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USDA’s Regenerative Pilot Program expansion contradicts farm bill’s funding cuts

The executive director of Invest in Our Land, a nonpartisan organization aimed at ensuring farmers have adequate access to conservation support, says the USDA’s announced expansion of the Regenerative Pilot Program is good news.

Rebecca Bartels tells Brownfield, “That expansion is a fabulous thing and it’s great to see Secretary Rollins expressing publicly how high the demand is for practices that have proven outcomes like those listed under the Regenerative Pilot Program.”

However, she says the $1 billion is set to be delivered through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which would be cut by $2 billion in the Senate Farm Bill currently under consideration.

“But if EQIP and CSP are cut, then the Regenerative Pilot Program would shrink alongside it because it’s a piece of the same size pie.”  She says, “We would love to see that funding as new funding.”

Bartels says USDA staffing reductions and reorganizations also stand in the way of funding finding farmers that need it.

“USDA said from a technical support perspective that they’re actually going to expand the staff that deliver the pilot, and many of us across the country are celebrating.”  She says, “We need more people.”

She says demand for conservation assistance already outpaces available funding, and the proposed cuts to EQIP and CSP would potentially leave more than 56,500 further valid farmer applications unfunded.

AUDIO: Rebecca Bartels – Invest in Our Land