For decades, Florida's upstream farmers and downstream aquaculturists have been at odds over water quality and environmental impacts.
Now, the new initiative "Healthy Farms-Healthy Bays" seeks to bridge the divide and foster more collaboration to protect Florida's fragile ecosystems. It has released a new report outlining its vision, as well as specific steps to protect water quality and conserve Florida's working lands.
Randall Dasher, a Suwannee County farmer and co-chair of the initiative, played a key role in uniting groups to work on creating a healthier watershed.
"It is about coming together and collaborating, getting across the table from each other in a nonthreatening way," Dasher explained. "Because too much of that has gone on. That just makes people be less likely to listen and hear, and talk about best practices."
The partnership, supported by the Florida Climate Smart Agriculture Work Group and a $100,000 grant from the VoLo Foundation, brings together farmers, aquaculturists and environmental experts to tackle challenges like nutrient runoff, declining water quality and the effects of climate change.
Ernie Shea, president of the nonprofit Solutions from the Land, said the initiative marks a turning point in how Florida's agriculture and aquaculture can work together when it comes to climate change.
"We're all affected," Shea pointed out. "Climate change takes no prisoners; it affects all sides of operations. And what we've done with Florida Climate-Smart Agriculture is bring together the entire value chain - the producers, right up through the associations that represent farmers."
The Suwannee River Basin was chosen as the focal point for their efforts. A team of farmers, aquaculturists and university experts conducted a two-year analysis to identify the most pressing challenges and propose solutions. One key recommendation is accelerating best practices to reduce nutrient runoff, from planting cover crops to using microbial sprays and reducing chemical inputs that affect water quality.
get more stories like this via email
In Pennsylvania, a nonprofit striving to secure the future of small dairy farms is hoping its federal funding won't be frozen much longer.
Agriculture drives the state's $83 billion economy, with more than 50,000 farms. The Dairy Grazing Alliance includes an apprenticeship program to connect mentors and apprentices across 16 states. It supports dairy farmers using managed grazing to restore land, produce quality milk and stay profitable.
Jessica Matthews, apprenticeship manager for the alliance, said Pennsylvania currently has nine apprentices and 12 mentors.
"I read a statistic that we've lost 95% of small dairy farms since the '70s," Matthews noted. "The Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship was originally formed to train the next generation of dairy farmers, because small farm owners were retiring without an identified successor."
Matthews said the program runs on 98% federal grant funding, with some climate-smart funds potentially tied to the Inflation Reduction Act. The money is on hold as they await guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Sustainable Ag Coalition, and producer payments have been paused until further notice.
The Trump administration tariffs on goods from China and Mexico are also expected to have an effect on farming in the state. Matthews pointed out one reason dairy farming is an expensive part of the ag industry in Pennsylvania is farmers are buying their supplies at market cost.
"Everything from Ajax for the milk house to iodine for teat dips, to vaccinations, all of that is bought at market costs at the farm," Matthews stressed. "They're making milk, and the milk is being sold at a wholesale cost per hundredweight."
She underscored it is hard to balance the high expenses with what farmers make from the milk when selling to a co-op. She added most milk stays in the country but higher tariffs on imported production supplies will raise farmers' input costs, even as their output remains the same.
get more stories like this via email
It looks like at least some Indiana farmers will be getting the federal dollars they have been counting on for farm conservation and soil health.
The Inflation Reduction Act included almost $20 million in funding for popular initiatives like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. More than 1,100 Indiana farms are part of the programs to help fight climate change.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would release funds for farmers who already have contracts.
Russell Taylor, vice president of Live Earth Products, which makes natural soil amendment products, said the funding freeze has forced the U.S. Senate to pivot on some big issues still to be resolved.
"Some of these freezes for funding, those items are really causing things that should have been working or in the works to be halted, such as the Farm Bill," Taylor explained. "Some of these things are just going to be delayed a little bit further out in the year but there still should be optimistic progress for things like getting a Farm Bill passed."
In releasing the funds, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins blamed the delay on the Biden administration, saying it "rushed out" money which was supposed to be spent over multiple years. She stated her agency is reviewing whether any of the funding so far has gone to programs which, in Rollins' words, "had nothing to do with agriculture."
Taylor cautioned farmers should also ensure they have what they need now to plant their crops should Trump's threats to impose tariffs become reality. And no matter the future of federal farm assistance, he said there are some steps farmers can take to ensure their soil health.
"In those regards to climate change, there are some things that you should be planning as far as the long game, and that is, building your soil organic matter," Taylor emphasized. "That's something that a farmer can address every year after year, and have it be useful for them to reduce their inputs and make a better utilization of those inputs."
He noted soil organic matter is a farmer's reservoir for storing water and nutrients, and it can always be improved regardless of current federal policies. U.S. Department of Agriculture research has found farms can boost their soil health within 10 years by using conservation practices.
get more stories like this via email
By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
Republicans won control of Congress and the White House in the last election, and their victories will have major ramifications for the future of climate and agriculture policy in the United States. It's too soon to say with certainty what exactly these ramifications will be, but we can nevertheless make some educated guesses about what to expect from the new Congress on agriculture and climate.
There's no doubt that Republican lawmakers will seek to scale down, roll back or repeal certain climate and agriculture-related policies that the Biden administration implemented, such as the Inflation Reduction Act's support for climate-smart agricultural programs.
But this doesn't mean everything will be on the chopping block, says Laurie Beyranevand, Director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems and law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
"There's been a lot of money that got pumped into ag research under the Biden administration, and I think generally, Republicans are really supportive of that," Beyranevand tells Sentient. "The Trump administration is definitely going to want to try to figure out which of those things farmers in the ag community are supportive of, and I don't think, wholesale, they're unsupportive of what Biden was trying to accomplish."
It's also important to note that, while Republicans do have majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, their House majority is very small: just five seats. This means that any piece of legislation can't afford to lose more than five Republican votes if Democrats remain unified, and this is a wrinkle that could potentially have significant consequences on agriculture policy.
Nevertheless, let's take a look at what sorts of policies the new Republican Congress might pursue in the upcoming session.
Immigration, Tariffs and Crop Subsidies Colliding
Opposition to immigration is President-elect Trump's flagship political issue - he's pledged to carry out "mass deportations" of immigrants in his second term - and Congressional Republicans are already pursuing legislation that would help implement this agenda.
But as Beyranevand notes, America's farming sector is highly dependent on immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, for its labor force. Deporting these folks, or sharply reducing the amount of immigrants in the country through other means, would create a shortage of agricultural workers, thus driving up the price of agricultural goods and reducing America's production capacity.
Normally, this would result in Americans purchasing more imported agricultural goods. But Trump has also pledged to enact tariffs on agricultural imports, and as we saw during Trump's first term, tariffs also cause prices to increase.
"If we have an ag labor shortage, and we're not able to produce as much domestically, then we're going to rely on imports, necessarily," Beyranevand says. "But Trump has also said that he wants to increase tariffs and reduce imports."
During Trump's first term, he sharply increased crop subsidies to farmers in order to stem the economic damage caused by his tariffs on agriculture, and he may well do the same during his second term if the GOP's anti-immigration policies end up hurting American agricultural producers.
Passing a New Farm Bill
The first order of business for the 119th Congress - and the likely vehicle through which Congress will pass new food and agriculture-related policies - will be the new Farm Bill. At least, it should be the first order of business, as Congress has failed repeatedly over the last two years to authorize a full Farm Bill, and has had to pass two short-term extensions of the last Farm Bill as a result.
The Farm Bill is an enormous legislative package containing a plethora of food and agriculture-related policies. It's an incredibly important piece of legislation, as America's farming sector is more or less reliant on it to function, and Congress must pass an updated version of it every five years or so.
The last five-year Farm Bill was passed in 2018, and Congress has been unable to agree on a new version ever since. Instead, lawmakers have passed extensions of the 2018 bill, the most recent of which expires in September. However, Republicans now control both chambers of Congress and the White House, which will make it easier to pass a new five-year bill, and barring something extraordinary, that's what lawmakers will do in 2025.
It's far too soon to say with certainty what will and won't be in the next Farm Bill. However, we can glean some things from the Farm Bill proposal House Republicans released in May, as well the Farm Bill "framework" Senate Republicans released a month later.
Removing the 'Guardrails' on Climate-Smart Policies
In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which allocated $19.5 billion to USDA conservation programs that benefit the environment. The law says that a conservation program must "directly improve soil carbon, reduce nitrogen losses, or reduce, capture, avoid, or sequester carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide emissions, associated with agricultural production" in order to be eligible for the funds.
That's the idea, anyway; in truth, it's not clear that all of these "climate-friendly" programs are actually benefiting the environment. There are a number of reasons for this, including lack of transparency and questionable methodology on the part of the USDA, but at least in theory, this money is legally required to go to programs that benefit the environment.
Republicans want to remove this requirement, which is sometimes referred to as the "guardrails" for climate-smart policies. If this were to happen, the USDA would be free to spend what's left of this money - around $13 billion, as of May - on any of its many conservation programs, not only those with a demonstrated benefit to the climate.
Cutting SNAP Funding
In addition to containing many farm- and agriculture-related policies, the Farm Bill is also how the government funds SNAP, the federal food stamps program.
SNAP funding once enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, but the GOP changed their tune on food stamps after Barack Obama took office: Despite expanding the program twice during George W. Bush's presidency, Congressional Republicans voted to cut food stamp funding in 2013, then again in 2018, and are now doing so once more in the most recent Farm Bill.
The amount of money food stamp recipients receive is determined by something called the Thrifty Food Plan. This is a diet plan, created by the USDA, that's meant to provide maximum nutrition for a family of four on a frugal budget.
The House GOP's Farm Bill proposal would limit the USDA's authority to adjust the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan over time, which would effectively cut SNAP benefits by $30 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Congressional Democrats oppose these cuts.
Repealing Proposition 12 - Or Not?
In 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, which banned the production and sale of eggs, pork and veal produced using "extreme confinement" - that is, the severely cramped living spaces that are par for the course in factory farms. Various elements of the meat industry sued to block the law, but the Supreme Court upheld it in 2023, and it's now in effect.
Because Proposition 12 forbids the in-state sale of these foods even if they were produced in other states, it's had a ripple effect on the entire sector, as California is a major market for eggs, pork and veal. This has made it target number one for the meat industry - even though many individual farmers actually like Proposition 12.
House Republicans' Farm Bill proposal would both repeal Proposition 12 and forbid any other states from enacting similar legislation. Senate Republicans' Farm Bill framework suggests, without explicitly stating, that it would do the same.
But repealing Proposition 12 has proven to be surprisingly controversial among Republicans. A coalition of 16 House Republicans signed a letter urging their leadership not to repeal Proposition 12, as they feel that doing so would be a violation of states' rights. Months later, eight more Republicans came out against repealing the law, on the grounds that doing so would make America less competitive with Chinese meat producers.
The fight over Proposition 12 has aroused very strong feelings on both sides of the debate, and it will no doubt be one of the gnarliest Farm Bill-related disputes.
The Bottom Line
It's worth keeping in mind that many policies regarding food, agriculture and the climate are outside of Congress's hands. Trump has pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords, scrap a proposed rule aimed at increasing electric vehicle usage and roll back environmental regulations - and these are all things that he can do without Congressional approval.
But Congress, and the Republicans who control it, will still play an enormous role in shaping America's climate and food policies over the next two years. Only time will tell exactly what those policies look like.
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
get more stories like this via email