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Q&A: Does USDA’s Spending Freeze Undermine the Legitimacy of a Government Contract? [1]

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Date: 2025-03-28

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.

Jonathan Coppess is no stranger to federal farm policy.

He served as the administrator of the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Obama Administration. He was also part of Joe Biden’s presidential transition team in 2020 to help inform that administration’s agricultural and rural development efforts, of which there were plenty: In 2022, Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the single-largest climate law in U.S. history. Billions of dollars from this law were invested in USDA conservation programs that give farmers grants and loans to implement more sustainable farming practices on their land.

But this funding could soon be a thing of the past. On President Donald Trump’s first day in office, he signed executive orders that froze spending across a number of federal agencies, including USDA.

While some of that money has since been released, much of the funding allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act is still frozen, which has harmed farmers who were relying on grants and loans to help them pay for parts of their business.

I spoke with Coppess about what he finds most concerning about this USDA spending freeze, and what it means, existentially, when the government breaks its own rules.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Claire Carlson, The Daily Yonder: The first two months of Trump’s presidency have been defined by chaos and confusion over federal spending cuts. I’ve been looking at how USDA is affected by those freezes, especially USDA conservation programs paid for by Inflation Reduction Act money, and it’s honestly been hard to figure out what is worth paying attention to and reporting on.

As an expert on this topic, what do you think we need to be paying attention to?

Jonathan Coppess: I feel like there’s a lot of conflating payments to farmers, as if all payments to farmers are the same, particularly when it comes to conservation payments. But I think there are important differences.

The Inflation Reduction Act funds were added onto the Farm Bill funding for these conservation programs. And what the funds do is they help farmers undertake conservation on the farm. So you’re doing actual work on the farm to improve your soils, to improve waters. It’s one of these areas in which the public policy dollar is doing more than just paying the farmer. And I think there’s a lot of missed opportunity in these discussions to clarify that not all payments are the same. You and I, who do not receive farm program payments, do receive benefits from conservation, whether that’s cleaner water, less soil erosion, fewer dust storms, or whatever. These are real benefits to us. And then both us and the farmer benefit from this investment in making sure that soils and fields can remain productive over a long stretch of time. Jonathan Coppess served as administrator of the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Obama Administration. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Coppess.)

DY: That makes sense – this has a broader effect than just on the farmer, even though a lot of the messaging and reporting is like, “shoot, farmers are not going to get this funding,” when in fact that funding was paying for something that we all benefit from, which is cleaner air or water.

JC: That’s exactly right. This is us investing in our nation’s farms, and getting something out of it. Then I think that leads to the second part of this, which is the most kind of consequential controversy, which is in those cases where a farmer has signed a contract with USDA to receive these funds and hasn’t gotten them, we – the federal government, as in all of us – are now breaching a contract and breaking the promise with the farmer.

And so that’s a different degree of problem legally. And I would say in a sort of philosophical sense, it’s different than just saying, in the future, we’re not going to offer payments for a certain practice or because we don’t want to fund climate change or whatever. Doing that in the future is a different matter than breaking the promise and the contract now, especially where that farmer went out and paid their own money to do the practice with the expectation of being reimbursed.

That is something very different than a new administration that has different priorities going forward. I think that’s an important distinction with this funding, and I would say it begs the question of what that means for us, and for the farmer and for farmers in the future. What is the confidence you have in a contract with your government? That’s not a minor thing.

DY: Not at all. I also think that the first point kind of makes this spending freeze more interesting to a broader audience. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of folks, farming is a very distant reality to them. We’re all dependent on it, but what it actually means to operate a farm is something most Americans don’t understand. So, can you talk more about how this affects the average American, especially if these funds are never paid out?

JC: So again, it goes to the same thing. As Americans this is our government. And so if it’s our government breaking a promise, breaking a contract, that’s us.

Part of my frustration with a lot of the conversation in recent years, and in particular this administration and this campaign, is that we’re treating the government as some foreign entity, some “other.” But that’s wrong – we are a self-governing society. So I do think there’s an important consideration that like, oh, if they do this, that’s us doing that, right? We’re breaking the contract. So that’s step one.

And then I think, to your larger point, these funds are being invested in things that we benefit from, cleaner water, all that stuff. And so I think the question is, is that something of value to the average American? I would think so. We all want clean water, clean air.

DY: I know USDA has released some of these Inflation Reduction Act funds, but do you see any potential for all of them being released? I think $20 million was released, which of course is a tiny fraction of a billion.

JC: Yeah, there was more than a billion dollars obligated. So $20 million, I mean, that does not give me confidence, but I don’t know how long USDA can freeze those funds or what it can do with it, because eventually somebody’s going to sue. It’s a breach of contract. It’s a pretty clear cut case. And unless the Supreme Court wants to completely eviscerate the whole contract system, which would eviscerate all of our economy, then they’re going to have to enforce the contract. I don’t see any other way. So the question really is a matter of time.

Are they going to fight this out and make farmers go through the expense and pain of litigating this, or are we just going to realize that obligated contracts have to be paid?

This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.

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