The Cost of Silence for Organic Growers & a Sustainable Future
On How the USDA Deleted Critical Funds & Climate Data, and the Fate of Organic Farming in America
In late January 2025, organic farmers woke up to find something unsettling: the U.S. Department of Agriculture had quietly purged its websites of climate-smart farming data, interactive tools, and funding information. The order came on January 30, instructing staff to “archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” within 24 hours. Entire sections on climate-smart agriculture, soil conservation, and extreme weather resilience were wiped out without warning. For the 60,000 farms and 25 million acres striving to implement climate-friendly practices, this wasn’t just a technical glitch – it was a gut punch.
Within weeks, Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute filed an emergency lawsuit on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY) and others, accusing the USDA of unlawful “climate censorship” that violated federal law. The lawsuit argues that by stripping these resources, USDA is denying 60,000 farmers across 25 million acres the knowledge and tools they need to adapt to climate change and access promised funding. “USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources,” one Earthjustice attorney said pointedly.
This data purge hit like a tsunami in the sustainable agriculture community. It wasn’t just nerdy research papers that disappeared; farmers lost access to practical tools like the Forest Service’s Climate Risk Viewer and soil health guides – resources that had helped them plan cover crops, manage drought risk, and tap into billions in conservation grants.
“We need every piece of science and intergenerational knowledge to adjust to this new reality,” said Marcie Craig, NOFA-NY’s Executive Director, emphasizing how farmers are on the frontlines of climate impacts.
Now, at the dawn of the 2025 growing season, those frontline farmers are essentially flying blind. Why would a government agency charged with “Caring for the Land and Serving People” delete vital climate information at the peak of a climate crisis? The official line from the new administration has been that they want to “focus on supporting farmers and ranchers, not DEIA programs or far-left climate programs.”
In other words, an ideological purge. But sustainable farming advocates see a more cynical calculus: power and profit. This abrupt reversal came under an administration openly aligned with the fossil fuel industry – at a time when Big Oil’s interests and Big Ag’s status quo are tightly interwoven.
The Big Oil–Industrial Ag Connection
Industrial agriculture is one of Big Oil’s biggest markets, and that’s not hyperbole. Consider that most synthetic fertilizers and many pesticides are made from petrochemicals – products of coal and natural gas. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has detailed how the fossil fuel and agrochemical industries are deeply “tethered,” sharing corporate board members and lobbying aims. Oil and gas companies see a lifeline in selling more fertilizer (made from fossil-derived ammonia) under the guise of “climate-smart” solutions, like so-called blue hydrogen fertilizer – a scheme CIEL calls a false solution to prop up polluters. In short, if American agriculture truly goes climate-smart and organic, Big Oil stands to lose. And a president elected with massive fossil fuel donations has little incentive to let that happen.
If you want a deeper look at how industrial agriculture became a colossal cash cow for the fossil fuel industry - and how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wound up in the middle of it all - Emily Atkin’s piece is a must-read:
Meanwhile, the climate crisis rages on. Globally, food and agriculture systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024, American farmers suffered $20.3 billion in crop losses from climate disasters – wildfires, heat waves, floods. There were 27 separate billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. last year. This is precisely the wrong time to halt climate adaptation efforts – yet that’s what happened. By scrubbing climate change from its vocabulary (and websites), USDA sent a chilling message to farmers: “You’re on your own.”
A Decade of Turmoil: Sustainable Agriculture 2015–2025
To understand how we got here, let’s trace the roller-coaster of U.S. farm policy over the past decade. It’s a story of bold strides, sudden U-turns, and constant whiplash for organic and sustainable farming advocates. Here’s a chronological breakdown of key developments (2015–2025) that set the stage:
2015 – Seeds of Hope: With the Paris Agreement freshly inked, USDA ramped up “climate-smart” initiatives under Obama, highlighting soil health and resilience. Programs like CSP and EQIP were buoyed by optimism that sustainable agriculture had finally gone mainstream.
The above picture depicts the Obama Administration signing the Paris Agreement (Source: Obama White House Archives) 2016 – Momentum Builds: Organic demand soared, prompting USDA to propose stronger animal welfare standards and new climate-adaptation measures. For the first time, Black and Indigenous growers gained traction in federal policy discussions; progress felt real and bipartisan.
2017 – The Rollback Begins: Trump’s inauguration brought a freeze on federal grants, abrupt staff cuts, and an end to the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule. EQIP and CSP were threatened with deep budget cuts, sending a clear signal: climate and organic weren’t welcome at the top. Grassroots advocates, however, refused to back down.
2018 – Farm Bill Tug-of-War: Despite tension, Congress passed a Farm Bill that preserved CSP and EQIP - but changed CSP’s funding in ways critics claimed reduced its impact. Still, the creation of Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) offered a glimmer of hope for local and organic producers.
2019 – Farm Stress & Trade Wars: Tariff battles hammered American exports, and most bailout funds bypassed small organic farmers. Catastrophic floods delayed planting while “climate change” remained taboo in USDA circles. Many felt left behind by short-term politics overriding long-term preparation.
2020 – Pandemic Pressure: COVID-19 shattered supply chains, but local organic farms proved resilient - until market closures hurt them, too. Some scored success with CSA deliveries, spotlighting the importance of strong local networks amid wildfires, droughts, and general chaos.
2021 – A Swing Forward: With Biden came a new climate focus, including the bold Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities plan. The Inflation Reduction Act poured billions into conservation, aiming to turn farmers into “climate heroes.” Applications soared, hope returned.
2022 – Full Throttle Climate-Smart: USDA funded $3.1 billion for 141 projects, targeting small, underserved producers and 25 million acres. Gains were real, but so was opposition, as critics decried “left-wing” spending. Pressure mounted ahead of the next Farm Bill fight.
2023 – Storms & Stalemate: Historic heat, megadroughts, and hurricanes battered farms. Political gridlock left USDA programs limping under temporary funding. Some progress survived (like a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure plan), but the looming election cast shadows over everything.
2024 – Election Whiplash: A new administration, backed by pro-industry donors, vowed to slash “wasteful” climate efforts. Warnings of looming program cuts were realized by year’s end: thousands of USDA employees fired, and sustainable-ag budgets on the chopping block.
NOAA map shows 2024's billion-dollar climate disasters, totaling $20.3B in farm losses. USDA's removal of climate resources prompted lawsuits from environmental groups. (Source: NOAA) 2025 – Purge & Lawsuits: True to predictions, climate data vanished from USDA sites and billions in farm contracts froze overnight. Over 60,000 farmers were stuck in limbo, with “promised” funds evaporating. Earthjustice and others launched legal battles, but for many small producers, the damage was already done.
Help others understand how a decade of progress in sustainable farming was built - and how quickly it’s being dismantled.
This USDA timeline - once prominently featured on the Climate-Smart Commodities page - has since been scrubbed from federal websites. It illustrated a rare moment of clarity: an organized, multi-billion-dollar national effort to move agriculture toward resilience, equity, and carbon reduction. Now, that vision has been shelved midstream. You can still view the archived version via the Wayback Machine.
Programs that took years to design, fund, and launch were unraveled in a matter of weeks. Signed contracts were frozen. Project milestones never reached. And the climate crisis marches on - untouched by the erasures of government webpages or the whims of political power.
Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities: Promise and Betrayal
It’s worth zooming in on the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities – perhaps the biggest single investment in sustainable agriculture ever undertaken by the agency, and now a major casualty of the data purge and funding freeze.
What was this program exactly, and why does its loss matter?
Launched in 2022, the Partnerships program (part of USDA’s broader Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry initiative) was designed to reduce greenhouse emissions in agriculture and reward farmers for climate-friendly practices. But it wasn’t just about carbon; it aimed to support small and underserved farmers and open new markets for them. Projects under this umbrella ranged from helping Black cooperatives in the Southeast implement agroforestry, to assisting midwestern corn growers in planting cover crops and selling verified “climate-smart” grain. The idea was to transform how America farms by scaling up what forward-thinking farmers were already doing.
By late 2023, significant progress had been made. According to USDA reports, over 14,000 farms and 3.2 million acres were actively enrolled in Climate-Smart Commodity projects. Thousands more were lined up waiting to join. Early successes were evident: farmers were cutting fertilizer use, improving soil health, and finding lucrative markets (like food companies willing to pay a premium for low-carbon grains). Crucially, many participants were producers often left out of big USDA programs – small family farms, organic grain cooperatives, Tribal agriculture programs. The inclusion of 276 nonprofit and commodity groups, 98 universities, and dozens of tribal and local governments as partners meant expertise and support was reaching deeply into rural communities.
One illustrative story is that of Patrick Brown, a fourth-generation farmer in North Carolina. He enrolled 90% of his acreage into a climate-smart pilot focusing on cover crops. The program offered higher incentives and more flexibility than traditional cost-shares, allowing him to plant multi-species cover crops on nearly all his fields – improving his soil and cutting input costs.
“We did the work – we planted the cover crops expecting to be reimbursed,” Brown said. But when the funding froze, his plan to plant 500 acres of grain this spring was thrown into question. “Without the necessary funding to continue the work we started, we may have to put our farm up as collateral to keep it afloat,” he admitted, his voice filled with uncertainty.
Multiply Patrick’s situation by thousands of farmers, and you grasp the scale of disruption. The Partnerships program was midstream – contracts signed, seeds in the ground – when the rug was pulled out. The betrayal felt by farmers is palpable. It’s not just the money; it’s the principle. They took a risk on innovative practices, often spending more upfront, with the trust that USDA “had their back.” To have that trust violated not only hurts financially, it undercuts future willingness to try climate-smart approaches. As one farmer put it, “We signed up, we did our part. If the government doesn’t do theirs, why would anyone sign up for this again?”
Supporters of the freeze claim it’s about fiscal responsibility, but the numbers tell another story. The program’s cost ($3.1B over 5 years) is minuscule compared to, say, annual commodity crop subsidies or the price tag of recent trade war bailouts. And it promised enormous returns: besides environmental gains, it would create hundreds of new markets and revenue streams for producers, from climate-branded wheat flour to carbon credits for rice farmers. Stranding these projects now not only wastes money already spent, it forfeits future economic benefits. It’s akin to planting an orchard and bulldozing it the next year, just as it starts bearing fruit.
Moreover, many partner organizations hired staff, set up programs, and mobilized resources expecting multi-year commitments. A sudden cut forces layoffs and organizational crises. NSAC noted that by reneging on agreements with partner nonprofits and businesses, “USDA will force a capacity reduction that greatly degrades technical assistance services available to farmers at the local level.”
The freeze doesn’t just pause payments – it breaks the trust and infrastructure needed to deliver climate solutions on the ground. Those effects could linger for years.
In short, the Partnerships program encapsulated a grand bargain: farmers, even skeptics, were willing to give climate action a shot if it also improved their livelihoods. USDA offered that deal. And now that deal is in limbo. Restoring it – or not – will signal whether America is serious about tackling agricultural emissions while uplifting family farms, or whether it will backslide into a status quo that serves neither farmers nor the planet.
A Pause with High Stakes
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities was more than a grant program; it was a rare federal attempt to reward stewardship, scale regenerative practices, and bring underserved farmers into the fold. And now it’s unraveling in real time - not because it failed, but because it threatened entrenched power.
What happens next - to these farmers, to the food system, and to climate adaptation in U.S. agriculture - depends on how this fight plays out. For now, the contracts are frozen, the data is gone, and the future hangs in limbo.
However, the repercussions are just beginning.
In the second installment of this series, we’ll examine the broader ripple effects: canceled trainings, broken contracts, layoffs, the effects on communities, and the lawsuits demanding accountability. We’ll also explore what actions you, as a consumer, voter, or grower, can take now to protect the future of sustainable farming in America.
Have you - or someone you know - been impacted by the USDA’s data purge or funding freeze? Whether you're a farmer, researcher, nonprofit partner, or advocate, your story matters. Drop a comment below (or shoot me a message instead) to share your experience, perspective, or questions. These disruptions are not abstract - they’re reshaping lives, livelihoods, and our food future. Let’s keep the conversation grounded and growing.