The Issue
At this most crucial time when our farmers are beginning to plant seeds, order equipment, and initiate the months of hard work to produce the food for us, our family and our country, they are being attacked by our own federal government.

Tens of thousands of family farmers have had their federal funding suddenly and without warning, taken away by the USDA. These include funds that are due them for fulfilling prior agreements with the USDA under contract with the Federal Government. They include such things as planting crops, installing fencing, supporting food banks, purchasing equipment, installing irrigation, mitigating climate change, and training new farmers.

Withholding these funds is unlawful and will put many farmers out of business if the government continues to refuse to honor their agreements. USDA must honor its commitments before more damage is done to farm communities nationwide and to our food supply.

What happened
On January 27, 2025, farmers received news that the Trump administration would be pausing all federal funding by Executive Order. The pause was intended to allow for a review of programs linked to the Inflation Reduction Act passed during the previous administration. The pause impacts thousands of farmers, ranchers, and the entire farming community that rely on these funds for critical projects.

Multiple court cases have been initiated to fight the pause, resulting in temporary restraining orders being put in place. Despite these orders, 99.65% of the two billion dollars of committed funding remains frozen.

How the freeze is impacting farmers
Farm Aid spoke to organizations and farmers on the frontlines of this funding freeze to hear how it’s impacting them and their communities.

Brian Geier farms 55 acres of corn, soy and hay, and maintains ten acres of forest in Harrison County, Indiana. He gets federal funding through a contract with the USDA to help with invasive species removal, which is important to the health of the forests and the success of his forestry operation. He also has a contract to start rotational grazing on his farm. He’s already spent money preparing for the design and expanding his herd Brian and is in the hole for money he has already spent.

Jesse Womack of National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) explains the impacts of the funding freeze are two-fold. The first is that “existing contracts with farmers won’t be paid out,” and the second is “unobligated funds in USDA coffers will be held there, even those funds slotted for wildly popular programs with long backlogs of farmers.”

Jesse is frustrated that the administration scrubbed any mention of climate change from the USDA’s website. “It’s sad to see when farmers across the country are dealing with climate change every single day and the impacts it has directly on their operations are undeniable. Politicians can’t hide the fact that good stewardship and soil health practices mitigate the effects of climate change.”

Hannah Smith-Brubaker is a livestock farmer and Executive Director of Pasa Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), an organization in Pennsylvania that supports sustainable farming through farmer-driven research and education.

They provide direct technical assistance and incentives to help farmers cover the costs of conservation practices. They currently have 143 farms enrolled and nearly two million dollars already committed to farmer support across 238 counties and 15 states in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. Practices include cover cropping and prescribed grazing and crop rotation, critical for protecting soil health, improving water quality and mitigating the impacts of extreme flooding.

What can we do
The impact of this pause will extend well beyond our farmers’ fields and into the supermarket without swift intervention from Congress.

Congress can fix this, and they need to hear directly from you.

Click here to send a message to your representatives today demanding they step up and protect our farmers from further harm