Release: NSAC Holds Briefing as USDA Funding Freeze and Layoffs Threaten Farmers and Communities Nationwide

For Immediate Release

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Release: NSAC Holds Briefing as USDA Funding Freeze and Layoffs Threaten Farmers and Communities Nationwide

Washington, DC, March 6, 2025 – Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a coalition of more than 150 farm, food, conservation, and rural organizations, held a virtual briefing on how the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding freeze and employee layoffs are affecting farmers and ranchers. 

Panelists – who called on USDA to end the freeze and release funding on all signed contracts – included farmers from North Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and California. These farmers shared their own stories of how the ongoing federal funding freeze – in addition to significant layoffs at USDA – has created challenging and often dire circumstances for farmers and communities from coast to coast, threatening farm viability and livelihoods. 

Rachel Bouresssa of Wisconsin said “I have EQIP and CSP contracts. I also work with organizations with RCPP agreements. At a time that I am looking forward to the growing season ahead, I am unsure if many of my contacts will be paid. … It’s not just my work. There are many small businesses, from excavating companies to plumbers, engineers, and suppliers that will also be impacted and they may not even know it yet. These are small businesses in rural communities. 

“The NRCS in Arkansas, we depend on it. It has saved our farm a couple of times because it’s allowed us to implement programs and conservation that have allowed us to cut inputs like herbicides and fertilizers and things. And without them, I wouldn’t be here fighting the fight now. And we were already short staffed in Arkansas. We’ve got NRCS agents manning two or three counties and we just lost 40 plus employees. We were short to start with, so what does that mean about payment processing?,” said Adam Chappell, a farmer from Cotton Plant, Arkansas.

Steve Tucker from Southwest Nebraska said “We have a lot of big companies that do big runs of product, but on the flip side of that, there’s nobody to take care of the smaller brands who are doing more specific specialized products and want to work directly with farmers …. So {I got} a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant … to try and help provide some funding to help get these things off the ground. I had farmers on board. … I had {consumer packaged good} brands,… We put this together, had numbers. And then this freeze happened and I went back to ’em and they said, nothing’s going to go until that freeze comes off or the freeze disappears, then we’re done, we’re out,” Tucker lamented. 

Patrick Brown of Warren County, North Carolina has 90% of his acreage enrolled in a Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program. He was scheduled to plant 500 acres of grain this spring and the contract was scheduled to go through 2028. 

“Now that the current project has been frozen and we’ve actually already done the work as far as planting those cover crops in the fall, we’re now going into the 2025 growing season with financial uncertainty whether or not I have to face the fact of putting this farm back into collateral and bond operation capital in order to plant a successful crop or wait on the federal government with emergency relief, which we still have not received,” said Brown noting that “without farming, we don’t eat and it is really terrifying going into this year faced with this level of financial uncertainty, but also the markets and the tariffs that are being announced daily, and the mental health aspect of farming as well.”

Anna Knight of Redlands, California talked about the impact of the funding freeze on Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, saying “every single week, my farm packs 1,000 food boxes with 12 different kinds of fruits and vegetables sourced from 25 different farming families. … we receive about $6,000 a week for this produce. We’ve been in contract with USDA for the last 12 months in order to produce these boxes and we’ve been planting, harvesting, weeding, packing in this effort. On Monday, we were alerted that this program was frozen and that tomorrow, Friday the 7th is going to be our last delivery. …For us, this represents an immediate $60,000 loss…Collectively, this suspended contract represents $300,000 that immediately is gone and our farmers don’t have an outlet for. LFPA has been such an important and impactful financial bridge that has helped so many farmers in my region be able to get back on our feet and connect with community members who really need this fresh produce. This is a real economic impact and economic loss for the farmers in my community.”

Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director, added that “stories like those shared by today’s panelists are playing out in countless communities nationwide. The ongoing federal funding freeze is threatening livelihoods as we speak – and creating uncertainty, confusion, and anger among the very people the Department is meant to serve. It’s high time for USDA to end deliberation of whether or not to honor its own word, and to immediately release funding on all signed contracts.”

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

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