, and ensure that everyone in this country can eat, and we are troubled by the likelihood that this reorganization will undermine that mission by driving out scientists and other dedicated public servants.

Prior forced relocations of USDA staff hurt the department and its mission

In her confirmation hearing, Secretary Rollins told the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry that “[a]ll Americans are important. But the farmer . . . is the American important to all Americans.” And in a speech to USDA employees on her first day on the job, she spoke about the principles of public service that she valued in USDA employees, and that would guide her leadership of the department. However, this reorganization plan is not in keeping with those statements.

Public service requires public servants. Yet by mid-April, as many as 16,000 of those public servants—more than one in six USDA employees—had reportedly departed. Many were illegally fired, some were reinstated under court order but expected to be fired again, and after all this chaos and reported abuse, many thousands reluctantly resigned under so-called deferred resignation programs (DRPs). Despite the magnitude of these losses, the forced relocations at the heart of this reorganization plan appear designed to drive thousands more public servants out of the department.

As you know, there is ample evidence of this from your time as USDA General Counsel in the first Trump administration. In 2019, you and then-Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue carried out an abrupt relocation of scientists and staff at the USDA’s two science agencies—the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)—from USDA headquarters in DC to Kansas City, Missouri. Chaos ensued, as documented by a report from the USDA’s own inspector general and two others from the Government Accountability Office (here and here): the relocation violated the law, was based on faulty data, and ultimately hobbled these science agencies, as some 75% of their employees eventually left their jobs rather than uproot their lives and families. The USDA lost hundreds of experienced scientists, spending millions at the expense of taxpayers and farmers who count on USDA services, with little to no benefit.

That relocation was clearly not planned with the needs of USDA science, farmers or taxpayers in mind; it squandered millions of dollars and stalled hundreds of important studies and grants. It was a serious setback for science and taxpayers, and a disservice to the farmers, rural communities, and consumers the USDA serves. Yet now, the reorganization plan Secretary Rollins has tasked you with implementing seems to double down on this past grievous error.

Gutting the USDA’s staff (again) is bad for farmers and all Americans

Secretary Rollins told the Wall Street Journal in April that proposed job cuts would not disrupt services—for example, reporting and forecasting about the farm economy—that farmers rely on. But how can it not? Empty chairs don’t crunch data. They also do not:

• Help farmers make climate-informed planting decisions—The USDA’s Climate Hubs provide much needed regionalized research and technical assistance for farmers facing increased climate challenges. Combined with the president’s budget proposal, which would zero out funding for these centers, further staff losses would harm farmers’ efforts to increase their resilience and protect future harvests.
• Keep invasive crop pests away from US farms—As many as 700 employees of the USDA’s Plant Protection and Quarantine division had departed by mid-April. These scientists, skilled workers, and senior administrators were tasked with inspecting fruit and vegetable shipments to intercept foreign pests and acting to limit damage from pests already present on US farms and forest land.
• Detect and limit new bird flu outbreaks—The layoff of scientists, inspectors, and critical office staff in early 2025 proved to be ill-conceived and damaging for the implementation of Secretary Rollins’ strategy to curb avian influenza as several fired employees were essential to her plan and needed to be rehired. The USDA is still leading the battle against the avian influenza strain that reached the United States in 2022 and further disruptions to staffing would impair their ability to respond to new threats.
• Inspect our food for safety—By early May, 555 employees at the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service had accepted a deferred resignation offer. These highly trained public servants were responsible for ensuring the safety of our meat, poultry, and egg products through inspections at slaughtering and packaging establishments.

Just as with the administration’s dangerous cuts to public health and medical research, all of this amounts to self-sabotage. Secretary Rollins herself seemed, albeit belatedly, to understand that when she sent urgent emails in April to some employees who had accepted, or were considering, early resignation under the latest DRP, asking them to reconsider.

With the current reorganization memo, the Secretary seems to be reversing course again and indicating that maintaining mission-critical staff is not a priority of the administration.

Conclusion

US farmers and consumers already face substantial uncertainty as a result of global trade chaos, worker deportations, rising costs for farm inputs and food, and a climate crisis that the administration seems determined to deny. As we have noted above, too many USDA scientists and staff have already been driven from their important jobs helping farmers and the public navigate these challenges.

The USDA can ill afford another exodus of talented public servants. Further losses will undermine the agency’s ability to provide vital programs and technical support to farmers and rural communities who need them, at a time when their ability to stay afloat is already strained. We urge USDA to change course.

Sincerely,

Karen Perry Stillerman
Deputy Director, Food and Environment Program
Union of Concerned Scientists

What is he talking about?

How we got here

A quick refresher: In July 2025, President Trump signed a massive budget bill that slashed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which more than 40 million people rely on to help feed themselves and their families. The bill used money from these SNAP cuts to pay for additional farm subsidies on certain commodity crops, which largely benefit the wealthiest farmers in the country.

The budget bill’s decimation of SNAP funding has caused a deep rift in the traditional farm bill coalition of farmers and nutrition advocates, making a full-scale farm bill more challenging—if not impossible—to achieve. Plus, since the budget bill already addressed many issues typically left to a farm bill (like nutrition assistance), there’s less for a new farm bill to tackle—hence why a potentially slimmed-down (or “skinny”) farm bill seems the most likely option in the months ahead.

If some type of farm bill isn’t signed into law by the end of the year, Congress will need to pass another extension (this would be the third such extension, for anyone keeping score) in order to keep agricultural programs running. The current farm bill extension expires on September 30, so the clock is ticking.

The best-case (but highly unlikely) scenario

First of all, any farm bill needs to reckon with the damage done by the recent budget bill. It should begin by taking steps to restore SNAP funding and ensure that recipients are able to purchase healthy meals for themselves and their families with the program’s benefits.

But a new farm bill can, and should, do much more. It should also be a blueprint for a better food and farm system, as UCS has advocated for years.

Some priorities UCS believes any new farm bill legislation should include:

Conservation and climate

• A new farm bill should strengthen popular voluntary conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) that support farmers’ engagement in an array of conservation practices on their lands, such as cover crops and no-till farming, that keep farms productive while preserving soil, water, and wildlife.
• The bill should strengthen efforts to prioritize soil health across CSP, EQIP, and other conservation programs.
• The bill should strengthen conservation technical assistance by setting aside funding to assist producers in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Food and farm workers

• Any farm bill must ensure the safety and dignity of food and farm workers who form the backbone of American agriculture. It must prioritize workers by instituting workplace safety and health protections, as well as protecting them from harm and harassment.

Equity

• A new farm bill should support small, beginning, and diverse farmers by increasing access to land and credit, supporting agricultural programs at historically Black colleges and universities, ensuring farmers have access to training and technical assistance support, and creating an Office of Small Farms.

Nutrition

• Any new farm bill must restore cuts to SNAP funding made in the budget bill.
• It should also strengthen programs such as the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP), which provides incentives for eligible consumers to purchase fruits and vegetables, and the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), which supports the development and expansion of local and regional food markets.

Agricultural research

• A new farm bill should support agricultural research by reauthorizing the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE), with yearly mandatory funding of at least $100 million.
• It should also support the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the nation’s leading competitive grants program for agricultural science, and add a research priority to AFRI focused on “research at the intersection of production, climate and the environment, and nutrition and health equity,” also known as sustainable nutrition science.
• Finally, a new farm bill should codify into law the national network of regional climate hubs.

The worst-case scenario

The priorities above should be a baseline for any future food and farm bill. But what would a bad bill look like?

Chairman Thompson hasn’t shared the full details of what he wants to include in his skinny farm bill. However, he has stated that he plans to base any new legislation on the House version of the farm bill he introduced in 2024. This bill passed in the House Agriculture Committee in May 2024, but never received a floor vote. UCS did not support it due to its elimination of climate-focused agriculture requirements in conservation programs, harmful changes to how SNAP benefits are calculated, and lack of protections for food and farm workers.

If a new skinny farm bill echoes the previous House version, that would be extremely unfortunate (if not surprising), and could be deeply damaging to our food and farm system. Such a bill would likely struggle to gain support from House Democrats, especially after Republicans effectively blew up the longstanding farm bill coalition by stuffing SNAP cuts and increased commodity subsidies for wealthy farmers into the budget bill.

We should not settle for less than what’s possible

For the past several years, UCS has advocated for a transformational farm bill that creates a better food system for farmers and farmworkers, for our environment, and for the food we eat. But UCS is also clear-eyed that such a bill may not happen in the current Congress, or under the purview of the current administration. Until we reach a moment when we can ensure that our country gets the legislation it deserves and needs to strengthen our food system, the refrain that “no farm bill is better than a bad farm bill” still rings true.

Congress and the Trump administration are trying to address rising imports with preferences for North American fuels and feedstocks in tax policy and penalties for imports in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed standards for 2026 and 2027 under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). But the fatal flaw in the RFS proposal is that it ignores any realistic assessment of how much domestic feedstock is available for fuel production, proposing volumes that far exceed domestic feedstock availability. These mandates can only be met with a combination of imports and counterproductive shuffling of vegetable oil out of food markets and into fuel markets, where it will be backfilled with increased imports in these markets. This will raise fuel prices for drivers, increase the deficit, raise food prices, increase global hunger and accelerate deforestation.

If the US government wants to support a homegrown biofuel industry it needs to be realistic about the available homegrown resources and scale its policies accordingly. The US no longer has any surplus vegetable oil or animal fat, and further enlarging mandates for bio-based diesel fuels will increase US reliance on imports in the form of biofuels, inputs to biofuel production or imports of oils and fats to replace those diverted from food to fuel use.

Longer term, novel feedstocks like winter cover crops, perennial crops, or agricultural residues can support increased biofuel production while improving water quality and soil health in the US Midwest. Supporting the development of these underutilized resources would be a smart long-term strategy, with positive returns to US farmers and energy security. But that will take time, and in the meantime, EPA should be scaling back biofuel mandates based on a realistic assessment of domestic feedstock availability. With recently enacted changes to tax policy, domestic feedstocks already enjoy a substantial preference over imports, so scaling back mandates to match domestic feedstock availability would primarily reduce imports of feedstock and fuel while continuing to support production of fuels made from domestic feedstocks. This would save drivers and taxpayers money and reduce harm to the environment and food markets.

Bio-based diesel has outgrown domestic feedstocks

The rapid growth of bio-based diesel consumption has outpaced domestic feedstock production as shown in Figure 1 below. By 2024 the feedstock required to produce all the bio-based diesel produced or imported to the US exceeded total US production of oils and fats for all uses. With fuel production now consuming more fats and oils than total US production, the US is increasingly dependent on imports for vegetable oil for fuel, food and other uses. Increasing the domestic share of bio-based diesel feedstock by increasing imports in food markets does not in any meaningful way improve US energy security, and it is costly for consumers and harmful to the environment and food markets in the US and around the world.

Where does the feedstock come from?

While Figure 1 compares total US production of vegetable oils and fats to feedstock requirements of US BBD consumption, Figure 2 looks specifically at the feedstock used to produce BBD and what share of these feedstocks were imported. It shows that the surge in BBD consumption between 2022 and 2024 relied heavily on imported feedstocks and fuels, which is not surprising given that BBD consumption is growing so much faster than domestic feedstock production.

The US has become a major vegetable oil importer

While the US is importing 5.5 Million Metric Tons (MMT) of BBD feedstock and another 3.3 MMT of feedstock in the form of finished fuel, this understates the overall impact, because the US is also importing steadily more of the vegetable oil it uses for food. Figure 3 shows total US trade balance in all oils and fats, for food, fuel and other uses. Before the biofuel era, the US had almost balanced trade in vegetable oil, with net imports of less than 1 MMT in 2011. Imports have grown steadily and took off in the last few years with net imports now exceeding 9 MMT. The US generally has a large agricultural surplus, exporting more agricultural commodities than it imports, but for vegetable oil the US is now the 4th largest importer of vegetable oil in the world, behind only India, China and the European Union.

Wonk Alert: jump to the conclusion for the TL;DR

The discussion below gets almost four thousand words deep into the details of the EPA’s Proposed Renewable Fuel Standards for 2026 and 2027 and was submitted as my public comment. Click here to jump to the conclusion.

The RFS proposal exceeds domestic feedstock availability by 3 billion gallons

To evaluate the EPA proposal, I’ll switch back to billions of gallons of fuel. Converting the feedstock figures above to gallons, in 2024 the US consumed 5.6 billion gallons of bio-based diesel, but only 3.2 billion gallons, or about 57 percent, were made from domestic feedstocks. Looking forward, EPA’s analysis finds that domestic feedstock availability could support annual increases of 275 million gallons of bio-based diesel. On page 297 of the Draft Regulatory Impact Assessment (DRIA) EPA summarizes various projections of available soybean oil to BBD producers. USDA’s estimate is 50 million gallons a year, while the American Soybean Association suggests 350 million gallons a year. To put these numbers in context, trend yield growth of soybeans over the last 50 years is 0.51 bushels per acre per year, so yield growth from the approximately 85 million acres of soybeans harvested each year in the US would supply less than 60 million gallons of BBD[iii], even if all the yield growth was devoted to fuel production. Growth rates for soybean oil that exceed this figure cannot be met with yield growth, and imply diversion of soybeans from existing markets and expansion of acreage of soybeans at the expense of other crops or land uses. EPA does a similar analysis for fats oils and greases and canola oil and produces the following summary on page 304.

EPA’s decision to project a 250 million gallon annual increase in soybean oil is far above yield growth and much closer to that of industry studies than USDA’s projection of 50 millions gallons a year. But even with this optimistic estimate, EPA still projects only 275 million gallons per year of available domestic BBD feedstock, and the majority of available feedstock in this assessment (350 million gallons of BBD) is imported. Adding EPA’s assessment of domestic availability to production from domestic feedstocks in 2024 would support not more than 3.75 billion gallons of domestic BBD in 2026. Yet the proposed standard is about 3 billion gallons more than that. This is a recipe for substantial increases in imported feedstock and the diversion of domestic feedstock from food to fuel markets.

Discounting credits for imported feedstocks and fuels is unnecessary and counterproductive

EPA arbitrarily proposes to discount the compliance value for imported feedstocks and fuels by 50 percent, motivated by the desire to focus the RFS on domestic feedstock. The compliance credits under the RFS are referred to as RINs for Renewable ID Numbers, and they are the currency of the RFS. The EPA proposes that imported fuels or fuels made from imported feedstocks would generate just 50 percent as many RINs as fuels made from domestic feedstocks. This RIN discounting proposal came as a surprise, and it appears to have been developed late in the process of EPA’s analysis, as it is inconsistent with the framework adopted in bulk of EPAs analysis in the DRIA.

The goal of prioritizing domestic production is not itself unreasonable and is consistent with the statutory goals of the RFS. However, the proposed RIN discounting mechanism is a poorly designed tool for that job. Recently enacted changes to the 45Z biofuel tax credit ensure that North American feedstocks and fuels already enjoy a substantial preference, rendering the RIN discounting redundant. Moreover, as a mechanism to reduce imports the RIN discounting mechanism will backfire, since while RINs issued for imported fuels will be reduced, the overall size of the mandate will not be adjusted, so twice the volume of imports will be required to meet the portion of the RFS that cannot be met with domestic feedstocks and fuels. This approach also undermines market clarity by adding uncertainty into how much biofuel will ultimately be required to comply with the RFS.

One major impact of the RIN discounting will be to divert a lot of US vegetable oils from existing uses to use making fuel. The diversion of domestic feedstock from food to fuel uses is discussed in the DRIA in section 3.2. On page 95, EPA explains that the 50 percent reduction in RINs for imported feedstock “will incentivize BBD producers to pay higher prices for these domestic vegetable oils than their current markets. […] other markets will turn to imported canola oil and/or corn oil to satisfy their market demand, or alternatively will switch to other vegetable oils in greater supply or reduce their use of vegetable oils.” To put some numbers to this, if the price of a bio-based diesel RIN is $1.50, a pound of domestic soybean oil will be worth 15 cents more to a renewable diesel producer than imported soybean oil, but a producer of food or other products will not receive this premium for domestic feedstocks. Average annual prices for soybean oil have ranged from 28 to 73 cents per pound over the last decade, averaging 45 cents per pound, so a 15 cent per pound difference is 20-50 percent of the value of the oil. In a commodity market this seems likely to overwhelm other factors and lead to extensive diversion of soybean oil from food to fuel uses, with these non-fuel markets backfilled with imported oils. Notably, EPA names only canola and corn oil as potential import replacements, ignoring palm oil and soybean oil, which account for two thirds of global vegetable oil exports, and are closely linked to deforestation.

Who pays the price for larger mandates and who benefits?

The cost of policies supporting bio-based diesel is considerable. As Professor Irwin at farmdoc daily explains, bio-based diesel prices (not counting direct and indirect subsidies) tend to be about double those of fossil diesel, a difference of about $2 per gallon, which must be made up by policy. There are a number of different policies that determine how these costs are distributed to different parties. Generally, costs are borne by people buying gasoline and diesel and taxpayers that bear the cost of tax credits. US BBD consumption exceeded 5 billion gallons in 2024, meaning the total costs are above $10 billion a year, and as the volumes rise so do the costs[iv].

Most of that money is simply wasted, turning expensive vegetable oil into cheap diesel. Moreover, because vegetable oil production, biodiesel production and renewable diesel production are mature technologies, there is no realistic prospect that scaling up production will bring down costs. By design, the RFS was intended to support the development of innovative not-yet commercialized technologies that would produce low carbon cellulosic biofuels from inexpensive and underutilized agricultural residues or high yielding perennial grasses that build soil carbon and reduce erosion and water pollution. While the commercialization of cellulosic biofuels has moved much more slowly than was envisioned in 2007, when the RFS was last amended, scaling up the productive use of underutilized and sustainable feedstocks remains a worthwhile policy goal. However, ramping up mandates for mature commodities far beyond domestic availability is inconsistent with the statutory criteria EPA is required to consider in setting biofuel volumes under the RFS.

The largest share of the cost of BBD support is transferred to US fuel consumers through the RFS. Analysis by the EPA in the DRIA find that more than 90 percent of the cost of complying with the RFS, $6.7 billion a year, is associated with BBD. These costs are spread across all the gasoline and diesel fuel consumed in the United States, adding about 10 cents per gallon to the cost of diesel fuel and 4.5 cents per gallon to gasoline, according to EPA’s DRIA[v]

A portion of the cost is also born by taxpayers who subsidize biofuel production through tax credits. Increasing the size of the RFS increases the cost of these tax credits, adding to the deficit and debt. The unprecedented nature of the RFS proposal, the uncertainty in how much feedstock will be imported and how US and global agriculture markets will respond and the simultaneous changes in tax policy make it difficult to project with confidence the overall and distributional impact on costs for US drivers and taxpayers. My intuition is that EPA’s estimates are too low, but more thorough analysis is needed. Ultimately we won’t know the full cost until the policy is implemented.

Despite this uncertainty, it is clear the costs of the proposal far exceed the benefits. The only monetized economic benefits spelled out in the proposal are $163 million in energy security benefits, or 3 percent of the fuel costs. EPA does not include any estimate of environmental costs or benefits, but as discussed below it is clear based on EPA analysis that the increase in crop-based fuels driven by the proposal would increase deforestation and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Insofar as anyone wins from this proposal, the primary beneficiaries are palm oil producers. Even though palm oil is not used directly to make biofuel in the US, EPA analysis and common sense make it clear that palm oil (as the largest source of vegetable oil production and exports in the world) and other foreign feedstocks will backfill food markets in the US and around the world that had previously been consuming soybean oil. Meat producers around the globe may also benefit from cheap soybean meal subsidized by US drivers and taxpayers. And oil companies (the petroleum variety) benefit in three ways: by producing heavily subsidized bio-based diesel; by reducing compliance costs of fuel regulations in states with Low Carbon Fuel Standards[vi]; and by misleading the public about the feasible low carbon alternatives to gasoline and diesel.

The proposal will lead to costly feedstock diversion without significantly expanding demand for soybeans and a limited and uncertain impact on soybean prices

Increasing the RFS mandate beyond domestic feedstock availability will provide a limited benefit to US farmers, because they can’t sell more soybeans than they produce. EPA does not project expanded production of soybeans. Two potential responses to increased demand for domestic feedstock are the diversion of domestic feedstocks from existing markets, and the diversion of whole soybeans from overseas crushing facilities to domestic crushing facilities. EPA’s projection that domestic soybean oil availability would grow by 250 million pounds, discussed above and in section 7.2.4.1 of the DRIA, already assumes rapid expansion of domestic crushing capacity, consistent with input from the soybean industry. Crush capacity expansion beyond this level is unlikely in the timeframe of the proposal since it takes several years to build additional crushing capacity.

But neither diverting US soybean oil from food to fuel nor diverting exported soybeans to domestic crushing facilities will increase overall demand for soybeans. The global market for soybeans is ultimately constrained by demand for soybean meal, which makes up 80 percent of each bushel of soybeans. The RFS proposal combined with the changes to tax policy will lead to shuffling of vegetable oil in US and global markets, as domestic soybean oil is redirected to fuel use to cash in on subsidies and mandates and other vegetable oils replace US soybean oil in unregulated food markets in the US and around the world. But at the end of the day, the high costs to consumers and taxpayers translate into small changes if any in demand for US soybeans.

The other question is whether this proposal will increase the price of US soybeans. It will almost certainly increase the price of domestic soybean oil, but the impact on price of the soybeans that farmers actually sell is more complicated. EPA’s analysis on this topic is based on a 2022 paper by Lusk prepared for the US Soybean Board on the impact of soybean oil BBD on food prices. This analysis explains that expanded biofuel production will cause a large increase in soybean oil prices, but a much smaller impact on soybean prices. Specifically, it projects that a 20% increase in soybean oil used for biofuel production will increase soybean oil prices by 8% but will only increase farm-level soybean prices by 0.9%. This is consistent with the recent USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates released on July 11th, which accounts for the revised tax policy and the RFS proposal and projects large increases in the use of domestic soybean oil and in US soybean oil prices. Projected soybean oil prices increased 15 percent from $0.46 to $0.53 per pound. But increased soybean crushing puts downward pressure on soybean meal prices, which are projected to fall 6 percent from $310 to $290 per short ton. Prices projected for whole soybeans are almost unchanged, down 1.5 percent from $20.25 to $20.10 per bushel.

The point is that large increases in soybean oil prices will translate into much smaller increases in prices for whole soybeans. The RFS and tax policy changes are likely to disrupt global markets in significant and unprecedented ways and thus the impacts are hard to predict based on historical data, especially in a context where rapid changes in tariffs and trade patterns are already creating a turmoil in global agricultural markets. But the benefits for US farmers will be much smaller than the costs imposed on drivers and taxpayers, making this a very costly and inefficient way to support farmers.

What is the climate impact of expanding BBD?

While the EPA under administrator Zeldin has been clear in its disregard for the importance of climate stabilization, the RFS statute clearly identifies reducing global warming emissions as a central goal of the policy. EPA’s analysis for the DRIA reveals that the likely impact of dramatically expanding BBD consumption would be to increase global warming emissions. The two models evaluated, GCAM and GLOBIOM, differ in many ways, but both found large expansions of cropland would be required globally, with associated increases in emissions from land use change emissions[vii]. While both models nominally found that there are climate benefits of the proposal compared to a no-RFS baseline, this does not address the more salient question of how expanding the use of BBD beyond domestic availability will affect the climate, and whether the proposal is consistent with RFS statutory guidelines. However, we can infer the answers to these questions from the analysis EPA presents.

EPA’s analysis in the DRIA compares High and Low Volume Scenarios and the Proposed Volumes to a No RFS scenario (Tables 5.1.1-1 and 5.1.1-2). The only difference between the High and Low Volume Scenarios is in the use of BBD. The Low Volume Scenario evaluates an RFS that grows by 312 million gallons of renewable diesel each year from 2026 to 2028 and the High-Volume Scenario grows twice this fast. According to EPA’s analysis, the only fuels that will be affected by this growth are renewable diesel made from soybean and canola oil. By comparing the climate impact of the High and Low Volume scenarios we can determine the climate impact of increasing vegetable oil BBD consumption.

Both GCAM and GLOBIOM find that expanding consumption of BBD will lead to an increase of about 200 MMT of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from land use change (including deforestation) and agriculture, but they differ in their net emissions once fossil fuel displacement is taken into consideration. The GCAM model finds a net emissions increase of 93 MMT CO2e, while EPA claims that GLOBIOM projects a net decrease of 87 MMT CO2e. However, the emissions reduction EPA attributes to GLOBIOM is not derived directly from that model, which does not include a detailed endogenous treatment of fuel markets and therefore can’t directly calculate emissions reductions from fossil fuel consumption. EPA makes an ad hoc assumption that the production of biofuels directly displaces petroleum fuels on a one-for-one basis, with no effect in other markets. This assumption ignores the well-known rebound effect, whereby reduced consumption of petroleum in the US lowers prices globally leading to increased petroleum consumption outside the US[viii]. This treatment is arbitrary and indefensible and means the GLOBIOM climate impact findings are clearly too optimistic.

Putting aside this problem with the GLOBIOM results, the climate benefits obtained from GLOBIOMs are still less than the RFS requirements for advanced biofuel. The GLOBIOM analysis finds that cumulative emissions associated with producing the additional BBD in the High Volume versus the Low Volume scenario are 66.3 g CO2e per MJ of additional BBD produced[ix]. This represents just a 27 percent emissions reduction versus 91 g CO2e/MJ for fossil diesel, which does not meet the statutory requirement that advanced biofuels reduce GHG emissions by 50 percent.

In summary, EPA’s analysis suggests that the climate impact of expanding RFS mandates beyond the level in the Low Volume Scenario is negative, or at best insufficient to justify the proposal. The GCAM model finds it will increase global warming pollution, while the GLOBIOM model, even biased by optimistic assumptions of fossil fuel displacement, finds a modest reduction of 27 percent compared to fossil diesel, which falls well short of the statutory requirement that advanced biofuels reduce emissions by 50 percent compared to fossil fuels they replace.

The RFS proposal will harm global food consumers and accelerate deforestation

In the long run, increases in consumption of vegetable oil that outstrip demand for protein meal will primarily benefit producers of vegetable oil that produce less protein meal, primarily palm oil. However, it will take time for palm oil production to replace the diverted soybean oil, because palm oil plantations take several years between a decision to expand and time to yield fruit. In the interim, global markets for vegetable oils will be tight, leading to higher prices. According to an analysis from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), “Vegetable oils are a key item in diets around the world and an essential source of fats, accounting for about 10% of daily caloric food supply (300 kcal per day per person), making them the second most important food group after cereals.[…] Vegetable oils are, of course, an essential cooking item, particularly for poor consumers unable to shift to more expensive butter or other animal fat-based products.” The IFPRI report finds that each metric ton of vegetable oil converted into biodiesel globally represent an equivalent amount of calories to feed more than 10 million people per year. Thus, EPA’s proposal to set mandates 3 billion gallons beyond its own assessment of domestic availability will divert 11 million metric tons of vegetable oil from food to fuel markets which would otherwise provide calories to feed 100 million people per year.

Over time, palm oil production will expand to replace the displaced soybean oil and bring down prices. Palm oil is ineligible for the RFS because of its role in deforestation, but when it backfills diverted soybean oil, the harm may be one step removed from US biofuel production, but it happens just the same. The expansion of soybean and palm oil is a major driver of tropical deforestation. Recent analysis finds that annual forest carbon loss in the tropics doubled during the early twenty-first century[x] and that oil palm and soybeans are, respectively, the second and third largest drivers of deforestation after cattle[xi].

In conclusion

Back in 2016 I concluded a long blog on biodiesel with this warning:

While EPA’s decisions from 2016 to 2024 expanded the BBD market much faster than I recommended, EPA acknowledged the risks of excessive growth and set mandates below the extreme requests made by the biofuel industry. In comparison, the current proposal is extreme, proposing mandates completely untethered to any realistic assessment of feedstock availability. The expansion of imported feedstocks in the last few years has created political pressure to focus the biofuel support on domestic resources, which is understandable. But the EPA’s RFS proposal has no rational basis as a domestic fuel policy. Instead of massive growth, the RFS should be scaled back in line with domestic feedstock availability to support a domestic biofuels industry at a scale that makes sense given competing uses for food, crops and land and delivers a clear reduction in global warming pollution.

[i] Figure data is available for download at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2OOVQB. Data on total production of vegetable oils and edible fats is from the ERS Oil Crops Yearbook plus technical tallow data from NASS Quick Stats. Data on feedstock consumption comes from Gerveni, M., T. Hubbs and S. Irwin. “FAME Biodiesel, Renewable Diesel, and Biomass-Based Diesel Feedstock Trends over 2011-2023.” farmdoc daily (14):71, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 12, 2024 and EIA Monthly Biofuels Capacity and Feedstocks Update.

[ii] In addition to the Oil Crops yearbook mentioned previously, this figure includes data on imported biodiesel and renewable diesel from EIA and trade data from the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Global Agricultural Trade System.

[iii] Assuming 11 pounds of soybean oil per bushel and 8.125 pounds of soybean oil per gallon of BBD., even if all the yield growth was devoted to fuel production. Growth rates for soybean oil that exceed this figure cannot be met with yield growth, and imply diversion of soybeans from existing markets and expansion of acreage of soybeans at the expense of other crops or land uses. EPA does a similar analysis for fats oils and greases and canola oil and produces the following summary on page 304.

[iv] Note that $2 per gallon is the minimum price to make it possible to sell BBD and serves a floor for costs. To the extent that RD sales have higher margins than fossil diesel, or that tax credits result in higher returns than in comparable fossil supply chains, the actual costs to consumers and taxpayers are likely to be significantly higher.

[v] The EPA analysis of the price impacts on gasoline in is Table 10.5.2-7, diesel is in 10.5.3-7 and the total fuel cost impact is in Table 10.6-1, which also finds Energy Security Benefits of $163 million. EPA does not estimate the financial value of other benefits of the program.

[vi] Oil companies reduce their obligations under Low Carbon Fuel Standard policies by shifting RFS compliance into those states to maximize overlap in their obligations. For more details, see my January 2024 Blog, A Cap on Vegetable Oil-Based Fuels Will Stabilize and Strengthen California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

[vii] The GCAM and GLOBIOM models used by EPA differ in model structure and assumptions and predict qualitatively different impacts. For example, GCAM predicts a larger increase in global soybean production, while GLOBIOM shows a more pronounced substitution of palm oil for soybean oil. Moreover, GLOBIOM lacks a detailed/endogenous treatment of the energy sector, meaning it does not capture the substantial rebound effect and thus exaggerates the impact of US biofuel expansion by ignoring rebounds in both global biofuel and oil markets.

[viii] This treatment is inconsistent with the consequential lifecycle analysis used elsewhere in EPA’s land use change assessment and renders the results unreliable. The National Academy of Sciences’ panel on “Current Methods for Life-Cycle Analyses of Low-Carbon Transportation Fuels”, on which I served, recommends that consequential analyses are required to determine “consequential life-cycle impact of the proposed policy is likely to reduce net GHG emissions. EPA notes this recommendation and claims its analysis is consistent with it, but EPA’s ad hoc treatment of fossil fuel displacement in the GLOBIOM case is inconsistent with this recommendation. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Current Methods for Life-Cycle Analyses of Low-Carbon Transportation Fuels. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26402. For additional discussion of model differences see comments on the EPA 2026-2027 RFS proposal submitted by Earthjustice and World Resources Institute.

[ix] Based on the difference between the High Volume and Low Volume scenario’s cumulative emissions from 2026 to 2055 excluding fossil fuel displacement divided by the difference in cumulative fuel volume in the same timeframe.

[x] Feng, Y., et al. 2022. Doubling of annual forest carbon loss over the tropics during the early twenty-first century. Nat Sustain 5, 444– 451. doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00854-3.

[xi] World Resources Institute. 2021. Global Forest Review.

But if there has been depressingly little political will to fix the pollution problem to date, just imagine what will happen if future dead zones aren’t even measured. With the Trump administration’s ongoing decimation of federal science agencies, that’s exactly what could happen.

Tracking a fertilizer-fueled dead zone that won’t die

The annual Gulf dead zone forecast and measurement are part of a project to track progress toward a commonsense goal that the US government, states, and Tribes have agreed to, at least in principle, since 1997. As I wrote on this blog almost exactly a year ago:

Government agencies at the federal, state, and Tribal levels, led by the US Environmental Protection Agency, came together in 1997 to establish the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force (HTF) with the mission of reducing the effects of hypoxia and the size, severity, and duration of the dead zone. The HTF has set a variety of pollution reduction and water quality goals over the years. But the persistent, infuriating truth is that the HTF and its member agencies are not meeting their own targets.

On the contrary, they are failing badly.

In that blog post last year, I pointed to an earlier version of the graph below as evidence of that failure: it shows the persistence of hypoxia—the lack of oxygen in the waters off the Gulf Coast—from year to year. Now here we are again talking about a dead zone that is still far too big.

The reason it’s too big, in large part, is industrial agriculture’s flagrant overuse of chemical fertilizer. That overuse is responsible for water pollution all across the Corn Belt, even before it flows downstream to the Gulf. A recently released water quality report for Polk County, Iowa, highlights agricultural pollution as a major threat to the region’s rivers, streams, and ultimately its drinking water. The Central Iowa Source Water Resource Assessment found that high nitrate levels, often exceeding federal health limits, are affecting the rivers that provide drinking water for the county and the city of Des Moines, and that the largest contributor is nitrogen fertilizer from farms.

It’s a vicious cycle: Fertilizer overuse degrades the soil and its ability to keep excess fertilizer from running off, which in turn leads to more overuse. Rinse, repeat. A recent study from Iowa State University revealed that nitrogen fertilizer application rates in the Corn Belt have been increasing by about 1.2% every year for the past three decades.

This is bad for drinking water in farm communities and downstream cities. It’s bad for wildlife and recreation in rivers and lakes. And in the Gulf, where fish, shrimp, and other creatures are killed or driven offshore by the lack of oxygen in a dead zone, it’s bad for people who make their living from those resources: A 2020 report from my team at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that agricultural nitrogen runoff has caused up to $2.4 billion in damages to fisheries and marine habitat every year since 1980.

Federal agencies and scientists are critical to tracking fertilizer pollution

This year’s Gulf dead zone prediction-and-measurement cycle began, as always, in the spring, when snowmelt and seasonal rains were flushing that excess fertilizer out of midwestern farm soils and into streams across the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin. This vast watershed drains all or part of 31 states (including the Corn Belt) and two Canadian provinces before flowing into the northern Gulf off the coast of Louisiana. Each May, scientists in the US Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Project sample nitrogen and phosphorus influxes at scores of monitoring stations throughout the drainage basin, and use sophisticated modeling and mapping tools to predict what these will mean for pollution levels in the Gulf later by July.

Scientists at NOAA and partners from several university research groups use those data to forecast the size, location, and duration of the Gulf dead zone likely to occur over the summer, when warming coastal water and microbial activity converge in ways that cause oxygen levels to plummet (i.e., hypoxia). In early June this year, the team predicted a hypoxic zone of “average” size. It’s something of a parlor game, in certain super-nerdy circles, to guess what US state a given year’s dead zone will be compared to—this year, the scientists threw in a twist, predicting a size of 5,574 square miles, equivalent to three Delawares! When the scientists actually conducted the research cruise to measure and map the dead zone from July 20 to 26, they found that it was smaller than predicted in area, but still “widespread and severe” and well over double the size of the goal.

As I pointed out around this time last year, it’s clear that making a dent in the dead zone is going to require new farm policies that compel the agricultural sector to stop flagrantly overusing fertilizer. But it’s also going to require that we keep tracking the problem.

How Trump’s attacks on federal agencies—and science itself—could kill the messenger

This past spring, even as USGS scientists were preparing to carry out their piece of the dead zone forecast project, Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were rampaging through federal agencies, creating havoc that exceeded even my pre-inauguration expectations. In April, they terminated leases for the USGS Water Data Centers, among other office closures. Moreover, reporting in May indicated that as many as 1,000 USGS employees would be laid off in June. Court orders paused layoff plans at many agencies, but they appear likely to move forward soon. It is unclear if there will be personnel to staff the monitoring stations by next year.

Then there’s NOAA. My colleagues in the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS recently compiled evidence of the Trump regime’s campaign to destroy federal science in its first six months. Among federal science agencies, they found that NOAA has faced some of the most destructive attacks. From the report:

NOAA, the nation’s foremost climate science agency, has faced reckless firing of staff, budget cuts, and slashed resources for climate research, satellite programs, data, and modeling. Under Department of Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s watch, the agency’s weather forecasting and climate monitoring capabilities are being undermined and many National Weather Service offices are dangerously understaffed—undercutting critical resources that communities, first responders, farmers, mariners, businesses, and local decisionmakers rely on to protect lives, infrastructure, and economic activity. Critical NOAA data and tools are also being discontinued, including snow and ice data products and climate.gov, a free public portal for essential information on climate science and impacts.

Ditto for the annual Gulf measurement, which is led by Louisiana scientists using a NOAA research vessel, equipment, and funding. It’s one of many important services the agency provides—along with climate science and monitoring, hurricane forecasting, fisheries research, and more—that is now at risk. Staff losses at NOAA between January and May have been dramatic, and President Trump’s proposed FY26 budget for NOAA calls for even deeper cuts.

Congress—which holds the power of the purse—has just begun the process of negotiating the FY26 budget. While it’s promising that a Senate committee recently repudiated the Trump NOAA budget, substantial damage has already been done and we are a long way from agreement on an appropriations bill.

You can tell Congress to protect NOAA from dangerous budget cuts by taking action here.

Meanwhile, the Hypoxia Task Force led by the Environmental Protection Agency may be in disarray, and academic partners who have been critical to tracking the Gulf dead zone could also have difficulty carrying out their work in the years ahead. US universities everywhere are feeling the effects of the Trump regime’s war on science. The team that made the Gulf dead zone prediction includes scientists at four US universities—Louisiana State University, the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, and William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science—along with Canada’s Dalhousie University. Federal grants have been a critical funding source for many institutions of higher education—in 2024, for example, federal grants reportedly accounted for 57% of the University of Michigan’s $2 billion overall research budget.

Will anyone still have resources for important work like tracking agriculture’s contribution to water quality and dead zones next spring and summer? How will researchers, farmers, fishers, and the public get an accurate sense of the impact fertilizer overuse and pollution is having on our waterways and the Gulf? And how can we hope to hold our government or Big Ag accountable for setting goals that will shrink the dead zone?

Decimating funding for research and public science isn’t just about saving a few bucks—it’s about stripping us of the tools that allow us to understand the full scope of the challenges we face, to advocate for evidence-based policy solutions, and to hold the powerful accountable for the harm they continue to cause. I hope that next summer, when another dead zone will surely bloom in the Gulf, we will at least know about it.

The bill slashes SNAP by more than $100 billion, which is a devastating blow to families trying to make ends meet. But there’s more to the story than the cuts themselves. The legislation also raises serious concerns about whether Congress will be able to pass a new food and farm bill this year—or even in 2026.

How the Bill Impacts SNAP

The bill made several major changes to SNAP. A few of the lowlights:

• Massive funding cuts. SNAP funding is cut by more than $100 billion. 
• Shifting costs to states. For the first time, states will be required to cover a portion of SNAP’s food benefit costs, based on each state’s SNAP error rate percentage—which may be difficult for them to do.
• Thrifty Food Plan restrictions. Updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to calculate SNAP benefits, are now limited to once every five years and must be cost-neutral, potentially locking in inadequate benefit levels. 
• Stricter work requirements. The legislation imposes stricter work requirements on able-bodied adult recipients without young children.

These changes will leave many more people without the support they need.

Ripple Effects on the Food and Farm Bill

SNAP cuts are bad enough on their own, but they also throw a wrench into efforts to pass a new food and farm bill.

The current food and farm bill was initially intended to be written and signed into law back in 2023. Usually, Congress reauthorizes the bill about every five years with broad bipartisan support. But that didn’t happen last time around, when Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate couldn’t reach an agreement. Instead, Congress has repeatedly kicked the can down the road by passing two one-year extensions, the latest of which will expire in September 2025.

There was some last-minute momentum on the food and farm bill last year, leading to the hope that we might actually see legislation passed and signed into law to continue support for agriculture and nutrition programming. The House Agriculture Committee advanced a bill in May that UCS did not support, and the Senate released its own version later that year, but neither bill moved forward before Congress adjourned in 2024.

Now, with Republicans controlling the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House, a new food and farm bill should theoretically be easier to pass—though we expect it would have provisions that UCS could not support. However, the gutting of SNAP has caused the landscape to shift: The longstanding coalition of food and farm advocates that helped get previous legislation enacted—farmers, rural groups, and anti-hunger groups—is in tatters, seriously threatening the possibility of Congress passing a long-overdue bipartisan food and farm bill anytime soon.

Currently, it’s unclear whether Democratic lawmakers who vehemently opposed the devastating SNAP cuts and other changes to the program will be willing to come together with Republicans, who supported these cuts in President Trump’s domestic policy bill, to negotiate on a new food and farm bill. 

An Unclear Path Forward

House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-PA) is now talking about moving ahead this year with a “farm bill 2.0” or “skinny” farm bill, a scaled-back version of the traditional bill—but this may be a hard sell for many Democrats. The budget bill used funding it took away from SNAP to pay for additional farm subsidies on some commodity crops, which will primarily benefit a small group of relatively wealthy farmers.  So a new skinny farm bill would likely not include traditional sections on SNAP and commodities, since those were already dealt with in the budget bill.

As a result of these decisions and the ill will they have created, there may be little incentive for Democrats who opposed SNAP cuts to come to the table—and several have already vowed that they won’t. Still, some House Democrats—particularly those facing tough re-election contests in 2026—have expressed openness to negotiating a scaled-back food and farm bill later this year.

So where does this leave us? Has Trump’s domestic policy bill blown up the traditional alliance between agriculture and nutrition advocates to the point where passing even a skinny farm bill is now out of reach? And if one does move forward, likely based on the 2024 House proposal opposed by UCS, will it be a bill worth passing?

We may not know the answers to these questions just yet, but the next few months will be critical in shaping what happens next. As this process moves ahead, it is vital to make your voices heard! Contact your members of Congress and urge them to fight for a food and farm bill that prioritizes conservation, climate, agriculture research, protections for food and farm workers, equity, and robust nutrition programs like SNAP. 

Stay tuned for the next chapter in the seemingly never-ending food and farm bill saga.

It’s challenging to know what actions at the system level will maintain our rural economies and improve public and environmental health without creating new problems. And it’s even more difficult to know how to implement system-wide solutions in a transdisciplinary context of multibenefit collaboration that’s rather new to everyone involved.  But cropland repurposing into other beneficial land uses is a promising solution to address many system-level issues and make everyone happy.

The good news is that we are learning, and we are improving.

After years of work done by our community of practice and scientists, we just published a much needed and comprehensive framework for best practices in cropland repurposing that can benefit everyone involved. This community of practice includes community leaders, farmer and farmworker advocates, scientists, and practitioners across California’s agricultural regions.

Our team of 54 authors—along with additional collaborators and countless participants in public events related to land repurposing— is clear that the framework is not about taking land away from farmers or abandoning agriculture. Our goal is to collectively reimagine how we can use land to create multiple benefits while addressing the water crisis head-on and support food and nutrition security.  

I am a romantic and also an agricultural engineer who loves agriculture, and along with many community residents and farmers, I believe we can transform the current unsustainability into new sustainable opportunities for prosperity and well-being while keeping our rural communities’ identities. And we can preserve the most beautiful side effects of agriculture while limiting the negative side effects and economic extraction of some corporative large-scale practices. As a wise t-shirt once said, “Keep the CULTURE in AgriCULTURE”.

In addition to our recent Roadmap for a Just Land Transition, our team of 54 coauthors (with the help of many collaborators and participants in public events) published a paper introducing a framework for best practices in cropland repurposing in the journal Frontiers in Water. In the next sections of this blog I will briefly summarize some of the most important takeaways from this work

The challenge we face

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires the state to achieve groundwater sustainability by mid-century. In the San Joaquin Valley where I live, agriculture represents 90% of water use, and a large part of that water use is unsustainable. This means about one million acres of irrigated agriculture will need to transition to other uses. Letting market forces of commodity and property values continue to dictate the terms of this transition could devastate local economies by threatening farmer and farmworker livelihoods.

What I’ve learned through years of community engagement is the importance of cropland repurposing being strategically organized and managed in collaboration with all impacted groups. A holistic and inclusive approach can enhance quality of life in low income and underserved communities, diversify regional economies, generate local socioeconomic opportunities, and improve environmental health—all while advancing water sustainability and food security, and maintaining the livelihoods of farmers and farmworkers.

A vision for what’s possible

The framework our paper introduces is built around six core objectives that represent “what we want to see” in land repurposing decisions. These aren’t abstract goals—they’re practical priorities informed and agreed upon by everyone in our expert author team and our collaborators.

Socioenvironmental and economic justice in the land surrounding vulnerable communities, and respecting and upholding Indigenous sovereignty.

Ecological resilience and sustainability involves restoring native habitats, creating nature-based solutions around agricultural communities, and managing natural resources responsibly so future generations can meet their needs too.

Sustainable agriculture based on agroecology principles focuses on farming systems that are healthy, economically viable, and ecologically sustainable for farmers, farmworkers, and communities, with fair land access, economic resilience, sustainable water use, access to technical assistance, and improved working conditions.

Funding, scalability, and replicability ensures that initiatives can grow from local to regional levels while maintaining community priorities and creating genuine job security in the transition to a green economy.

Leadership, accountability, and representation emphasizes bottom-up leadership with meaningful involvement from all groups involved, and it includes robust monitoring to prove that benefits are actually being delivered.

Multiple benefits to address social needs encompasses everything from food security and affordable housing to mental health support and educational opportunities that help agricultural communities thrive.

Seven best practices for cropland repurposing

To implement this vision of what’s possible, our team identified and recommends seven essential best practices. For more detail about each, including ideas around implementation strategies, check the framework or the paper. We also provide some specific best practices for an essential topic, aquifer recharge.

1. Prioritize public health

Every cropland repurposing project must guarantee no harm to public health while actively improving conditions.

2. Prioritize cropland repurposing in socioenvironmentally vulnerable locations

Cropland repurposing efforts maximize the return on investment when they are near disadvantaged communities and sensitive environments, and vulnerable communities can improve their economic prosperity with non-extractive green economic activities.

3. Transition agricultural practices for sustainability and strategic farming

Agricultural transitions create the most value when they shift from large water-intensive monocultures to smaller-scale, diverse, multifunctional land uses like agroecological systems that deliver multiple public benefits.

4. Foster a sustainable agricultural economy

Agricultural resilience increases when it protects small and mid-size farmers through practical support like equipment sharing cooperatives, revenue diversification opportunities such as agrivoltaics and decentralized composting, and enhanced water access for those practicing beneficial methods.

5. Advance equity and center community leadership

Cropland repurposing plans that reflect local priorities, address local needs, and holistically consider the whole system are more likely to succeed. This requires transparent processes that use full cost-benefit accounting (including the costs and benefits of side effects) and meaningful community engagement.

6. Pursue a just clean energy transition

California’s clean energy transition will happen in rural areas and must involve collaborative partnerships with communities, include binding community benefits agreements, and ensure that local communities benefit from the clean energy generated in and near their communities.

7. Expand skill-building, outreach, and access to information

This involves providing inclusive, multilingual education and training programs, community monitoring of environmental conditions, and fair compensation for those who contribute to planning and implementation processes.

Real examples, real results

These aren’t just theoretical concepts. Across California, communities are already implementing these ideas with remarkable success:

• In Madera County, the La Viña community is receiving a buffer zone project that converts almond and walnut orchards into native pollinator habitat, creating a 100-foot barrier between homes and farms to improve air quality and reduce pesticide exposure.

• The Wukchumni Tribe is restoring 10.7 acres of riparian woodland and wetlands in Tulare County, incorporating traditional land uses while creating educational and workforce opportunities.

• In Tulare County, the township of Allensworth is planning to transform industrial monoculture into an agroecology hub owned by a community trust, featuring regenerative agriculture, agrivoltaics, farmer training programs, water treatment technology, and agritourism.

The path forward

This framework and our road map for just land transition represent more than just objectives and best practices to guide agricultural land repurposing efforts; they offer a detailed, evidence-based roadmap for transforming California’s approach to land use in ways that benefit everyone. If the areas actively repurposing cropland adopt this framework, they will be more likely to succeed in creating a just land transition, including water sustainability.

The consequences of inaction are clear and we cannot afford them: continued groundwater depletion, degraded communities, and an agricultural and economic system that’s increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

But with strategic, collaborative action guided by this framework and experts with holistic approaches to equitably serve everyone involved in this transition, we can turn this into an opportunity to build something better together.

The choice is ours. We can let market forces alone determine how this transition unfolds, exacerbating existing inequalities and destroying rural economies. Or we can work together to implement these best practices, ensuring that the shift toward social, environmental, and economic sustainability becomes a foundation for prosperity, well-being, and climate resilience in California’s agricultural regions.

To learn more, you can read the framework only here. We also have a glossary you can check out if you want to know better understand some of the vocabulary we rely on. Many experts contributed to this effort beyond our author team, including our collaborators who are listed in the acknowledgements.

Es desafiante saber qué acciones a nivel sistémico mantendrán nuestras economías rurales y mejorarán la salud pública y ambiental sin crear nuevos problemas. Y es aún más difícil saber cómo implementar soluciones a nivel sistémico en un contexto transdisciplinario de colaboración que es bastante nuevo para todos los involucrados. Pero el reúso de tierras de cultivo hacia otros usos beneficiosos es una solución prometedora para abordar muchos problemas a nivel sistémico y hacer felices a todos.

La buena noticia es que estamos aprendiendo y mejorando.

Después de años de trabajo realizado por nuestra comunidad de práctica y científicos, acabamos de publicar un marco de trabajo muy necesario y completo para las buenas prácticas en el reúso de tierras de cultivo que puede beneficiar a todos los involucrados. Esta comunidad de práctica incluye líderes comunitarios, defensores de agricultores y trabajadores agrícolas, científicos y profesionales de las regiones agrícolas de California.

En nuestro equipo de 54 autores—además de colaboradores adicionales e innumerables participantes en eventos públicos relacionados con el reúso de tierras—tenemos claro que este marco no busca quitarle tierras a los agricultores ni abandonar la agricultura. Nuestro objetivo es reimaginar colectivamente cómo podemos usar la tierra para crear múltiples beneficios mientras abordamos la crisis del agua de frente.

Soy un romántico y además soy un ingeniero agrónomo al que le encanta la agricultura, y junto con muchos residentes comunitarios y agricultores, creo que podemos transformar la insostenibilidad actual en nuevas oportunidades sostenibles para la prosperidad y el bienestar mientras mantenemos las identidades de nuestras comunidades rurales. Y podemos preservar los efectos secundarios más hermosos de la agricultura mientras limitamos los efectos secundarios negativos y la extracción económica de algunas prácticas corporativas a gran escala. Como dijo una vez una camiseta muy sabia: “Mantengamos la CULTURA en la AgriCULTURA”.

Además de nuestro reciente informe para una Transición justa de la tierra (enlace al informe en inglés), nuestro equipo de 54 coautores (con la ayuda de muchos colaboradores y participantes en eventos públicos) publicó un artículo (enlace al artículo en inglés) introduciendo un marco de buenas prácticas para reúso de tierras de cultivo en la revista Frontiers in Water. En las siguientes secciones de este blog resumiré brevemente algunas de las conclusiones más importantes de este trabajo.

El desafío que enfrentamos

La Ley de Gestión Sostenible de Aguas Subterráneas de California (SGMA) requiere que el estado logre la sostenibilidad de las aguas subterráneas para mediados de siglo. En el Valle de San Joaquín donde vivo, la agricultura representa el 90% del uso del agua, y una gran parte de ese uso de agua es insostenible. Esto significa que alrededor de un millón de acres de agricultura irrigada necesitarán transicionar a otros usos. Si permitimos que únicamente el mercado inmobiliario y de materias primas dicte los términos de esta transición, el resultado podría devastar las economías locales, amenazar la calidad de vida de agricultores y trabajadores agrícolas, y disminuir la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional.

Lo que he aprendido a través de años trabajando con otros expertos es la importancia de que el reúso de tierras de cultivo sea estratégicamente organizado y gestionado en colaboración con todos los grupos afectados. Un enfoque holístico e inclusivo puede mejorar la calidad de vida en comunidades de bajos ingresos y desatendidas, diversificar las economías regionales, generar oportunidades socioeconómicas locales y mejorar la salud ambiental—todo mientras se avanza en la sostenibilidad del agua y la seguridad alimentaria, y se mantienen los medios de vida de agricultores y trabajadores agrícolas.

Una visión de lo que es posible

El marco que nuestro artículo introduce está construido alrededor de seis objetivos centrales que representan “lo que queremos ver” en las decisiones de reúso de tierras. Estos no son objetivos abstractos—son prioridades prácticas informadas y acordadas por todos en nuestro equipo de autores expertos y nuestros colaboradores.

Justicia socioeconómica y ambiental en la tierra que rodea las comunidades vulnerables, y respetando y defendiendo la soberanía indígena.

Resiliencia ecológica y sostenibilidad involucra restaurar hábitats nativos, crear soluciones basadas en la naturaleza alrededor de las comunidades agrícolas, y gestionar los recursos naturales responsablemente para que las generaciones futuras también puedan satisfacer sus necesidades.

Agricultura sostenible basada en principios de agroecología se enfoca en sistemas agrícolas que sean saludables, económicamente viables y ecológicamente sostenibles para agricultores, trabajadores agrícolas y comunidades, con acceso justo a la tierra, resistencia económica, uso sostenible del agua, acceso a asistencia técnica y mejores condiciones de trabajo.

Financiamiento, escalabilidad y replicabilidad asegura que las iniciativas puedan crecer de niveles locales a regionales mientras mantienen las prioridades comunitarias y crean seguridad laboral genuina en la transición hacia una economía verde.

Liderazgo, responsabilidad y representación enfatiza el liderazgo desde abajo con participación significativa de todos los grupos involucrados, e incluye un monitoreo robusto para comprobar que los beneficios realmente se están entregando.

Múltiples beneficios para abordar las necesidades sociales abarca todo, desde la seguridad alimentaria y vivienda asequible hasta el apoyo a la salud mental y oportunidades educativas que ayuden a las comunidades agrícolas a prosperar.

Siete buenas prácticas para la reúso de tierras de cultivo

Para implementar esta visión de lo que es posible, nuestro equipo identificó y recomienda siete buenas prácticas esenciales. Para más detalles sobre cada una, incluyendo ideas sobre estrategias de implementación, consulta el marco o el artículo.

1. Priorizar la salud pública Todo proyecto de reúso de tierras de cultivo debe garantizar que no haya daño a la salud pública mientras mejora activamente las condiciones.

2. Priorizar el reúso de tierras de cultivo en ubicaciones socioeconómicamente vulnerables Los esfuerzos de reúso de tierras de cultivo maximizan el retorno de inversión cuando están cerca de comunidades desfavorecidas y ambientes sensibles, y las comunidades vulnerables pueden mejorar con actividades económicas verdes no extractivas.

3. Transicionar las prácticas agrícolas hacia la sostenibilidad y la agricultura estratégica Las transiciones agrícolas crean el mayor valor cuando cambian de monocultivos intensivos en agua a gran escala hacia usos de tierra más pequeños, diversos y multifuncionales como sistemas agroecológicos que entregan múltiples beneficios públicos.

4. Fomentar una economía agrícola sostenible La resistencia agrícola aumenta cuando protege a los pequeños y medianos agricultores a través de apoyo práctico como cooperativas de intercambio de equipos, oportunidades de diversificación de ingresos como agrivoltaicos y compostaje descentralizado, y acceso mejorado al agua para aquellos que practican métodos beneficiosos.

5. Avanzar la equidad y centrar el liderazgo comunitario Los planes de reúso de tierras de cultivo que reflejan las prioridades locales, abordan las necesidades locales y consideran holísticamente todo el sistema tienen más probabilidades de éxito. Esto requiere procesos transparentes que usen contabilidad completa de costo-beneficio y participación comunitaria significativa.

6. Perseguir una transición justa hacia la energía limpia La transición hacia energía limpia de California ocurrirá en áreas rurales y debe involucrar asociaciones colaborativas con comunidades, incluir acuerdos vinculantes de beneficios comunitarios, y asegurar que las comunidades locales se beneficien de la energía limpia generada en y cerca de sus comunidades.

7. Expandir el desarrollo de habilidades, divulgación y acceso a la información Esto involucra proporcionar programas educativos y de capacitación inclusivos y multilingües, monitoreo comunitario de condiciones ambientales, y compensación justa para aquellos que contribuyen a los procesos de planificación e implementación.

Ejemplos reales, resultados reales

Estos no son solo conceptos teóricos. A través de California, las comunidades ya están implementando estas ideas con éxito notable:

• En el Condado de Madera, la comunidad La Viña está recibiendo un proyecto de zona de amortiguamiento que convierte huertos de almendros y nogales en hábitat nativo para polinizadores, creando una barrera de 100 pies (30,48 metros) entre hogares y granjas para mejorar la calidad del aire y reducir la exposición a pesticidas.

• La Tribu Wukchumni está restaurando 10.7 acres de bosque ribereño y humedales en el Condado de Tulare, incorporando usos tradicionales de la tierra mientras crea oportunidades educativas y laborales.

• En el Condado de Tulare, el pueblo de Allensworth está planeando transformar monocultivos industriales en un centro agroecológico propiedad de un fideicomiso comunitario, presentando agricultura regenerativa, agrivoltaicos, programas de capacitación para agricultores, tecnología de tratamiento de agua y agroturismo.

El camino a seguir

Este marco y nuestra hoja de ruta para una transición justa de la tierra representan más que solo objetivos y buenas prácticas para guiar los esfuerzos de reúso de tierras agrícolas; ofrecen un plan detallado y basado en evidencia para transformar el enfoque de California hacia el uso de la tierra de maneras que beneficien a todos. Si las áreas que están activamente reusando tierras de cultivo adoptan este marco, tendrán más probabilidades de éxito en crear una transición justa de la tierra, incluyendo la sostenibilidad del agua.

Las consecuencias de la inacción son claras y no podemos permitírnoslas: continuo agotamiento de aguas subterráneas, comunidades degradadas, y un sistema agrícola y económico que es cada vez más vulnerable al cambio climático.

Pero con acción estratégica y colaborativa guiada por este marco y expertos con enfoques holísticos para servir equitativamente a todos los involucrados en esta transición, podemos convertir esto en una oportunidad para construir algo mejor juntos.

La elección es nuestra. Podemos dejar que las fuerzas del mercado por sí solas determinen cómo se desarrolla esta transición, exacerbando las desigualdades existentes y destruyendo las economías rurales. O podemos trabajar juntos para implementar estas buenas prácticas, asegurando que el cambio hacia la sostenibilidad social, ambiental y económica se convierta en una base para la prosperidad, el bienestar y la resistencia climática en las regiones agrícolas de California.

Para aprender más, puedes leer el marco completo aquí. Muchos expertos contribuyeron a este esfuerzo más allá de nuestro equipo de autores, incluyendo nuestros colaboradores que están listados en los agradecimientos.

Amid this frenzy in May on the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, I asked Refuge Manager Oscar Reed what he most appreciates about this place. The first thing that came to mind was not the fine feathered friends, frogs, or foxes that virtually all the other visitors—like me—had cameras, scopes, and binoculars trained on.

“The marsh,” Reed responded. “In the fall, I just love the amber color in the sun and watching it wave in the wind.”

 “In one word, how would you describe it?” I asked.

 “Tranquil.”

In appreciating the serenity of the marsh, it was as if Reed channeled Rachel Carson, the great environmental writer whose 1962 book, Silent Spring, helped inspire the modern environmental movement. Two decades earlier, in her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, she wrote that “to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh…is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

I came to this wildlife refuge in Delaware for the birds. Reed and Carson reminded me that without the marshes of coastal wetlands, so much of what is essential for this thriving ecosystem would be dramatically diminished. In the past, Congress and Democratic and Republican administrations going back to the 1980s have agreed, mandating a report every 10 years on the status and trends of wetlands in the conterminous United States.

In the most recent report to Congress last year, the Interior Department and its United States Fish and Wildlife Service said wetlands are vital to up to half of bird species found in North America, more than 80% of threatened and endangered birds and about half of all the animals and plants covered under the Endangered Species Act.

Priceless natural gifts

If Carson were alive in this epoch of climate change, she would have likely added that the breath of marsh mist should stir the soul to remember how priceless a wetland is. According to a 2022 study by researchers at Resources for the Future and Columbia University, wetlands are worth between $1.2 trillion and $2.9 trillion in flood mitigation value alone, a value that has grown more critical with sea level rise and increased frequency and intensity of storms and wildfires.

Then add crab, lobster, scallops, salmon, and shrimp, which are among the nation’s most valuable seafoods. They all spend a portion of their lives in wetlands. The marshes further clean the water for recreational fishing. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), commercial and recreational fisheries provide 1.7 million jobs.

Add in other benefits, such as filtering pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff before they run off into rivers and lakes, and other forms of recreation—which of course includes bird watching—and the annual benefits of wetlands soar to $7.7 trillion, according to the congressionally mandated report, a backbone of the nation’s $30 trillion economy.

(By historical coincidence, the $7.7 trillion is eerily about the same amount of money that the Federal Reserve lent, spent or pledged to save the banking system after the 2008 financial collapse, according to Bloomberg News.)

“The ecosystem services provided by wetlands are unmatched by any other habitat except coral reefs,” the report said.

The unmatched value has been recognized in the past on a bipartisan basis. Congress overwhelmingly voted for the Clean Water Act in 1972, and George H.W. Bush respectively signed into law the Clean Water Act and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act in 1989.

When President Bush, a hunter and fisherman, signed the wetlands act, he said he was “disturbed” that the fall flight of ducks was near all-time lows, in a nation that had lost more than half of its original wetlands. He went so far as to make a “no net loss” pledge for wetlands. He declared in a 1989 speech to Ducks Unlimited:

“It’s time to stand the history of wetlands destruction on its head. From this year forward, anyone who tries to drain the swamp is going to be up to his ears in alligators.”

Bush’s “no net loss” pledge resulted in only one recorded period of slight net wetland gain, 1998 to 2004. But the rhetoric helped the nation pump the brakes on wetland loss just enough to see what could happen if there was increased investment in conservation instead of allowing total exploitation.

Progress imperiled

The 2022 State of the Birds Report compiled by more than 30 government agencies and conservation organizations, found that wetlands were about the only habitat that showed signs of thriving. While bird populations declined dramatically in most habitats in the United States, the report found that wetlands saw major increases in ducks, geese, swans, and water birds such as pelicans. The report hugely credited the funding triggered by the North American Wetlands Conservation Act in facilitating a “model conservation success story.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), one of the agencies participating in the report, said that since 1991, the act has led to the conservation of more than 32.6 million acres of habitat in 3,300 projects, funded with nearly $7 billion in grants and partner contributions. A joint report in December by USFWS and NOAA found that the rate of wetland loss in coastal watersheds from 2009 to 2019 was less than the rate of loss from 1998 to 2009, indicating “progress towards reducing net wetland loss.”

Such progress is a miracle, partially a result of the Fish and Wildlife Service cobbling together enough partnerships to protect species despite declining congressional funding over the last decade for its refuge system and a resulting erosion of employees. A Congressional Research Service report in January said the number of employees had decreased from about 2,750 in 2014 to about 2,300 in 2023.

The National Wildlife Refuge Association, the leading advocate for the refuge system, says the number of full-time employees at USFWS is now down to 1,750 because of early retirements, unfilled positions, and departures as the Trump administration regained the White House and established the Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate jobs. That is such a massive loss of staffing over the years that the association calls the refuge system “gutted.”

Bombay Hook is part of that erosion, down to 8 employees from 10. That makes continued progress, let alone the elusive goal of no net loss, highly uncertain. The joint report by USFWS and NOAA said that without a “strengthening” of conservation efforts, the loss of inland and coastal wetlands alike may intensify with the combination of local development, commercial agriculture, sea-level rise, and the ever-more severe storms of climate change. “Scientists and decision-makers around the world are concluding that coastal wetlands are critical landscape features that help drive and sustain economic prosperity,” the report said.

Unfortunately, too much of the last decade has been dominated by a Washington that dismisses science and scientists. The Supreme Court, packed to a conservative supermajority by President Trump in his first term, has rolled back many air, water, and wetland protections on behalf of industry and developers, handcuffing the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the public against pollution and the natural world against habitat loss.

The second Trump administration is going for the jugular, to choke conservation itself. In its proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, it wants to slash Fish and Wildlife Service funding by 32%, from $1.68 billion down to $1.14 billion. The administration would end several conservation funds and end its Science Applications program that coordinates large-scale conservation planning across jurisdictions. Within the overall USFWS budget, the administration would cut the wildlife refuge system by 22%.

In a particular act of bureaucratic cruelty, the administration wants to cut a third of USFWS’s budget, while at the same time absorbing NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Protected Resources to administer the Endangered Species Act. The administration would also cripple other agencies that are key partners with Fish and Wildlife. For example, the US Geological Survey would be cut by 38%, losing its ecosystems research division and taking major hits to its core science systems programs and science support programs.

This is despite the USGS’s website still saying that its ecosystem science is a “critical piece” of government efforts to understand the complex mechanisms of animal disease outbreaks, toxic chemical contamination, invasive species, and the economic burdens of climate-induced weather events and disasters. 

There are many other cuts across the government that could imperil wildlife refuges because of their interconnected conservation science, pollution prevention, and climate change data. Among the most notable are the Trump administration’s proposed cuts of 54.5% to the Environmental Protection Agency, 55.8% to the National Science Foundation, and 27% to NOAA. 

Effects unknown

All of these cuts would drastically affect what I have seen over the years on the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. It was established in 1937 and developed by a segregated African American Civilian Conservation Corps team from 1938 to 1942. The team cleared swamps, built dikes and causeways, and created freshwater lakes.

The fruits of their labor were immediate, with the refuge manager writing in 1940, “Every night the croaks, squawks, and hoarse guttural screams of Great Blues, American Egrets, and Black-crowns (herons) can be heard as never before on any section of the refuge. This is something entirely new, and very much a spectacle to us as well as to our Natural-History minded friends.”

I’ve heard the croaks, squawks, and hoarse guttural screams on several visits. One year I visited, tens of thousands of snow geese honked in the marsh. When they were spooked by something overhead, I could feel the concussive power of them taking off all at once, so tightly packed that it was as if I were looking at a white sheet. On another trip, a river otter cruised along a creek shimmering with the orange, yellow and red reflection of fall foliage. On another, gorgeous, rusty-red headed avocets foraged in the shallows.

On this last visit, Oscar Reed drove me around, telling me how none of what I saw was an accident. We spoke on the condition that the discussion was solely on the beauty of the place and not about politics. The refuge has one of the largest tidal marshes in the mid-Atlantic, with a low tide that exposes mud flats as far as out as the eye can see. High tide turns the area into what seems to be a series of lakes, but the water in many places is only 18 inches deep.

Reed, 60, oversees a delicate manipulation of this environment, raising and lowering water in impoundments as needed for the best feeding conditions for shorebirds, wading birds, and ducks. Sometimes, the work can be backbreaking, such as wading out into the marsh with a potato rake to clear beaver logs that hinder the effectiveness of water control structures. “The logs are so well knitted together, it takes everything to dislodge them,” he said.

He said that visiting scientists studying the refuge for marsh management can find it more than a notion to do their work. And hunters might have a surprise waiting if they are not careful. “There was one researcher who went out in the mudflats and got stuck where she couldn’t move her legs,” Reed laughed. “We also had a hunter who got stuck and had to use his brand-new shotgun to push himself out.” 

The reward for the management is a parade of sights that never stop surprising him. Populations of threatened piping plovers have inched up. This spring for instance, uncommon birds for Delaware found this place a haven, such as sandhill cranes and a roseate spoonbill way off course from its Gulf Coast climes. The number of bald eagles cruising through in the spring to feed on fish has grown over the years to as many as 50 in a single day.

They are sights that have 100,000 visitors a year coming to this refuge to see, as Carson would say, creatures far more eternal than us. Eagles, for instance, started evolving around 36 million ago. The oldest fossils of great blue herons, which look like prehistoric pterodactyls to many onlookers, are 1.8 million years old. Our species of humans has been around for only 300,000 years. As we passed the eagles, herons, and sandpipers, Reed said, “Some of the best satisfaction I get is when I look at the guest book in the visitor center and I see lots of exclamation points.”

The best exclamation point would be if the nation rose up to remind the Trump administration—to borrow from President George H.W. Bush—that anyone who tries to drain the wetlands and murder the marsh is going to be up to their ears in protest. In their simultaneous tranquility and cacophony, the nation’s 573 national wildlife refuges remain arguably the nation’s greatest place, as Carson said, to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.   

For much of the 20th century, if not earlier in some instances, a pattern of large-scale farm consolidation continually privatized the profits and socialized the harms. Large landowners, like financial investors, multi-billion-dollar farming companies, and individuals like the wonderfully infamous Stewart Resnick benefit from the status quo. And just to be clear, the status quo is that in the fourth largest economy in the world, we have some of the poorest and most polluted communities barely making it.

Land use transitions do not happen passively; they are choreographed by powerful actors and profoundly shape rural economies and community opportunities. Today, California’s Central Valley is dominated by an extractive economic paradigm. But what if the future could be different? What if the economy could benefit more people? What if the Central Valley could be a healthy place to live and work? These are the central questions guiding UCS research on cropland repurposing.

Today, UCS released a road map to accelerate a just land transition in California’s Central Valley. One of the most immediate ways to ensure the ongoing land transition is led by communities is to ensure that projects contributing to land use transitions actually provide meaningful benefits to communities.

A just land transition defines “Meaningful Benefits” for communities

California’s Department of Conservation (DOC) has a head start in this area. In April, DOC adopted revised guidelines for its Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program (MLRP), which included a robust definition of “meaningful benefits.” The MLRP program is investing $90 million in projects that repurpose irrigated agricultural land and address unsustainable groundwater usage while “providing community health, economic wellbeing, water supply, habitat, and climate benefits”.

In November, California voters approved an historic Climate Bond—Proposition 4. $10 billion will be invested through the bond to support climate resiliency programs across the state, including to improve sustainable water management and advance cropland repurposing projects. Proposition 4 requires that at least 40% of the overall investment, $4 billion, fund projects that provide direct and meaningful benefits to vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

Funding from Proposition 4 could be appropriated as early as this summer. It will be up to the state to ensure that projects receiving public funding succeed in advancing the program goals, including upholding its commitment to vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. A key component of effectively evaluating projects lies in defining whether a project provides “meaningful and direct benefits.” Unfortunately, the legislature did not settle on a uniform definition when it passed the bond last year.

If adopted by the legislature, the Department of Conservation’s definition of meaningful benefits can provide guidance to all implementing agencies and consistent guardrails to ensure this major investment of public funding yields the public benefits that were promised to California residents – and in particular to marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

A just land transition is guided by clear values

UCS put together this road map toward a just land transition in partnership with allies and guided by a set of core values. Following these north star principles, the policy brief provides a set of short and long-term steps to facilitate and accelerate a justice-oriented land transition. As in the visualized just transition framework here from the Climate Justice Alliance and Movement Generation, a just land transition shifts us from an extractive economy to a living economy.

It is important to be explicit about values and to test policy solutions against those values, otherwise one extractive economy may just be replaced by another. For example, in one of her seminal works, Golden Gulag, Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore outlined how drought, debt and development dynamics led to irrigated cropland being replaced by the prison-industrial complex throughout the 1980s and 1990s. She explained how new prisons “light the night sky along the Central Valley’s ‘prison alley’…the result of the confluence of political and economic forces embedded in, and built on, the historical power of agriculture and resource extraction in the state” (Gilmore 2007). Indeed, 18 of the 24 new prisons sited between 1982-1998 were on formerly irrigated cropland.

Throughout various land use transitions in California, the state government has been a complicit partner in enriching certain groups to the detriment of others. Between racist laws and genocidal acts of 1800s to the purchasing of land at inflated value from farmers, with public funds, for use by the California Department of Corrections in the late 20th century—it goes without saying that our elected representatives have moments where their decisions affect constituents differently AND how voters shape government priorities also matter. The 1980s prison expansion may not have been possible without the $495 million New Prison Construction Bond Act of 1981 ($1.7 billion in 2025, adjusted for inflation).

We can do better.

A just transition empowers the people to drive the change

A just land transition requires that people who are impacted have a seat at the table. As I alluded to at the start of this blog, there are already a lot of tables and seats for certain types of farmers and landowners. Yet frontline communities, or those communities located in proximity to cropland transition, are likely to experience the first and worst impacts and are often structurally excluded. There are ways to build power and empower folks so they can drive the change:

• Require a process for ensuring affirmative community support for land transition projects involving public funds. Such processes could include an allowance for a right of first refusal by frontline communities or a meaningful process of engagement with the frontline community(ies) for any proposed community benefits agreement.
• Develop local civic infrastructure that will support a just land transition by building decisionmaking power in frontline communities. Examples include community land trusts to acquire and manage land, community choice aggregators for local renewable energy, and cooperatives or other models that center community participation and ownership.
• Fund organizations to develop networks of local elected officials and community leaders who want to be innovators and champions of just land transition. These members could be, for example, mayors, council members, and county supervisors. (See for example, Community Water Center’s Community Water Leaders Network and the AGUA Coalition [La Asociación de Gente Unida por el Agua/Association of People United for Water])
• Expand direct investment in community-based organizations and technical assistance providers working on just land transition. Direct investment will continue building local capacity for project development, implementation (including long-term maintenance), and policy advocacy, as well as evidence for scaling place-based solutions for the region.

A just land transition that is based on intentional and strategic cropland repurposing could help shift the status quo from an unsustainable and extractive agricultural system to a just and living economy, at a feasible pace. To do so means adopting and following guiding principles—these above steps and many more accelerate a just land transition in California’s Central Valley. Everyone has a role to play, which is why our roadmap suggests steps specifically for the legislature, regulatory agencies, local governments and the philanthropic sector.

UCS is fighting to defend these valuable resources

Shortly after announcing the proposed changes to the government’s definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS), the EPA and the Department of the Army opened a 30-day written comment period to gather feedback on the proposal. I submitted comments on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and our more than 500,000 supporters, which you can read here. We also joined our partners in the Clean Water for All coalition to submit a joint response.

Additionally, I delivered oral testimony at an EPA listening session, where UCS joined 45 local, state, regional, and national organizations urging the agency not to narrow the definition of WOTUS. Instead, we called on the EPA to preserve protections for as many wetlands and streams as possible following the Sackett decision. Here is my full testimony:

I’m Dr. Stacy Woods. I’m a geostatistician and environmental scientist, and I’m the research director for the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

I’m here today to urge the EPA to include wetlands and other water bodies in the definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to the fullest extent permitted following Sackett.

The Supreme Court ruling in Sackett removed federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams across the country. In 2023, the definition of WOTUS was updated to bring it into alignment with the Sackett decision. Therefore, further narrowing the definition is not required.

It is not required, nor is it prudent. When wetlands lack federal protections, they are at risk of being damaged or destroyed by industries seeking to maximize their profits, regardless of the environmental costs.

Even before the Sackett decision, wetlands were losing ground in the United States. Between 2009 and 2019, over 650,000 acres of wetlands were lost in the US—that’s equal to the land size of Rhode Island.

Wetlands in this country are primarily destroyed by urban and suburban sprawl and by industrial agriculture operations. And while corporations may profit from draining wetlands to make way for unchecked development or endless rows of feed corn, communities pay a heavy price for this wetland loss.

For example, research by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 30 million acres of wetlands in the Upper Midwest offer nearly $23 billion in residential flood protection each year—a benefit that is now threatened by the reduction in federal wetland protections.

But wetlands do more than soak up water and reduce flooding in nearby communities. Wetlands also provide substantial benefits to commercial fishing, water supply, water quality, carbon capture, and recreation, amounting to over $7.7 trillion per year, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Research shows that even wetlands that look isolated on a map are often still connected to other waters. Narrowing the definition of protected waters, connections, and ditches would mean ignoring how water moves across the landscape—and ignoring the scientific evidence that shows how wetland and stream pollution can harm rivers and lakes downstream.

The definition of WOTUS was already amended to align with the Sackett decision. Any further restrictions go beyond what is required and would threaten wetlands, streams, downstream rivers and lakes, and the communities that rely on these waters.

On behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists and our more than 500,000 supporters—including many whose communities, livelihoods, and well-being are directly impacted by nearby wetlands and streams—we thank the EPA for this opportunity to provide comment on the definition of Waters of the United States.

You can act to protect our waters

The EPA and the Department of the Army have announced a public listening session to hear directly from people who depend on clean, safe wetlands and streams—that is, people like you! The session will take place on May 14, 2025, with both virtual and in-person participation options. A second listening session will also be announced soon. You must register in advance to give comments, and speaker slots fill up quickly. Click here to register to speak.

To help you prepare, UCS has created a guide with talking points you can use during your three-minute testimony. I also designed a story map that explains the history of wetlands in the United States, the benefits wetlands provide to all of us, and how you can take action to defend these vital water bodies.

Please use every opportunity to urge the federal government to protect the wetlands and streams that sustain our communities, economies, and the environment.

Of course these are not normal times, and with everything else that’s currently happening throughout the federal government under the Trump administration—including the lengthy budget reconciliation process, an ongoing federal funding freeze impacting agricultural programs, and staff cuts affecting the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)—the food and farm bill hasn’t been nearly as front-and-center as it normally would be at this point in the legislative calendar.

But one thing that’s proceeding as usual this year is the introduction of what are called “marker bills,” or pieces of legislation that members of Congress hope to get included in the language of the food and farm bill once we have one. One such marker bill is the Agriculture Resilience Act.

Building farms that can withstand the impacts of climate change

The Agriculture Resilience Act, or ARA, is a detailed, climate-focused bill that, if enacted, would achieve an array of important climate- and conservation-related goals. It was introduced on April 22 (Earth Day!) by Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM). 

In announcing the bill’s introduction, Pingree’s office noted that the legislation “aims to empower farmers with the incentives they need to stay in business, fight climate change, and help draw down carbon in the soil. With the right tools as outlined by Congresswoman Pingree’s bill, farming will be on a pathway towards net-zero U.S. agriculture emissions by 2040.”

So, what does the ARA do, and why is it so important for climate, conservation, and other UCS priorities? Here are a few key examples:

• The ARA provides a wide variety of tools including research, technical assistance, and financial support that farmers can use to build more resilient farms that can withstand extreme weather. This is especially important for beginning and underserved farmers.
• The bill would increase USDA investments in conservation, technical assistance, and research programs.
• It advances the idea of sustainable nutrition science—a UCS priority—encouraging research that integrates nutrition, climate, food production, and the environment. The ARA includes language to “develop food systems that are healthful, sustainable, equitable, and resilient to extreme weather, other impacts of climate change, and other potential intersecting global and national disruptions.’’
• It expands research and extension programs and adds climate adaptation and mitigation as part of these programs’ activities.
• The ARA would provide grants to state and Tribal governments to implement soil health management programs on their land.
• One change from a previous version of the bill is that the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) will now reinstate automatic contract renewals for producers who demonstrate compliance with existing contracts and commit to addressing additional resource concerns.

Kate Anderson, director of the UCS Food and Environment Program, made the following statement welcoming the reintroduction of the ARA:

“The Agriculture Resilience Act offers a science-based framework to build a more robust, climate-ready, and environmentally sound food and farming system—at a time when farmers and ranchers are facing growing losses from climate-related disasters. Today’s dominant model of corporate industrial agriculture harms farmers and contributes to unhealthy diets, while degrading soil, polluting air and water, and leaving our food supply vulnerable to extreme weather—all while fueling the climate crisis.

“This bill would expand farmers’ access to proven practices that improve soil health—making it more resistant to erosion, better able to absorb floodwater and withstand drought, and less likely to pollute waterways. Farmers across the country are already using strategies like cover cropping, crop rotation, and managed grazing. But achieving a truly resilient food system requires stronger financial investment and hands-on technical support. The Agriculture Resilience Act gives farmers the tools they need to succeed—and to lead in confronting the climate crisis.”

UCS has strongly supported earlier versions of the ARA given that it contains the type of forward-looking climate and conservation language we hope to see included in future food and farm legislation, and we are excited to see it introduced again. We appreciate the hard work by Representative Pingree, Senator Heinrich, and other bill cosponsors to introduce this legislation.

Your voice can make the difference

Now that the Agriculture Resilience Act has been reintroduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, it’s a great time to reach out to your elected officials. You can ask your senators and representative to become cosponsors of the ARA, which will help build support.

It’s not clear when we will see a new food and farm bill introduced in either the House or Senate (it may not even happen this year). However, the more support the ARA has from members of Congress, the more that helps to get key language from the ARA included in the farm bill when it’s time for the House and Senate agriculture committees to draft their respective versions. Let your members know why the ARA is important, and urge them to cosponsor the bill!