Each year at the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest, students gather to classify soils based on their color, texture, and structure. The team whose analyses most closely match those of professional soil scientists return to campus with a gleaming 3-foot trophy, the coveted Stanley Cup of soils.

There is more than school pride at stake, however. This competition teaches the next generation of soil scientists how to manage the soils used to grow our food and support our agricultural infrastructure. Their work helps farmers produce more nutritious crops, combat erosion, and capture and store carbon underground. As the Trump administration’s budget cuts put the field of soil science on shaky ground, students here remain committed to treating soil as the life-giving—and downright competition-worthy—resource that it is.

Prepping for the Contest

“You can imagine how different the soil is in the middle of Utah than it might be in Maine or Florida,” John Galbraith, the longtime coach of Virginia Tech, 2024’s winning team, said in the lead-up to this year’s competition.

Teams can range in size from three students to more than 20. They compete both individually and as a group to most accurately describe the origin and characteristics of five “competition pits” over two days. These pits expose the top five to six “horizons,” or layers, of soil, telling a story of the land.

This year’s contest was held April 27 through May 2 this year. Hosting an outdoor event in spring in Wisconsin is always a gamble, since winter’s chill and precipitation tend to stick around well into April, and on Day One of the contest, Mother Nature dealt a losing hand.

It was 45 degrees and dumping rain as the students and their coaches gathered in the parking lot of a local nature reserve near this year’s host school, the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (UWSP). From there, they were guided to the competition site, which had been kept a strict secret all week.

Once they arrived at the site, a wooded lakefront property called Lions Camp, students were forbidden from looking up anything about its soils online. “If your cell phone comes out, you will be disqualified,” Bryant Scharenbroch, an associate soil science professor at UWSP and the lead organizer of this year’s competition, bellowed over a loudspeaker. “No warnings!”

The poncho-clad students sloshed nervously towards the soil pits. Over the course of the morning, they would each spend an hour individually “judging” three pits. Judging requires filling in a scorecard with the color, texture, structure, and water retention abilities of each soil horizon, and using this to estimate the soil’s classification, how it formed, and how it can be best managed or utilized.

Students use a color book to determine the exact shade of each soil layer; a triangle to classify soil, based on its mix of clay, silt, and sand; a soil knife to get a feel for the texture of each horizon; and finally, a muffin tin to transport soil samples in and out of the pit. Their hands, though, are their most important tools. Throughout the day, students need to manually squeeze, squash, and smash the soil to get a sense of its composition, down to its exact percentage of clay versus sand.

At 10 a.m., the first timer went off, and the competitors descended into the soaked earth.

But the critical work of flipping oyster cages—turning them over to combat biofouling and introduce sunlight and air to the bottom—had become impossible. They couldn’t even lift some of them, even though they were made of hollow plastic mesh.

The cages were covered and also filled with the globby bodies of sea squirts, invasive marine invertebrates that thrive in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine and along the coasts of Alaska and the western United States. In large numbers, sea squirts—some as large as a pair of tube socks, some smaller than a pinky ring—are surprisingly heavy, and are impacting lobster, oyster, and other fisheries.

Gaiero had heard that sea squirts could be challenging, but this was out of control. “I’d never seen anything like it,” she says.

By the next season, she felt overwhelmed. “This was ruining my life.”

Blob Invasions Impact Maine’s Fisheries—and Beyond

For more than 500 million years, tunicates have existed as simple creatures clinging to underwater substrates and filter feeding on plankton and bacteria. There are hundreds of subspecies. Some have inhabited the Gulf of Maine since the 1800s, arriving in the ballast waters of ships from distant seas; new subspecies have come from Europe and Asia in oyster seed and on cruise ships.

As tunicates spread across oyster cages, mooring lines, and buoys, they add incredible weight, turning a 5-pound oyster cage into an unmanageable 100-pound obstacle. As they proliferate, they compete with bivalves—oysters, mussels, and scallops—for resources and can eventually choke them out entirely. A bivalve covered in globby tunicates can no longer open its shell to feed, and will eventually starve to death.

They were only a mild nuisance to Maine’s working waterfronts until the past decade, when their populations started to soar.

“The biggest thing driving this invasion,” explains Jeremy Miller, research associate and coordinator of the System Wide Monitoring Program at Wells Reserve, “is the warming Gulf of Maine. The Gulf of Maine is getting warmer and warmer every year. Ever since about 2012, we have been going in one direction, and we haven’t had an anomalously cool year since 2007.” According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, sea surface temperatures in the gulf have been steadily rising at an average of 0.84° F annually, roughly three times that of the world’s oceans.

The Wells Reserve team researches and tracks changes to the environment along the Wells Estuarine Research Reserve, monitoring changes year on year and sharing their findings with the broader scientific community. (Although they are concerned about potential federal cuts to their overall funding, their studies on invasive species receives private foundation money.) The warming waters have had profound impacts on Maine’s fisheries and waterfronts, from the disappearance of Northern shrimp to more frequent flooding events, including so-called “blue sky flooding” in the coastal city of Portland. And those rising temperatures are now driving a sea squirt population boom.

Internal anatomy of a tunicate (Urochordata). Adapted, with permission, from an outline drawing available on BIODIDAC.

Tunicates thrive and spread faster with warmer ocean temperatures. And the rising number of aquaculture farms are providing plentiful structures to which sea squirts can attach themselves and grow.

And there are other factors as well. “The Gulf of Maine, compared to a lot of other parts of the world, is actually fairly low in diversity,” says Larry Harris, Professor Emeritus of Biology Sciences at the University of New Hampshire and co-author of UNH studies on tunicates and warming ocean temperatures. Harris explains that development along the coast of Maine has created the perfect ecosystem for tunicates, with new docks and moorings offering an abundance of substrates for them to attach to in addition to aquaculture farms. Also, tunicates have few true predators in the Gulf of Maine, and overfishing has reduced the number.

Because tunicates are effective filter feeders that grow extremely quickly, they can reproduce alarmingly fast; certain species can double their populations in as little as 8 hours. Some species are considered “colonial,” growing in a super-organism, like coral. Others are called “solitary,” but often appear in clusters and groups because their offspring do not travel far.

And they are not easy to destroy. Cutting a tunicate off a line and throwing it back into the sea doesn’t kill it; a new tunicate will grow from the dismembered piece.

Instead, aquaculture farmers and lobstermen are encouraged to deal with tunicates by desiccation: hauling out traps, lines, and buoys and leaving them in the sun until they fully dry out, which kills the sea squirts. For oyster farmers, combating tunicates means regularly flipping, or “tumbling” the oyster cages to expose the tunicates to the sun.

The impact of tunicates extends beyond oyster farms. As part of his work at the Wells Reserve, Jeremy Miller manages the Marine Invader Monitoring and Information Collaborative. Traveling to different working waterfronts and Maine islands, he’s found lobstermen complaining about tunicates covering their traps, and hears of mussel farmers whose lines have snapped from the sheer weight of the tunicate blobs. Moreover, the diet of a tunicate—nutrients filtered from seawater—is similar to that of shellfish, reducing resources for native filter feeders.

“People are kind of shocked at the amount of actual biomass of these things,” Miller says. “From a biological standpoint, these are taking nutrients—it takes a lot of stuff to grow that biomass, and it’s all stuff that other things could be using. That creates a big impact on aquaculture.”

The Gulf of Maine has a particularly intense tunicate infestation because it’s heating faster than other bodies of water. But global ocean temperatures are all rising, and tunicates have become a nearly worldwide problem. Three species have appeared in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. Invasive tunicates have even been discovered in the waters off Sitka, Alaska.

Nibbling Away at the Problem

While not all tunicates are edible, many of the varieties currently invading Maine’s coast are, including clubbed tunicate and members of the Ciona species. Tunicate meat is slightly chewy, reminiscent of calamari. Wild tunicate does look unappetizing, however. The fleshy tubes growing in Maine’s waters are brownish, barrel shaped, and flaccid.

It can be a struggle to convince consumers to eat these creatures. But in some parts of the world, they’re a welcome food.

“In Asia, they eat the club tunicate,” explains Larry Harris, University of New Hampshire Professor of Biological Science. “They peel off the outer coating. And in Australia they are a pretty standard part of some diets.” In Chile, a rock-like variety called piure is being embraced by fine-dining establishments as a sustainable and local seafood option.

In Norway, the sea squirts for Pronofa’s culinary experiment are farmed, an idea that causes alarm for Maine farmers as it would mean purposefully introducing tunicates to the environment. It remains to be seen whether intrepid chefs may start experimenting with wild-harvested tunicates. In other parts of the world, including Chile, Argentina, and the Mediterranean, sea squirts are part of the local diet. They are easy to harvest and prepare on any waterfront, and recipes for sea squirts abound in these places.

Even if Americans don’t eat them, sea squirts can be transformed into high-protein feed for various animals, from chickens to salmon, and some have begun exploring that possibility.

University of New Hampshire professor Harris began experimenting with tunicates for animal feed decades ago. But he discovered that a Norwegian company, Ocean Bergen, already held a patent for that purpose, which extended to the U.S., so he discontinued his efforts. Ocean Bergen is one of a handful of Norwegian companies working with tunicates as a future food-system solution. Researchers believe that Ciona, which thrives in the freezing waters around Norway, could help clean the water around salmon farms, filtering out the excess nutrients that cause harmful algal blooms.

Two varieties of tunicate that are taking over Maine waters. (Photo courtesy of the Wells Estuarine Reserve)

Scientists are also experimenting with using tunicates for biofuels. Because they produce cellulose to make their outer tunic bodies, tunicates can be broken down to produce ethanol. Since initial studies in 2013, tunicates have been suggested as a potential fuel of the future, but progress with these experiments has been slow and heavily regulated.

Using tunicates for animal food or biofuels would also involve cultivating them for a reliable harvest, which would meet resistance from the aquaculture industry. Since sea squirts are already wreaking havoc on the seafront, a tunicate farm would likely not be welcome near any existing oyster, mussel, or scallop aquaculture operation.

It may be a while before Mainers consider the idea of eating a sea squirt. Meanwhile, the most important step in preventing tunicate spread is effectively stopping their proliferation. As ocean waters continue to warm, and Maine’s aquaculture industry continues to grow, it is likely that the sea squirt will thrive, and aqua-farmers will have to deal with them.

As Larry Harris warns, “Every dock, every net, is a potential population.”

The post Warming Waters Cause Invasion of Sea Squirts at Maine Fisheries appeared first on Civil Eats.

“I joke that this farm is a little better than Death Valley, but I’m not really joking,” said Yadi Wang, the farm director, as he drove his pickup through this 665-acre ranch about a two-hour drive from Phoenix.

For Wang, every day at the ranch is different. During the winter, he spends his days preparing fields of heritage wheat, planting seeds, and laying pipes from irrigation ditches to the row crops edging the now-dry Gila River. Early summer is the busiest, with the farm team spending up to 10 straight days harvesting the desert-hardy wheat, barley, and other grains.

“These cash crops translate into the tangible,” Wang said. Yet much of his time is devoted to a longer-term, less noticeable project: restoring degraded land, often through practices that originated with the Indigenous peoples of this region.

Oatman Flats Ranch is attempting to create a sustainable, scalable model for regenerative farming in the Southwest, demonstrating what can and perhaps should be grown in an increasingly hot, dry, and water-limited region. In 2021, Oatman Flats Ranch became the region’s first-ever Regenerative Organic Certified farm, with practices build soil health and biodiversity, help sequester carbon, and reduce water consumption. Now it’s been designated as a Regenerative Organic Learning Center by the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROC), welcoming other farmers interested in observing and talking about the practices there.

‘We Need a Significant Change in How We Farm’

“If we’re going to hold on to farmland, we need a significant change in how we farm and what we farm,” said Dax Hansen, the ranch’s owner.

But it won’t be easy. Oatman Flats Ranch has undergone a dramatic transformation that required significant investments in training, research, equipment, and techniques, all of which took years to deliver a return. Although processes have been refined and problems worked out along the way, with insights that Hansen freely shares with other farmers, many practices are out of reach for the average farmer.

“It’s an experimental farm,” Wang said. “I have a lot of respect for [Hansen], willing to get all these cash assets to pour into this, to lose money. Not many people can or are willing to do that.”

Hansen, a successful financial technology lawyer who grew up in Mesa, Arizona, purchased the property from his aunt and uncle in late 2018. Oatman Flats Ranch has been in the family for four generations. His grandfather Ray Jud Hansen ran cattle in the 1950s before becoming one of Arizona’s first conventional cotton farmers.

The land was severely degraded when Hansen bought it, with compacted, salty, eroded fields caused by decades of conventional farming practices and 10 years of neglect. The soil was more than 55 percent clay. “It was pretty bleak,” Hansen said. “[The land] had basically been sterilized, with almost nothing growing on it.”

Hansen wanted to demonstrate the potential for regenerative farming in the arid Southwest, so he and his team redesigned the farm. They began by restoring the dilapidated infrastructure, repairing wells and pump equipment, excavating irrigation ditches, and purchasing the necessary farm equipment. They cleared hundreds of invasive trees, leveled the fields, fertilized them with manure, and planted cover crops to improve soil and water quality. In addition, Hansen commissioned an ethnobotany and archaeology study of the property to understand what crops had historically been planted at Oatman Flats Ranch.

Meanwhile, the neighboring farmers no longer grow food for people; their crops provide feed and fuel. Oatman Flats Ranch is surrounded by millions of acres of alfalfa for livestock and corn for ethanol, watered by one of the world’s fastest-draining aquifers.

Dax Hansen purchased the farm in 2018 with his wife, Leslie Hansen to create a model of regenerative farming in an increasingly hot and water-scarce Southwest. (Photo credit: Adam Riding)

“Climate change and a persistent megadrought are reducing the flow of rivers in the West, yet we have been unable to sufficiently reduce our dependence on these rivers to keep demands balanced with supplies,” said Brian Richter, president of Sustainable Waters, an organization focused on water scarcity issues. “The result is increasing depletion of rivers, lakes, and aquifers.”

The constraints led Hansen and his wife to explore water-conserving crops. His team planted drought-tolerant, and nutrient-dense White Sonora wheat and mesquite trees.

“We embraced the abundance of heirloom and native crops in the Sonoran Desert,” Hansen said. “We are looking at the land and asking it what we should grow, rather than asking the land to grow what we want.”

Hansen hired farm attendant Juan Carlos Gutierrez and Wang, who shared his vision of healing the land and were knowledgeable about water, soil, and biodiversity. Wang has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in agriculture and life sciences. Gutierrez does a bit of everything at the farm, including planting and harvesting, maintaining farm equipment, managing cover crops, rotating animals, and milling wheat and mesquite into flour.

In five years, Oatman Flats Ranch’s regenerative practices saved over a billion gallons of water, doubled the amount of organic matter in the soil, and steadily transformed the once-beleaguered ecosystem, according to its May 2024 Regenerative Impact Report. The water savings are measured by tracking the flow rate of each well on the ranch to calculate the amount of water used per round of irrigation. The acre-feet of water used at Oatman Flats Ranch are then compared to the estimated acre-feet used in conventional wheat production. (One acre-foot is enough water to flood a football field 1 foot deep, or more than 325,000 gallons.)

“When we grow regenerative, we can use 2 or 3 acre-feet of water,” Hansen said. “Alfalfa and cotton will take like 9 or 10 acre-feet.”

To measure soil organic matter, Wang takes samples from the surface of the fields and sends them to the Motzz laboratory in Arizona and the Regen Ag Lab in Nebraska for analysis. Soil organic matter is the key indicator of soil health, influencing nutrient and water availability, biological diversity, and other factors critical in growing healthy crops. In some fields, soil organic matter has grown from 0.8 percent to 2.4 percent, according to the lab results. Yadi said 0.8 percent is about normal for the region, while 2.4 percent is very high, an outlier. “People think it’s impossible,” he said.

Regeneration Rooted in Indigenous Practices

At the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about two hours southeast of Oatman Flats, the San Xavier Co-op Farm uses historic land management practices and grows traditional crops that reflect their respect for the land, plants, animals, elders, and the sacredness of water.

San Xavier Farm Manager Duran Andrews and his team plant cover crops, rotate fields, and collect rainwater. “[Regenerative agriculture] is nothing new to us,” Andrews said. “We have been doing this for decades. Harmony between nature and people has been our approach all the time.” Rotating fields and cultivating multiple mutually beneficial species in the same fields improves water and soil quality and biodiversity in this harsh landscape.

The co-op grows a variety of native crops that were developed in the region and cultivated for centuries or, in some cases, millennia, such as grains and beans, which they sell online. “We irrigate them till they sprout, then cut them off till the monsoon shows up,” Andrews said. “We try to keep crops in that hardy state through all the years and decades they have been here. We try not to get away from how things were done in the past.” They also grow White Sonora wheat, introduced to Arizona by Spanish Jesuit missionaries in the 1600s. “It was a gift from Father Kino that we have taken as our own,” Andrews said. “The [San Xavier] community was one of the first to grow this wheat.”

Following the Mexican-American War in the mid-1800s, the United States claimed parts of modern-day Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Utah. The Anglo ranchers who moved into the area dug canals to irrigate agricultural fields, transforming the landscape. An 1852 watercolor by surveyor Jon Russell Bartlett depicts a verdant valley with cottonwoods and mesquite trees lining a flowing Gila River as it passes through Oatman Flats Ranch.

That landscape is unrecognizable today. The lower Gila has gone bone dry after years of upstream diversions, dams, water overuse, and climate change. In 2019, the Gila River earned the title of Most Endangered River by the nonprofit advocacy group American Rivers.

Standing on the sandy Gila riverbed, which divides the north and south farms of Oatman Flats Ranch, Wang pointed to the nearby invasive salt cedars. Healing the land involves rebuilding the water, nutrient, and carbon cycles from the ground up, “at the micro level,” he said. “On the macro level, it’s broken.”

The ranch team has poured resources into rebuilding soil health by planting hedgerows and 30-plus species of cover crops, at a cost of approximately $100,000. The hedgerows, mostly native trees, were planted along the edges of the fields to reduce erosion and provide habitat for beneficial species, including pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds.

The cover crops—millet, chickpeas, sunflowers, sorghum, sudan grass, broadleaves, and native grasses among them—are planted immediately after harvesting wheat, to provide “soil armor,” help conserve water, fix nitrogen in the soil, suppress weeds, attract beneficial insects, and sequester carbon. The once-barren land now supports life for more than 120 species of flora and fauna.

“When you take life away, it just doesn’t come back unless you provide the resources,” said Wang.

The varying heights of the cover crops make multi-storied microclimates, with vapor condensing near the cooler soil surface, creating dew. “I can make dew in the hottest part of July, when the ambient temperature is over 90 degrees by 9 a.m.,” Wang said.

Instead of tilling the cover crops into the fields at the end of their cycle and disturbing soil structure, the team uses a roller-crimper—a ridged cylindrical drum attached to a tractor—to cut stalks and lay the crops down “like a carpet” to protect topsoil, Hansen said. Switching to roller crimping saves money, too, since it costs one-third less than tilling.

The roots remain in the soil, reducing soil erosion and creating an extensive microbial network that cycles nutrients, builds soil organic matter, and increases water infiltration “like a sponge,” Wang said. All of this protects soil from high temperatures, too.

The fields slope ever so gradually to allow irrigation water to move down the rows. In the early years, water would race down the hard-packed dirt, spilling into the Gila drainage. Now, Wang has the opposite problem: When he irrigates, it takes days for water to spread three-quarters down the length of the field. In response, the ranch plans to switch to sprinklers to save water, expand cultivable land, and mimic natural rainfall. The sprinklers are expensive and cost about $1 million, most of that already paid by a water irrigation efficiency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This move away from flood irrigation is gaining traction in the parched Southwest.

In 2022, Oatman Flats Ranch introduced sheep, natural lawnmowers that prune back cover crops and weeds while fertilizing the soil. They are rotationally grazed from field to field to give plants in each area a chance to recuperate and strengthen their root systems.

Now, six years after regeneration efforts began, 90 animal species have returned to the area around the farm, including mountain lions, owls, and tiny blue dragonflies—”a sign of water,” Wang said—who weave in and out of rows of White Sonora wheat.

Native Crops Adapted for the Arid Southwest

Mesquite trees are superbly adapted desert plants. At the ranch, they’re planted in dense groves near the farmhouse. Their taproots can burrow 200 feet deep, and they can shed their small, waxy leaves—designed to conserve moisture—in extreme drought.

Their green-bean-like pods were a staple food for Indigenous people in this region, rich in fiber, protein, and calcium. When dried and ground into flour, they have a mildly smoky, nutty, molasses-like flavor. Wang’s wife adds the flour to her coffee, making a frothy, slightly sweet, nutrient-packed latte.

White Sonora wheat is a key part of Hansen’s vision for a regenerative grain economy. The wheat is sown in November or December and harvested in late spring or early summer.

Standing in a field of pale golden wheat stalks, Wang threshed the grain from the chaff by rubbing his palms together as if warming his hands on a cold day. The berries resemble tiny deer hooves, with a groove in each golden-colored grain.

“This is as clean as you can get,” Wang said. “No synthetic fertilizer. No chemicals. Drying on the stalk.” The ranch’s cold-stone milling process preserves the grain’s vitamins and minerals, and retains its naturally sweet, mild flavor.

Oatman Flats Ranch sells Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) products such as stone-milled flour and mesquite flour, as well as bread, pancake, and waffle mixes, under the Oatman Farms brand. The flours and mixes are now used by numerous restaurants, including Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company.

“We are looking to partner with and help sustain farms like Oatman,” said Jonathan Buford, CEO and brewmaster at Arizona Wilderness, which sources sustainable ingredients from more than 50 local producers. “We need to look at a different currency than just capital. We must consider that Earth must profit, too, for the future of our planet.”

Seeding More Regenerative Farms

To better understand how the regenerative movement is evolving, Hansen routinely talks to other farmers, and he’s clear about what must happen for it to really take hold. “It is absolutely true that farmers don’t have the resources to do this on their own,” Hansen said. “Farmers need help from consumers, restaurants, and governments to pull off this regenerative effort. I believe we can make regenerative agriculture viable by explaining the plight of the land and the farmers and nature and boldly proclaiming the solution of regenerative agriculture.”

The transition to a Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) model can require a large investment, as it has for Hansen. And it takes three to five years to reap the benefits of regenerative practices, according to Elizabeth Whitlow, founder and senior advisor of the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), which oversees the ROC framework and guidelines.

For most farmers, this is not an option. Margins are thin, and financial constraints often inhibit farmers from exploring regenerative practices. “The only option is to do the cheapest thing you can to survive,” Wang said. “[There is] no room to consider what they could do differently.”

The paybacks of regenerative organic farming can be significant, however. They include reduced costs of inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and water, as well as increased profits from high-value products. “I do see brands stepping in and up to provide long-term contracts with farmers while they transition into this new, unknown territory,” Whitlow said. “The premiums and long-term stability offered through this kind of contract agreement help the farmers.”

Besides Hansen’s own funds, Oatman Flats Ranch has also been supported by payments from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for on-farm conservation programs, such as tree planting and conservation cover. As the Trump administration cuts climate-related programs, Hansen said Oatman Flats would be affected by “the elimination of Arizona statewide programs supporting local food systems.”

Hansen nonetheless believes that in time, a financially viable model for regenerative organic farming is possible, particularly as demand for ROC products grows. A 2022-2023 impact report from the ROA showed that ROC product sales grew 22 percent on average between 2022 and 2023, reaching nearly $40 million. But profitability, he said, will take “quite a while.”

With the growth of regenerative agriculture, Hansen sees the potential to preserve his family’s farm and a way of life he holds dear, especially as the climate changes.

“You’ve seen what the land looks like in five years; imagine it in 10,” Hansen said. “If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.”

The post Could This Arizona Ranch Be a Model for Southwest Farmers? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Then came a reprieve: the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), a state initiative to help farms adapt to California’s increasingly erratic climate. Using the $58,000 grant, the Thaoxaochays switched their farm from full-flood irrigation to a drip system fed through trenched water lines and monitored by moisture sensors.

As part of the upgrade, they also installed a flow meter to help comply with California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires farms to track groundwater use. The changes slashed not just water use, but also the energy costs of running the pump, leaving the farm far better equipped for the next drought—which arrived just three years later.

The farm also secured a $23,000 grant through the state’s Healthy Soils Program (HSP), an initiative that helps growers integrate composting, cover cropping, and reduced tillage—practices that enhance soil health and increase its capacity to retain water and sequester carbon. In addition to boosting field productivity, the changes helped cut the farm’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers.

“It was the lifeline we needed,” says Thaoxaochay of the two programs. “We’ve been completely resilient since,” she adds, unlike many small farms that have been forced to seek emergency state relief due to erratic weather conditions.

In recent months, U.S. farmers have watched climate-related support wobble under political pressure. The Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in USDA funding for programs aimed at climate resilience and social equity, then reissued several with political strings including scrubbing references to climate change and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

A federal judge has since ordered reinstatement of the funds, but the episode has only deepened the fragility of national climate policy, casting a long shadow over efforts to help farmers brace for a future of worsening droughts, floods, and wildfires.

While California farmers aren’t immune to the fallout, the Golden State offers a level of support not found in much of the country. In addition to SWEEP and HSP, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) oversees a suite of several climate-smart agricultural programs that cut emissions and build on-farm resilience.

These include the Alternative Manure Management Program, which funds systems that dry manure into compost rather than flushing it into methane-emitting lagoons; the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems Program, to promote low-input, plant-based farming methods; and the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALCP), to fund conservation easements that permanently protect farmland, preserving them as carbon sinks. (See “California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs,” below, for details.)

Lilian Thaoxaochay said a recent drought “almost tanked” her family’s farm. A California initiative, funded by the state’s Cap-and-Trade program, helped them switch to a drip system. (Photo courtesy of GT Florists & Herbs)

All these initiatives are funded through California’s Cap-and-Trade Program, which channels billions of dollars towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and spurring economic growth.

Enacted in 2006 and implemented in 2013, Cap-and-Trade requires major polluters like oil refineries and manufacturing facilities to buy “allowances” at quarterly auctions to offset their carbon output. The proceeds flow into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which pays for the state’s climate-smart agricultural programs—along with more than 80 other climate initiatives across transportation, housing, and energy. Together, these investments support California’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2045, positioning California as a national model for integrated, climate-resilient policy.

Eleven Northeastern states also cap power-sector emissions through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Yet California Cap-and-Trade is the only program that directly accounts for emissions from agriculture, the leading global source of atmospheric methane and responsible for 8 percent of California’s carbon emissions.

Despite these significant emissions, the climate-smart agricultural programs designed to reduce them receive just 5 percent of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) allocations. That imbalance, says Brian Shobe, policy director at the California Climate & Agriculture Network (CalCAN), overlooks agriculture’s outsized potential to sequester carbon and build climate resistance: Healthy fields, pastures, and orchards enhance biodiversity, improve water retention, and help buffer farms against extreme weather.

With federal funding cuts hitting California’s farmers—and Trump’s recent executive order seeking to nullify state cap-and-trade systems—advocates are pushing for more than just a renewal of Cap-and-Trade’s existing allocations. As the program moves toward reauthorization in 2030, a coalition of agricultural and environmental groups, including CalCAN, has started urging lawmakers to lock in 15 percent of GGRF revenues for agricultural climate programs.

And, in mid April, Governor Gavin Newsom, Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire, and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas pledged to extend the program, framing it as a chance to “demonstrate real climate leadership” on the national stage.

Stable funding, says Shobe, would let more farms and ranches adopt long-term climate solutions instead of scrambling for inconsistent, one-off grants tied to fluctuating auction revenues. It would also fortify the state’s broader climate strategy, he adds, and help stabilize the food system against climate-driven shocks that drive up grocery prices.

But agriculture isn’t the only sector competing for those funds. With no automatic appropriations for most climate programs, about 40 percent of Cap-and-Trade revenue is up for grabs each year, prompting fierce competition among advocates for housing, transit, energy, and agriculture.

“There’s an annual food fight over limited climate dollars,” says Zack Deutsch-Gross, policy director at Transform, a nonprofit focused on sustainable, equitable transit and land use. “It pits climate advocates against one another as they seek [stable] appropriations for their programs.”

CalCAN and its allies argue that carving out 15 percent for agricultural programs is essential to safeguarding California’s food supply in the face of relentless cycle of droughts, floods, wildfire, and heatwaves.

“This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to secure a more stable, climate-resilient food system,” Shobe says. Given the competition for funding as Cap-and-Trade’s reauthorization deadline nears, and the added pressure of federal pullback, he and his colleagues are wasting no time in laying the groundwork for legislative support.

Climate Strain and Sticker Shock

Last month, Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies, introduced a bill to extend Cap-and-Trade beyond its expiration date. While Irwin did not respond to Civil Eats’ requests for comment on the bill or its implications for agricultural funding, the move signals growing legislative recognition of the program’s role in backing climate initiatives, including those that support farmers.

Gianina Thaoxaochay harvests sigua, a luffa gourd, at GT Florists & Herbs. (Photo courtesy of GT Florists & Herbs)

Agricultural programs, meanwhile, remain among the state’s most cost-effective climate investments, says Shobe, measured by the cost per ton of greenhouse gas reductions. That includes initiatives focused on water efficiency and soil health, along with the CDFA’s Cap-and-Trade-funded climate-smart programs.

Despite their impact, most of these programs face inconsistent, boom-and-bust funding. SALCP is the only one with continuous appropriation, receiving 2 percent of GGRF revenues through the broader Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program. Yet even with that modest share, it accounts for 15 percent of all GGRF emissions reductions.

“These programs offer cost-effective, scalable solutions—especially for small- and mid-sized farms—to help them adapt to worsening climate extremes,” says Shobe. Yet their reach remains limited due to volatile funding. Without sustained investment, many farmers face steep barriers to adopting climate-smart practices at the scale needed in a sector already operating on razor-thin margins.

And it’s not just farms feeling the squeeze, Shobe says—consumers are, too. As human-induced climate change continues to disrupt food production, raise grocery prices, and worsen inflation, the economic strain will intensify, he adds, without greater investment in farm resilience.

“Families feel climate change at the checkout line,” Shobe says. “If we don’t invest now in protecting our food system, we’re going to see real cost impacts.”

Manure, Methane Digesters, and the Funding Divide

In 2022, Danbom received a $565,000 Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) grant, which funded roughly three-quarters of a system that captures manure before it’s flushed into methane-emitting lagoons, then dries it into nutrient-rich compost. According to a CalCAN report, AMMP projects have cut methane emissions by the equivalent of removing nearly 150,000 cars off the road annually.

“We’re now producing about 80 percent of our fertilizer needs on-farm,” Danbom says. The compost improves soil structure, reduces pesticide use, and, once aerated, serves as soft cow bedding. “It’s totally increased my [waste] management efficiency,” he says, “and helped my bottom line.”

Despite those gains, anaerobic digesters—larger-scale systems that capture methane from manure lagoons and convert it into biogas for fuel—dominate manure management funding. Through a combination of GGRF and other programs, California has committed nearly $677 million to these dairy digesters while the Biden administration made parallel investments through projects such as the USDA Rural Energy for America Program.

Collectively, manure management projects have slashed methane emissions from California’s dairy sector by 22 percent, according to research. Yet digesters continue to receive the bulk of public funding, with supporters maintaining that they deliver the biggest methane cuts in the livestock sector and are key to hitting state climate goals. Critics, though, counter that this focus overwhelmingly favors large-scale operations, effectively incentivizing the growth of mega-dairies and potentially boosting emissions.

“We need all of the programs working together,” says Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Agricultural Energy Consumers Association. “Farmers of all sizes need solutions that work for them.” His coalition is pushing for a $75 million annual allocation for small- and large-scale manure management approaches, alongside increased funding for farming infrastructure and processing upgrades. Nevertheless, he maintains that dairy digesters provide the best return on investment, noting that they can capture up to 90 percent of methane emissions from livestock waste.

Still, digesters only make financial sense at a certain scale, making dry manure management a better fit for smaller dairies—if they can access funding. AMMP, along with healthy soil and water efficiency programs, are often the most accessible options for small-scale farms facing financial and logistical barriers. But they’re oversubscribed, Danbom says—he applied three times before securing his grant. Without consistent support, he warns, the climate-smart solutions “consumers increasingly demand” may be out of reach for the farms best positioned to implement them. 

Competition for Cap-and-Trade Funds

As the outlook for national climate policy darkens, that push has gained urgency, says Adina Levin of Seamless Bay Area, a transit equity and land use advocate. Her group, along with Transform, is part of a coalition pushing the state to direct Cap-and-Trade dollars towards affordable housing and public transit—investments that reduce emissions, improve air quality, and benefit frontline communities rather than subsidize high-polluting sectors such as industrial agriculture.

With transportation as California’s largest source of greenhouse gases—and a major contributor to particulate pollution—Levin sees transit and transit-oriented housing as essential infrastructure. And like climate-smart agriculture, these programs deliver broad, lasting returns, she says, by expanding low-cost housing, boosting transit ridership, and easing public health risks linked to air pollution.

“Since federal funding is likely to be unreliable in the near term, it’s essential for California to stand up for equity and climate action,” Levin says. Keeping up that momentum matters: California’s climate initiatives have become a national model, from inspiring Healthy Soils programs in eight states including New Mexico and Montana, to shaping affordable housing and transit policy in the Pacific Northwest.

And ultimately, sustaining this leadership hinges on stable funding.

Strengthening the Food System Against Climate Change

Despite the layered benefits, Anderson often sees regenerative practices “stymied by the inconsistency in funding.” Having witnessed eager landowners walk away from projects when support fell through, he adds that “it really slows the adoption of something that not only meets our climate goals, but stabilizes our food system in the face of climate change.”

Thaoxaochay, of GT Florists and Herbs, agrees. As a University of California Cooperative Extension agent who works closely with small-scale farmers, she’s seen firsthand how transformative these programs can be. And she notes that once farmers adopt these techniques, they tend to stick: Research shows that 75 percent of grant recipients continue the practices well after funding ends.

“The long-term impacts . . . are greater than we could ever imagine,” Thaoxaochay says. “But without consistent funding, we’re left crossing our fingers that these programs will still be around after each funding cycle—rather than building on their success.”

California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs

Through California’s Cap-and-Trade-funded Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the California Department of Food and Agriculture supports a suite of climate-smart agriculture programs that promote sustainable agricultural practices and land conservation:

• Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) provides grants to dairy and livestock operations for capturing manure before it’s flushed into methane-emitting lagoons, and for then drying it into nutrient-rich compost.
• Dairy Digester Research and Development Program (DDRDP) funds the installation of anaerobic digesters that capture methane from manure pits and convert it into renewable energy.
• Healthy Soils Program (HSP) offers incentives for on-farm practices that enhance soil health, boost carbon sequestration, and improve water retention through cover cropping, compost application, and reduced tillage.
• State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) provides financial assistance to implement efficient irrigation systems and related equipment—such as drip lines, soil moisture sensors, and pump upgrades—to reduce on-farm water use and cut greenhouse gas emissions from energy-intensive pumping.
• Biologically Integrated Farming Systems Program (BIFS) funds on-farm demonstration projects that show how to reduce chemical pesticide use through ecological practices such as beneficial insects, crop rotation, and soil health management. These on-the-ground trials—often in partnership with university extension programs and farmer-led research groups—are paired outreach and education to help other growers adopt similar approaches.
• Proactive Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Solutions Program funds projects that develop and implement pest management strategies to prevent the spread of invasive pests, reducing reliance on pesticides and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
• Pollinator Habitat Program (PHP) provides grants to establish and maintain pollinator habitat on agricultural lands, supporting biodiversity and ecosystem health.
• Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALCP) funds the protection of critical agricultural lands through conservation easements that permanently protect farmland from development, preserving carbon sinks, supporting biodiversity, and helping to curb urban sprawl.

Return to article ↩

This article was updated to include the correct spelling of Zack Deutsch-Gross’ last name.

The post The Future of California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs appeared first on Civil Eats.

“Everything just happens fairly slowly with agroforestry because of the nature of the beast—we’re working with trees,” he said.

Given enough time and care, Unruh continues, agroforestry—farming with trees—can become a keystone of resilient, profitable, and climate-conscious land management. In silvopasture systems like his, which bring trees onto pasture for livestock, cows can beat the summer heat under shade-giving honey locust trees while grazing on their seed pods. Besides keeping animals happier and lowering farmers’ feed costs, silvopastures can sequester carbon as the trees draw carbon dioxide from the air and, through their root systems, deliver it deep into the ground.

Other agroforestry practices such as windbreaks, hedgerows, riparian buffers, and alley cropping can help retain topsoil, prevent nutrient pollution, and provide wildlife habitat. According to the final installment of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report in 2023, agroforestry is one of humanity’s most feasible options for reducing climate risks.

Agroforestry’s Growth Spurt

As Civil Eats has reported, the federal government gave agroforestry a major boost that same year through the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, awarding over $153 million to agroforestry work. Many of the organizations interviewed said the funds helped them hire staff, share knowledge, and implement agroforestry practices on thousands of farms.

An Appalachian Sustainable Development visit to a forest-farming site. (Photo courtesy of Appalachian Sustainable Development)

Unruh said that while Trees for Graziers had been growing even before the program, 80 percent of the projects he had planned for this spring were supported by Climate-Smart Commodities funds.

For nonprofits that support agroforestry, such as Virginia-based Appalachian Sustainable Development, the funding provided greater capacity for technical assistance and market development. Katie Commender, who directs the group’s agroforestry program, was working with one employee in 2020, trying to serve a backlog of hundreds of farmers who had requested site visits for agroforestry advice. Through Climate-Smart Commodities and other grants, she was able to hire four additional staffers and start whittling down the waitlist.

In January, when President Trump took office, that expansion began losing momentum. His administration froze already approved federal grant funding, including Climate-Smart Commodities grants. Farmers said they couldn’t pay for materials during the critical spring planting season, nonprofits began cutting the hours of their technical advisors, and experts were no longer able to attend events where they’d planned to share knowledge.

The administration received multiple court orders to lift the freeze; Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released $20 million for certain conservation initiatives in February, as well as an unspecified amount for rural energy work in March. Some USDA grant programs were fully unfrozen, while payments for others remain suspended.

An additional roadblock appeared earlier this month, when the USDA announced it would cancel the Climate-Smart Commodities program. While some projects may continue under a different name if they meet certain criteria, the program’s largest agroforestry grant—the $60 million Expanding Agroforestry Project (EAP), led by The Nature Conservancy—was decisively terminated. The future of other individual projects remains uncertain.

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a press release announcing the cancellation.

The Impact on Farmers

But after making arrangements to buy seedlings and prepare land, Brown learned in February that $225,000 in grant funding she’d been guaranteed was paused indefinitely. “I think I actually lost a couple of friendships that morning . . . people were in the crossfire of me being in a very bad mood,” Brown said with a rueful laugh. 

She later learned that Trump’s newly established Department of Government Efficiency had canceled a contract with the Clark Group, a consultancy the USDA had hired to review her grant. And on April 14, The Nature Conservancy notified grantees that its agroforestry project had been terminated by the USDA.The money Brown had been counting on is now entirely off the table.

Brown said she’s still planning to plant some trees that she’d already acquired, but is unable to buy many more that had been scheduled to go in the ground this year. She’s paying out of pocket for deer fencing to protect those seedlings as well.

The funding uncertainty also upended technical assistance for farmers. Commender, with Appalachian Sustainable Development, said her team was working fewer hours, with 19 site visits currently on hold, to compensate for missing grant money; others at the nonprofit have been furloughed. Longer-term work to develop markets for high-value agroforestry products like elderberries, silvopasture-raised meat, and medicinal herbs is suspended indefinitely.

That kind of dedicated support is crucial for agroforestry because the practice is still relatively uncommon, said Keefe Keeley, executive director of the Savanna Institute, the Midwest’s leading agroforestry nonprofit. The organization has used federal money to scale up technical assistance staff in six Upper Midwestern states over the past several years, as well as develop demonstration farms.

Similar efforts were underway through over two dozen partners supported by the EAP grant alone. “Seeing a farm where something is happening and imagining how it could work on your own farm is really essential,” Keeley said. “The cancellation of these projects is undoubtedly a setback for farmers in our community who are getting ready to plant trees this spring. It means tens of millions of dollars in lost financial assistance for farmers who want to adopt agroforestry.”

A Hit to Indigenous Agroforestry

Stephanie Gutierrez of Ecotrust. (Photo credit: Sean Gutierrez)

The funds, from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2023, supported the Indigenous Agroforestry Network, which connects Native practitioners so they can share traditional and modern agroforestry techniques, including at an in-person meeting attended by many West Coast tribes last year. “The network brought them together to just share and listen and learn from each other,” she explains.

The grant was scheduled to cover work through 2027, and Gutierrez had been planning a new year of meetings and events when, in February, Ecotrust found itself unable to access federal reimbursement systems. Gutierrez said the organization was cut off from more than half of the money she’d been guaranteed. While Ecotrust briefly regained access the week of April 21, it was cut off again April 29. Federal officials haven’t shared any information about why the Indigenous Agroforestry Network has faced this inconsistency or when funding might be permanently restored.

Trying to Forecast the Future

The Agroforestry Coalition is particularly concerned about the USDA National Agroforestry Center and its 30 years of service. On April 2, the group delivered a petition to protect the center’s employees, signed by over 40 farmers and agroforestry organizations, to federal lawmakers from Nebraska, where the office is based.

The USDA office represents the only dedicated voice for agroforestry in the federal government, said Cristel Zoebisch, who co-chairs the coalition’s policy working group. While the Trump administration hasn’t yet cut the center’s staffing, she said it’s a likely target for future layoffs.

“We wouldn’t have anyone within the USDA that’s focused on figuring out how agroforestry might fit under different federal programs, advocating for that, and providing that information to stakeholders,” Zoebisch said of what might happen if the center is shuttered.

Back in Pennsylvania, Unruh said he’s largely been able to pivot from the Trees for Graziers projects that had been supported by Climate-Smart Commodities, thanks in part to community connections and the local interest in agroforestry. “It wasn’t a surprise, and we had been functioning under the assumption that the money would not come back,” he says of the cancellation news.

Other practitioners may not be so fortunate. Unruh said many farmers taking their first chance on trees are facing significant bills, now with no chance of federal reimbursement. He’s not optimistic that the administration will adopt the long-term thinking needed to promote agroforestry; instead, he hopes that farming with trees will spread organically as the benefits continue to prove themselves.

“We’re here to support small farms, family farms, and that’s language that everyone can get behind. This isn’t just about climate change,” he said. “It’s about seeing more small farms thrive.”

This story has been updated to reflect the most recent information from Ecotrust regarding funding.

The post Agroforestry Projects Across US Now Stymied by Federal Cuts appeared first on Civil Eats.

While the current administration may blame “woke” DEI environmentalists for the blazes, science shows that the climate crisis contributed to the severity of the damage. Meanwhile, the administration is decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier climate research institution.

Most of us didn’t need another reminder that the climate crisis is not a future to fear, but a reality on our doorstep. We are heartbroken for those who have lost everything, and angry and frustrated that our political leaders have failed to confront the driving force behind the crisis: the fossil fuel industry.

The political headwinds we’re facing make it all the more challenging, enabling fossil fuel producers to continue to shapeshift to shirk responsibility and find new avenues for oil and gas. They’ve got their eyes on one: the food system.

The food system is responsible for an estimated one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions driving this crisis. One key reason: the industrial food chain and its ultra-processed foods are deeply dependent on fossil fuels.

Consider, if you will, a simple bag of potato chips with a not-so-simple origin story. At nearly every step of this ultra-processed food’s path from the field to the grocery store, fossil fuels are key. Growing vast monocultures of potatoes requires synthetic fertilizers whose production requires massive amounts of energy. It also necessitates petroleum-based pesticides, from fungicides to herbicides, to ward off weeds and stop sprouting. Irrigation and farm equipment also depend on fossil fuels.

Most processing facilities still rely on non-renewable energy to power the machinery for sorting, washing, trimming, slicing, blanching, frying, and seasoning. Fossil fuels provide the raw materials for the plastics in packaging, and, typically, the power to transport those chips to distribution centers and supermarkets, corner stores, vending machines—wherever you find them.

And that’s just potato chips. Fossil fuels are used throughout our food system—across much of the foods produced by the industrial food chain. By one estimate commissioned by my organization, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, food systems account for at least 15 percent of annual global fossil fuel consumption. (Though, we stress, this is a rough estimate, since assessing usage around the world is exceedingly challenging; we need more and better data.)

“Where Are the Fossil Fuels?” infographic from the Fuel to Fork podcast.

The analysis found that 42 percent of that total fossil fuel consumption comes from processing and packaging stages, largely driven by the global rise of ultra-processed food. Another 38 percent comes from retail consumption and waste; and the rest is from industrial inputs (like pesticides and fertilizer) and agriculture production. To paraphrase grocery industry expert Errol Schweizer in the podcast Fuel to Fork, which my organization helps produce, fossil fuels are the lifeblood of the food system.

Fossil fuels are on track to be an even bigger presence in our food system. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a nonprofit environmental organization, warns that as sectors like transport are decarbonizing, the fossil fuel industry has its sights on food, particularly through petrochemicals. CIEL notes that an estimated 74 percent of all petrochemicals are already used for agricultural fertilizer and plastic.

The International Energy Agency projects that by 2050 half of all oil and gas will be used for petrochemicals. Based on current levels, 40 percent of that will be going into our food system in the form of plastics and fertilizers.

In another report, CIEL notes how chemical companies are introducing microplastic-coated pesticides and fertilizers as a ‘climate solution’. Industry boosters state that microplastic-coated pesticides and fertilizers reduce nitrous oxide emissions by slowing the release of pesticides and fertilizers, so the farmer has to apply less frequently and use less.

But, as CIEL adds in the report, the industry has acknowledged that assessing use reduction is challenging. CIEL also points out that using these plastic-coated agrochemicals “directly introduces microplastic into the environment and potentially into the food supply. It also compounds the health and environmental hazards posed by agrochemicals themselves.”

Also, as CIEL and others call out, these products not only don’t significantly reduce usage, they cause other problems. Along with increasing the presence of plastics in food production and threatening public health, microplastics used this way dissolve in the soil, impacting soil health, reducing how much water soils can retain, and destroying healthy microorganisms essential for nutrient cycling.

But raising the alarm about the growing connections between food systems and fossil fuels is a challenge, because these emissions are often made invisible. Back to that bag of potato chips: The petrochemicals used in fertilizer’s manufacture are responsible for some 34 percent  of energy used in potato crop production, yet they aren’t counted in the total emissions for the food sector according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or in national emission inventories governments share with the United Nations.

Instead, they are accounted for in different sectors altogether: manufacturing and industry. The same is true for plastic used in food packaging. Despite being crucial elements of our food’s journey from field to fork, and carbon-intensive ones at that, neither fertilizer, pesticide, or plastic production are made visible as food-related emissions.

What is also hard to see are the subsidies the fossil fuel industry enjoys. By one estimate, the industry benefits from $7 trillion in subsidies annually, making inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides artificially cheap and therefore possible to use on a vast scale. As Raj Patel, author and a Civil Eats advisor, points out on Fuel to Fork, fossil fuels “enable certain kinds of large-scale industrial agriculture to be profitable.”

Meanwhile, we collectively pay the true cost. Fossil fuels make it possible to grow crops in vast monocultures using pesticides instead of biodiversity to deter insects and employing energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers that actually deplete natural soil health and fertility. Fossil fuels also help make ultra-processed foods often the cheapest and most profitable to produce and sell, contributing to a global epidemic of diet-related ill-health.

They allow our food to be grown in far-flung places and wrapped in plastic to sit on shelves for months on end, adding further to the carbon emissions bill as well as disrupting local foodways.

This method of production also enables us to raise livestock on an industrial scale: Artificially cheap fossil fuel makes it economically feasible to grow vast monocultures of feed, primarily corn and soybeans, needed for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

The CAFO system, with its dependence on vast amounts of feed crops, has many knock-off climate effects. Soybean production in Brazil, one of the world’s largest exporters of soybeans for animal feed, has contributed to massive deforestation and land use change there, releasing locked-in carbon into the atmosphere. Mismanaged farm waste on CAFOs has a climate toll as well, responsible for as much as 7 percent of global farming emissions. And methane emissions from ruminants, like cattle, are another significant source of climate impacts.

Fossil fuels have enabled us to soar past our ecological limits.

I’m not naive about the challenges of reducing the use of fossil fuel in the food chain or loosening industry’s stranglehold on policymaking. I do believe, however, that by exposing the links between this industry and our food, we can mobilize the political will for action on food systems transformation to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.

And, as more people see the links between fossil fuels and food, we can start to trace a path out of this dependency and find solutions—not just big, thorny, political ones, but everyday ones, too. For those who have the access, and the means, we can make changes ourselves: increase our consumption of whole foods from local, small-scale organic farmers, reduce our consumption of ultra-processed foods, avoid plastic when possible, eat less meat from factory farms, and reduce food waste—to name just a few examples.

Alongside these choices, we must collectively work to prevent the industry from using the food system as an escape hatch, a new market for oil and gas as the public demands decarbonization in other parts of the economy. We can support practices like agroecology and regenerative approaches that reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides while catalyzing a cascade of benefits, from better health outcomes to biodiversity protection.

And we can also make clear that climate action requires food system action. If we needed any further reminder about why this is so urgent, the thousands of acres of blackened, charred Los Angeles neighborhoods should be more than enough.

The post Op-ed: The Food System Cannot Become Another Fossil-Fuel Industry Escape Hatch appeared first on Civil Eats.

But last week, farmer and Pasa Executive Director Hannah Smith-Brubaker sounded exhausted as she relayed the state of things. For a month, the organization hasn’t been able to get grant disbursements based on money they’ve spent or get any answers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as to when the freeze may end. So, they’ve been making payments to farmers with no way to fund them, while pausing new enrollments. “We’re going to run out of money eventually,” she said.

In the midst of all that, another shoe dropped: Last week, a Pasa staff member was browsing the list of canceled contracts posted by the White House cost-cutting initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), when they noticed a familiar name. As first reported in Civil Eats’ Food Policy Tracker, DOGE said it had canceled an $8.2 million contract for “environmental compliance services” with the Clark Group.

Pasa relied on the Clark Group to provide third-party reviews of farmers’ plans to implement popular practices. Those reviews are required by law before a farmer installs new fencing to improve grazing management, for example, or plants buffers along waterways to prevent runoff and create habitat. When Pasa reached out to the Clark Group, the company said they could no longer provide the service.

“Even to this point we have not been notified by USDA about this,” Smith-Brubaker said. “It ties our hands in terms of being able to help about two-thirds of the farmers in our program. And we’re still sort of figuring out what the repercussions will be for people who are mid-process who have already paid for things to be installed.”

Multiple sources who did not want to be identified because they thought speaking up might jeopardize their funding told Civil Eats that the Clark Group was providing the same reviews to many other groups working on Climate-Smart Commodities projects. The projects mentioned include several smaller East Coast projects and several larger projects that work with farms across Eastern, Midwestern and Southern states.

That jeopardizes payments intended for thousands of farmers producing fruits and vegetables, row crops, milk, and meat, most of them on small farms.

It’s one example of how, while the USDA has begun releasing a trickle of funds for farmers in other grant programs, there are already starting to be more permanent, long-term impacts of funding cuts and contract cancellations.

Many assume the Climate-Smart Commodities Program is likely to be canceled altogether, especially since the agency has already started scrubbing the term “climate change” from its website. But questions remain as to whether that will happen, especially because President Trump has focused specifically on clawing back Inflation Reduction Act dollars, which did not fund this program.

And if the USDA does cancel it, it’s unclear whether payments already requested will be honored. Since the contracts are legal documents, cancellation could also prompt lawsuits.

In the meantime, the Clark Group contract and other related cuts represent stitches being ripped out of the interconnected federal programs and infrastructure that hold it all together. For example, another farm group involved in a Climate-Smart Commodities project officially dropped out last week after the length of the funding freeze and losing a critical staff member due to the cancellation of a different USDA program made it impossible to continue.

Neither the USDA nor DOGE responded to questions and requests for comment, nor did House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), whom Smith-Brubaker reached out to for help.

“Farmers want to know whether they can trust the U.S. government to do what it promised to do. They want to know whether the money and services they have signed agreements on will be delivered, especially after President Trump said he wasn’t going to withhold payments to farmers,” said Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), the House Agriculture Committee’s top Democrat. “Gutting USDA programs and personnel and hanging our farmers and rural America out to dry is not the solution.”

Whether the agency decides to cancel the Climate-Smart Commodities program altogether or the cuts lead to a slow unraveling or shrinking of the program, the impacts will be significant. Farm groups across the country have been spending considerable time and resources building up infrastructure and enrolling farmers to seize the $3.1 billion opportunity laid out by the Biden administration.

How Cuts Over Here Impact Farms Over There

“This means the nine farms who were ready to go into contract will not receive the funds they had planned on, in one case as much as $170,000,” said Megan Larmer.

While Glynwood’s implementation was not impacted by the Clark Group contract cancellation because the organization was working with a different provider for environmental reviews, the organization was struggling to hang on, waiting for payments to resume. Then, another program they relied on to implement their project was cut, illustrating the interconnected nature of USDA support.

On February 14, Glynwood received a letter from the Corps Network, an organization that had partnered with the USDA to run President Biden’s Working Lands Conservation Corps. The USDA and the Corps Network had placed young people in the Conservation Corps in positions with 28 farm organizations.

One of those young people landed at Glynwood, where their role was running the administrative duties of the Climate-Smart Commodities project.

In the letter, the Corps Network said that effective March 13, it would be terminating its sub-agreement with Glynwood and would stop reimbursing the organization for the employment costs after that date. The letter said the Network had received verbal notice from the USDA that the program would be terminated.

“Additionally, as of the date of this letter, The Corps Network is awaiting $500K in receivables from Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA with no estimate of when those bills will be paid,” it said.

At least one other Climate-Smart Commodities project was also relying on the help of a Corps member, a source told Civil Eats, and the young people in the Corps were working on other farm projects that will likely be impacted.

But the Clark group contract is a bigger deal because of its broader reach.

Across the whole program, the USDA approved more than 140 projects, many of which involve a dozen or more partner organizations working with farmers in multiple states. It’s unclear how many of them relied on the Clark Group for environmental reviews, and the Clark Group did not respond to Civil Eats’ inquiries.

Some groups told Civil Eats they were not working with the Clark Group. But sources also confirmed to Civil Eats that projects that involve thousands of farmers across a wide range of states, from Missouri to South Carolina to Vermont, are likely impacted.

Back at Pasa, Smith-Brubaker estimates she will have to lay off around 30 individuals working on her project. Many of those are people who were gaining experience as on-farm providers of technical support, and she emphasized the importance of growing that next generation of individuals who can support farmers in that way. “We imagined that these folks then could go on to work at the Natural Resources Conservation Service after this project,” she said.

Still, she said the more immediate loss will be the $20 million in funds they were set to distribute to farmers and another $20 million in free technical support.

The thing that makes her angriest is that while DOGE tweeted that canceling the Clark Group’s contract would result in taxpayer savings, in fact, its own accounting showed that the full payment to the consulting group had already been made. In other words, the savings accrued by canceling it at this point in time was equal to $0.

Many of the practices Pasa was helping farmers implement would improve soil health, she explained, and every 1 percent improvement in soil organic matter results in around 20,000 additional gallons of water stored in the soil.

“Even if 1 percent of farms across Pennsylvania improve their soil organic matter by 1 percent, you’re talking 43 billion gallons of water that aren’t going into the Chesapeake Bay, for example, or flooding neighbors downstream,” Smith-Brubaker said. It also makes farms more resilient to drought, ensuring they can continue to feed Americans during dry spells, which are becoming more common.

For now, all that is in limbo. “We’re still trying to serve farmers the best that we can,” Smith-Brubaker said, “but you know, there will come a point in time when that’s just not going to be possible.”

“I just don’t understand that,” she said. “In my mind, these are public servants. These are people who are providing not only food but environmental benefits for their neighbors who live downstream from them.”

The post Farmers Say Climate-Smart Commodities Projects Are Crumbling appeared first on Civil Eats.

At each stop, Wolf helped farmers determine how they could adopt new regenerative practices to build healthier soil and increase biodiversity. Over time, those practices can help improve farms’ environmental and financial resilience while potentially also pulling carbon out of the air.

Some of the farmers decided to plant more cover crops or adopt prescribed grazing plans for healthier pastures. Others planned to plant trees that would provide shade for animals or hedgerows to restore habitat for pollinators.

The work was all through Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, which hired Wolf as the technical service provider for its portion of a five-year Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack invested $3.1 billion in the program under President Biden to spur climate action and make farms more resilient to the impacts of the changing climate.

However, organizations like Glynwood didn’t sign their grant contracts until 2023. After that, they invested time and money in hiring, planning, and enrolling farmers.

Now, many are at a pivotal point: Farmers are awaiting payments, but the funding is stalled.

On inauguration day, President Trump signed a series of executive orders that included directives to roll back Biden-era climate policies and projects. A subsequent broad pause in funding was stopped by a judge and later rescinded, and a judge ruled yesterday that the administration had failed to comply with the court order.

It’s unclear exactly how that process is linked to what’s happening at USDA, but farm groups across the country report that the agency has stopped their disbursements and has been silent about when the pause might end. Policy pros in D.C. say the assessment of grants and programs for links to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives is likely part of the reason for the delay, while other farm grants are tied to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Trump is specifically targeting.

For example, farmers who received Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grants to install solar arrays on their land are left in limbo; so are those with conservation grants through popular programs including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which got an infusion of cash through the IRA.

But the pause in Climate-Smart Commodities grants is having particularly wide-reaching impacts, since the investment was so large, the program was just getting off the ground, and thousands of farms—from small dairies in the Northeast to large commodity grain operations in the Midwest—are involved.

Many of the farmers in this story operate small farms growing food for direct markets, but the Iowa Soybean Association said commodity growers participating in its Climate-Smart project are “contractually owed $11 million for practices implemented in 2024.”

In response to detailed questions, a USDA spokesperson sent Civil Eats an emailed statement. “The Trump Administration rightfully has asked for a comprehensive review of all contracts, work, and personnel across all federal agencies. Anything that violates the President’s Executive Orders will be subject for review,” it read. “The Department of Agriculture will be happy to provide a response to interested parties once Brooke Rollins is confirmed and has the opportunity to analyze these reviews.”

Farmers Respond by Demanding Clarity

“We’re losing our window to get the farmers the money they would need to implement the practices coming into the year,” Wolf said, “and we’re also losing momentum on enrolling our next round of participants in the program.” Last week, Glynwood conducted an informational session for the next year; 22 farms attended, but Glynwood staff told them the program’s future was unsure.

At Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring, NY. (Photo courtesy of Glynwood Farms)

At a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on February 5, National Farmers Union president Rob Larew said the issue was creating concern for farmers and communities across the country.

“Freezing spending and making sweeping decisions without congressional oversight just adds more uncertainty to an already tough farm economy,” Larew said. “We encourage this committee to seek clarity from the administration and make sure that farmers in rural communities aren’t left behind.” Later, Democrats on the Senate and House Agriculture Committees both sent letters to the USDA demanding answers on the status of the payments.

Civil Eats spoke directly to farmers and representatives of farm groups working with farmers in North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, and in the West, all of whom reported the same issues. At the moment, they’re all crossing their fingers that the freeze will be temporary, while frantically planning for the chance that the grant program will be thrown out entirely.

At the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a coalition of groups that primarily represent small farms, Policy Director Mike Lavender said he spent last week urgently reaching out to contacts on Capitol Hill about the slew of impacts on farmers, jobs, and rural communities that NSAC’s members were communicating to him.

“The sheer wastefulness of changing course at this moment in this way is staggering, and I don’t think people are talking about that enough.” Wolf said. “There’s just the inefficiency . . . to have so many resources already put in and so many people working on projects all over the country that are now in jeopardy.”

Individuals working in the field also said that the Trump administration’s purposeful rooting-out of climate-smart funding at the USDA will undermine some of the Republican Party’s stated goals for agriculture.

For example, Republicans talked extensively about supporting young and new farmers in the Senate hearing. Many of those young farmers depend on conservation programs and other USDA grants to make their operations viable as the climate changes. Supporting regenerative agriculture was also a key promise embedded in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

Impacts on Climate-Smart Commodities Projects

Although Wolfe’s Neck is based in Freeport, Maine, it is operating a $35 million Climate-Smart Commodities project that includes farms in the Northeast, on the West Coast, and in western mountain states. So far, they’ve enrolled about 70 farms and the goal is to eventually reach 400. Only about 12 percent of the funding has been allocated.

Each Climate-Smart project uses a different payment structure; Wolfe’s Neck gives farmers an administrative payment up front and then splits payment for a regenerative practice into three payments. A farmer who is planting cover crops for the first time, for instance, would get 30 percent of the total cost at the beginning, 30 percent halfway through, and the rest at the end of the project term.

Farmers have been enrolling at different times over the past six months, so that means some farms are midway, having put in the work and resources, and are now expecting a second or third payment.

Griswold was due to get a USDA disbursement to make those payments last week, but her USDA officer had already informed her that payments are on pause, with no indication of a timeline for when they might resume. “It’s really challenging, because we have many smaller farms who have invested their own time and are now really depending on this financial and technical assistance,” she said.

Carla Norwood and Jon White at Working Landscapes North Carolina are in a similar boat.

Norwood is the organization’s executive director and White is the project director for their $5 million Climate-Smart Commodities project, which currently has 43 farms fully enrolled. They are expecting to get up to 90 farms this spring.

To reach small vegetable, livestock, and larger row-crop farms across the state, they hired five people. So far, they’ve spent about $120,000 on direct payments to farmers to plant cover crops, incorporate composting, implement prescribed grazing plans, and even use biochar.

“We’ve been so excited to offer direct financial benefits to farmers,” Norwood said. Most of the farmers sell into Working Landscape’s network of food hubs, which helps build a resilient regional food system.

But Working Landscapes’ payments have also been paused since they submitted for reimbursement on January 28, and White has been searching for answers as to whether it’s a temporary hiccup or something more permanent. On February 7, Working Landscapes received a notification from the USDA payment system instructing them to submit a new request that covered activities only up to January 19, without any accompanying reasoning or justification.

“We have not received notice that our program will be cut, and we believe that our reimbursement claim and advance request submitted on the 28th are valid submissions that should be processed by the USDA as soon as possible in accordance with the law,” they said in a statement provided to Civil Eats.

In the meantime, White said, the uncertainty is weighing on the farm community, and a lack of trust in the USDA will only get worse if the funding goes away entirely.

That’s especially true, said Megan Larmer, the senior director of programs at Glynwood, because most of the projects have only recently begun sending out payments. At Glynwood, they’ve received about $120,000 of the $500,000 awarded for operating costs, but they were just on the cusp of dipping into the $4 million awarded to pay growers. “The majority of projects that I’m aware of have not yet, or have only just begun, to move resources into farmers’ hands,” she said.

And the timing, especially in places with shorter growing seasons, couldn’t be worse. “This is our window. It’s now until mid-April that you can get farmers to do that desk work with you,” Larmer said. “All of that work that has to happen before the season kicks in, when they’re meant to then be implementing these practices.” Even if the pause is resolved in a few weeks, she said, that could mean many farmers won’t have time to enroll for this year, pushing the work another year out.

In the meantime, the climate crisis is accelerating, making it harder for farmers to succeed, and farms that may be struggling financially due to a tough farm economy are missing out on resources that could help them stabilize and build long-term viability, Norwood said.

“This is what regenerative ag people have been saying: Once you have that initial investment to get your soil healthy, then you don’t go back,” Norwood said. “There are so many people we haven’t reached yet. We need to get them started and multiply.”

Norwood said the Working Landscapes team has carried out cover crop trials and soil tests with partner farms for a few years. They have seen, for example, that farms that implement practices the USDA considers climate-smart can reduce their need for expensive inputs like fertilizer.

“You can see on paper, in black and white, how much less fertilizer you’re going to need to buy because of the work those cover crops are doing,” she said, adding that healthy soil is also more tolerant to drought and flooding.

The trouble is, soil health doesn’t happen quickly: These projects are mostly in year one and two out of five, and White said it can take two to five years to break even on cover crops. But it’s worth it, he said. “Not only is your soil getting healthier, but the farmers are getting better at the practices. Investments take time to pay off.”

Other Climate Grants Also Face an Unknown Fate

Over the years, Resnick has received federal grants through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to build season-extending high tunnels that she said have been crucial to their ability to farm at all.

Then, a year ago, she signed a contract for a $72,000 REAP grant to install solar panels on top of Butterbee’s barn. (REAP was one of the programs that got an extra funding infusion through the Inflation Reduction Act.) Eventually, the panels would save the farm about $5,000 a year on electricity by powering their heated greenhouses and selling energy back to the grid. Resnick was required to put up half the money, which she did, and the panels were installed by a solar developer.

At the end of January, Resnick put in her request for the government’s promised half of the cost. She soon received an email saying the disbursement had been rejected due to the funding freeze. While the solar company she worked with has assured her the pause is only temporary, Resnick is worried, given the lack of communication and clarity from the USDA.

“We’re on the hook, no matter what,” she said. “What I’m imagining is that if the funding gets cancelled, then hopefully the solar company will work out for us a long-term payment schedule. But we never would have gotten these solar panels if we knew they would cost $36,000 more. We can’t afford that. We’re already feeling stretched by debt, and this would add a whole other dimension to that.”

Resnick began contacting her congressman, Representative Andy Harris (R-Maryland), and was frustrated by a mass email his office sent out that blamed “liberal politicians and pundits” for pushing false narratives about the pause in funding.

“I’ve been calling Andy Harris every day to say, ‘Everything is not fine. The funding freeze has not been lifted. What you’re saying is contrary to my experience,’” she said. “In the meantime, I’ve been posting online about this, and farmers from across the country have been reaching out to me.”

At the Senate hearing earlier in the week, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said, “what keeps me up at night is who’s gonna farm in the future.”

Ensuring funding for practices that allow small farms to survive and thrive as the climate changes is a key place to start, Resnick said. “There is no small farmer that makes a lot of money. We’re doing this because we care about farming, we care about food, we care about the environment, and we love it. Without reliable support from the USDA, it might not be possible. “If this were me 10 years ago, I’d probably find another career,” she said.

Within the Climate-Smart Commodities projects, there are hundreds of farmers like her wrestling with similar issues. “We’re meant to help move $4 million into the hands of farmers in the Hudson Valley over the next four years,” said Megan Larmer at Glynwood. “Our ability to do that is immediately compromised by not being able to actually do that work to recruit them and support them.”

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https://civileats.com/2025/02/05/california-decides-what-regenerative-agriculture-means-sort-of/ https://civileats.com/2025/02/05/california-decides-what-regenerative-agriculture-means-sort-of/#comments Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:45:05 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=61139 The question is, will the new definition do any good? Broadly speaking, regenerative agriculture improves soil health and carbon sequestration through diverse crop rotations, animal grazing, limited tillage, and reduced (or eliminated) external inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. But it also has wider benefits, including farmer wellbeing, community engagement, and ethical animal husbandry. The problem […]

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California urgently needs to improve its soil. Better soil produces healthier food, but it also holds more water—a boon for a wildfire state with depleted groundwater. Better soil also holds more carbon, making it an effective tool to combat the climate crisis. One way to improve soil is through regenerative agriculture, an array of sustainable farming practices that, as of January, are gathered under an official definition in the state of California.

The question is, will the new definition do any good?

Broadly speaking, regenerative agriculture improves soil health and carbon sequestration through diverse crop rotations, animal grazing, limited tillage, and reduced (or eliminated) external inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. But it also has wider benefits, including farmer wellbeing, community engagement, and ethical animal husbandry. The problem is that it’s notoriously hard to define. No federal or scientific definition exists, leaving the term open to interpretation—and greenwashing.

The definition’s supporters say it provides an entry point toward better practices for thousands of farmers.

Two years ago, in an effort to guide California’s farming policy and programs, the state launched a public process to define regenerative agriculture.

The process included seven public listening sessions—two of them for California Native American tribes—and three work group meetings. Hundreds of people from across the U.S. food system joined the sessions, adding impassioned comments that ranged from “Regenerative MUST be coupled with organic to have any value whatsoever” (Annie Brown, Rodale Institute) to “We’re trying to make a difference in agriculture and we need to be open minded: Instead of asking everyone to switch religions immediately, at least get them into regenerative ag, and we’ll get ‘em into organic after a while” (a farmer at California’s Alexandre Family Farm). For some, farmworker health was essential to the definition; for others, it was irrelevant.

On Jan. 7, the state’s advisory board for food and agriculture unanimously approved the work group’s definition and forwarded it to Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), who is expected to accept it. Critics say the new definition will do little to promote significant regenerative practices and will potentially confuse the public, but the definition’s supporters say it provides an entry point toward better practices for thousands of farmers.

A Definition as a Continuum

The approved document runs to a single page and begins with the following:

“‘Regenerative agriculture,’ as defined for use by State of California policies and programs, is an integrated approach to farming and ranching rooted in principles of soil health, biodiversity and ecosystem resiliency leading to improved targeted outcomes. Regenerative agriculture is not an endpoint, but a continuous implementation of practices that over time minimize inputs and environmental impacts[,] and further enhances the ecosystem while maintaining or improving productivity, economic contributions and community benefits. ‘Regenerative agriculture’ is an ongoing continuum of sustainability for California’s farmers and ranchers, informed by current science as well as the traditions and innovations from the original Indigenous stewards of the land.”

Don Cameron, president of the state’s advisory board, lauded the definition’s flexibility and discretion while making clear that this effort was not about establishing certification or a framework for companies to make label claims.

Critics say the new definition will do little to promote significant regenerative practices and will potentially confuse the public.

“That bridge will be crossed if [companies] move forward with a certification process,” he said. “I look at this for different state agencies to have guidelines so they can put programs out there that are regenerative in nature.”

In accepting the board’s definition, the CDFA will not be pursuing a regulatory or statutory action. They will, in essence, be agreeing to follow a guideline that includes eight targeted outcomes. At this time, there is no funding allocated for outcome assessment, verification, or third-party audits.

What Prompted the Definition, and What It’s Supposed to Do

Agriculture plays a significant role in climate change, producing 10 percent of U.S. and 8 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from croplands, industrial vehicles, and livestock.

In 2022, California’s Climate Innovation Program provided $525 million in financial incentives to California-based companies, including agriculture businesses, to develop and commercialize technologies to help California meet its climate goals. Regenerative agriculture efforts were specifically mentioned.

This prompted CDFA Secretary Karen Ross to turn to the State Board of Food and Agriculture, an advisory board consisting of members from across the sector. The board appointed a work group to establish a definition that would help guide farmers who want to increase sustainability practices, as well as state agencies and programs looking to focus their funding.

Since the passage of the 2022 bill, Governor Gavin Newsom has removed its funding to help address the projected state budget shortfall, so it is unknown at this time what programs farms would be eligible for if they adopt qualifying regenerative practices.

“I really do think it was a pretty remarkable effort by the most remarkable state in our economy in the agriculture space,” said Elizabeth Whitlow, who until recently was the executive director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance and she was part of the work group that hammered out the guidelines. “Secretary Ross said we need to define this so we can have money to reward the practices. I listened and said, ‘You are stepping into muddy waters here. You should back away from this definition and call it ‘agroecological’ or ‘holistic.’”

In a state with more than 1,500 soil types and 400 crops, the work group’s central tension from the outset was—as Tom Chapman, co-chief executive of the Organic Trade Association, described it—“whether to go narrow and meaningful, or wide but not that deep.”

The group, directed by Secretary Ross to provide a “big tent” in which all stakeholders could operate, went with the latter. The definition’s harder edges were softened as large farms and conventional agriculture industry groups weighed in. For instance, from an early draft that sought the “elimination” of reliance on pesticides—a key tenet of organic farming—language changed in the final draft to a “reduction” of reliance.

Many in the industry, especially in the conventional sector, feel this broader definition, anchored by its first target outcome of “building soil health, soil organic matter and biodiversity,” is a good place to start.

“In agriculture, nothing is one size fits all, so the adoption of systems has to be realistic for each particular kind of crop,” said Renee Pinel, president of Western Plant Health, a nonprofit trade organization that represents the interests of fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers. She says she sees this definition as a starting point, as “someplace from which to constructively move forward.”

For conventional farmers in California who contend with year-round pests and diseases in the state’s mild climate, she said, “We have to be realistic about how quickly we can move to softer biological products. We can’t mandate the removal of products until we have replacements, or farmers can’t defend themselves and you’ll have massive crop failures.”

A broader definition allows for innovations in technology or advances in inputs or soil amendments to be incorporated, Pinel and others have argued.

What the Definition Doesn’t Do

But a lack of specificity in the definition is problematic for many farming experts.

“I could survey 100 farmers and show them this definition and they would each have a different interpretation of what this means,” said Rebekah Weber, policy director for California Certified Organic Farmers. “And the verification and accountability pieces just aren’t there.”

In fact, at the Jan. 7 meeting to finalize a definition, State Board of Food and Agriculture  member Michelle Passero, director of The Nature Conservancy’s climate change plan for California, spoke up, saying she was hoping for a definition that was “a little more outcomes-oriented.”

“If I was trying to use it in a legal sense, how would it be helpful? How do you apply it? Does it mean if you do one [of the eight targeted outcomes,] then it’s fine or sufficient?” she asked.

The definition ends with a guidance for state agencies and departments to coordinate with the CDFA, and, “contingent upon resources,” to develop measurable, verifiable outcomes. Agencies and programs are also responsible for keeping track of verification and reporting.

The fact that organic has been minimized in the definition also bothers many. These farmers view regenerative agriculture as steeped in organic, biodiverse practices that rely on plants and other organisms to produce soil fertility and control pests, instead of on industrial fertilizers and pesticides. For them, the definition does not go far enough.

Bryce Lundberg is vice president of agriculture at Lundberg Family Farms, a fourth-generation organic rice and quinoa company. He is a member of the state advisory board as well as the work group that oversaw the regenerative definition. In the group’s final meeting, he said that he appreciated the definition’s approach to the health of humans and the environment, but underscored that the organic component was vital.

Bryce Lundberg of Lundberg Family Farms. Photo courtesy of Lundberg Family Farms.

“To have organic as a baseline to regenerative agriculture, that would be my hope,” he said in the meeting. “That ‘regenerative’ would be beyond organic as a standard, that would be my preference.” In a subsequent interview, Lundberg said, “I’m proud of the organic community in California that advocated that ‘organic’ be the baseline for this definition. Two-thirds of the comments have been from the organic community [saying] that we need a higher bar.” Farming according to a watered-down regenerative definition, he suggested, is like getting a “participation trophy.”

California has more than 3,000 organic farms and ranches but more than 70,000 farms and ranches total, meaning only 4.2 percent of California’s farms are certified organic.

Using the word “organic” would immediately exclude thousands of farmers and ranchers who may want to adopt regenerative practices but have not yet. And in the wake of the hottest year on record and a new administration that has expressed tepid enthusiasm for climate-change mitigation efforts, more producers need to adopt at least some regenerative practices, said Andrew deCoriolis, executive director of Farm Forward, a nonprofit focused on reducing animal suffering.

USDA really needs to be the one setting the definition—they label food products nationally.

“Even if this ends up being marginally better practices across all of California, that would be a net good,” he said.

Weber says this new definition could be cataclysmic for certified organic farmers in the state.

“Organic farmers have to meet strict requirements. And now they will be in the same marketplace as a ‘regenerative’ farmer who is being subsidized by the state of California, but there isn’t verification behind that word? That’s an unfair market advantage,” she said.

Whitlow echoed that sentiment, saying the definition might lead consumers to choose “regenerative” over “organic.” “If all you have to do is spray one fewer time or use a little less fertilizer, and you can use the term ‘regenerative,’ consumers may say, ‘I’m going to buy this regenerative product, that sounds pretty good.’ We are concerned that it could have unintended consequences for organics.”

What Happens When the Definition Gets Loose in the Wild

Secretary Ross has underscored that the definition will help determine where state resources go, and that it is not consumer-facing or about retail labeling claims or certifications.

Many farming advocates think that’s naïve.

“I’d pose the question back to the CDFA: How do you plan on assuring this doesn’t influence the marketplace or embolden folks who put a regenerative claim on their product?” Weber asked. “There hasn’t been enough discussion around that.”

In the past few years, label claims have proliferated, with climate-related terms such as “net-zero” or “climate-smart” beef drawing little scrutiny, and package claims like “pure” and “all-natural” energizing consumer class-action lawsuits. The new, loose definition might unleash more greenwashing, and consumer confusion.

Also, there are several regenerative-associated marketing certifications already in existence, including what’s considered to be the highest bar for farming: Regenerative Organic Certified, which builds on the USDA Organic certification.

“USDA really needs to be the one setting the definition—they label food products nationally,” said Anne Schechinger, Midwest director for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

She added, “We support California’s attempt, but they obviously need to include specific practices, a way to measure the benefits of these practices, a way to show that there are water or climate benefits.”If California’s definition of regenerative does, in fact, encourage widespread healthier soils in the state, it will be interesting to see whether it gains traction with supporters of regenerative ag at the federal level—including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. His Make America Healthy Again platform includes regenerative agriculture as a central pillar.

+ + +

An earlier version of the article misspelled the name of Annie Brown at Rodale Institute.

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