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Report: A Pause to Land Conservation Programs Funding from USDA Could Kill Their Momentum [1]

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Date: 2025-06-30

Enrollment rates for two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation programs spiked after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocated billions of dollars to them, but agriculture experts warn that a pause on conservation funding could stall the momentum that was building for more sustainable farming practices.

A recent study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found that in Fiscal Year 2024, about 44% of applicants to the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and 55% of applicants to the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) were awarded grants. These programs provide money to farmers trying to improve their water and air quality, soil health, local wildlife habitat, and mitigate drought impacts on their land.

The 2024 numbers are a marked increase over previous years, when up to three-quarters of grant applicants were denied funding, according to Michael Happ, author of the report. “These programs have been underfunded and oversubscribed for a while now, especially from changes set from the last two farm bills,” he said.

That was the case up until the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The Biden-era law dedicated more than $11 billion over four years to the two programs, allowing more farmers to implement conservation projects. “That’s thousands more farmers who are able to access funding that they might need for their operation,” Happ said.

But a freeze on federal spending by the Trump administration could jeopardize this progress. In late January of 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that froze Inflation Reduction Act funding to EQIP, CSP, and two other grant programs managed by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

While some of the money has been released, many farmers who were awarded grants still have not received the funding they were promised, leaving them in challenging financial positions.

“There’s not been a lot of clarity,” Happ said. “Some of the money has been released, but a lot of it still hasn’t. And there’s a lot of mixed messages coming from USDA, and farmers are getting frustrated and confused, understandably.”

“Just Like Any Other Business”

For many farmers, these grants are often the only way they can afford to implement conservation projects.

That was the case for John Burk, a fourth-generation farmer from Bay City, Michigan. He farms 4,500 acres of corn, soybeans, sugar beets, and wheat. He uses cover crops to protect the soil from erosion and increase the nutrients in the ground. “I know I use way less fertilizer than I did 20 years ago, and our yields have gone up tremendously,” he said.

Burk has benefited from a number of USDA conservation grants, including ones from EQIP and CSP. “For the farmer to do those [conservation] practices, it costs a lot of money,” he said. “So it’s nice to have those conservation dollars to help us keep doing more conservation on the land.”

Congress has approximately $9.5 billion left to spend on these programs, based on what the Inflation Reduction Act set aside for EQIP and CSP. If applicants were awarded $7,500 — about the average contract size for EQIP grants during Fiscal Year 2023 — more than 900,000 farmers could benefit from that money that’s yet to be obligated, according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy report.

Even just a few thousand dollars can go a long way on a farm. “We’re not here to try to see how much money we can spend to grow a crop,” Burk said. “It’s just like any other business: We try to minimize our costs and maximize our output, and the one way we do that is through these conservation programs and the money that they give us.”

But if Inflation Reduction Act funds remain frozen, this opportunity could be out of reach to many American farmers. Not only do the farmers lose out from this, but so do their surrounding communities.

In the Midwest, for example, there’s been a sharp increase in the number of dust storms recorded. In mid-May of 2025, a highly abnormal dust storm traveled across northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and Chicago, a city that rarely sees such events. The dust came from dry, eroded farmland.

These storms are a major risk to public health: a study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated there were 232 dust-related deaths between 2007 and 2017.

USDA conservation programs pay for projects that help mitigate these dust storms. Without the IRA funding, the momentum that’s been building for conservation practices risks disappearing.

“I can guarantee [conservation] is going to stall on other people’s farms,” Burk said. “It’s just going to end because they can’t afford to do it. They’re not far enough into the system… to see any benefit from it yet.”

Back to the Dust Bowl?

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service which oversees these grant programs, has been around since 1935. It was created out of necessity after extreme drought conditions and erosion led to the Dust Bowl — an era of constant and debilitating dust storms — which highlighted the urgent need for soil conservation.

For Happ of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the uncertainty of that time reminds him of some of the issues farmers face today.

“We’ve kind of forgotten the basics of soil stewardship,” Happ said. “That, plus this erosion of trust [in the federal government], of staffing, of conservation programs… I just want to make sure that we’re not going back in that direction and trying to rip away the progress we’ve had over almost 100 years at this point.”

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[1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/report-a-pause-to-land-conservation-programs-funding-from-usda-could-kill-their-momentum/2025/06/30/

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