By Hope Kirwan
Katie Woodrow, agriculture project manager for the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, has spent the last two years recruiting around 40 farmers to adopt sustainable farming practices like cover crops and no-till planting.
She’s now in the process of canceling all of the multi-year contracts they’ve signed because the U.S. Department of Agriculture abruptly ended her organization’s grant, and hundreds like it, under the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in a press release Monday her agency was immediately canceling the $3.1 billion program. The agency said a review of the projects awarded by former President Joe Biden’s administration found they had “sky-high administration fees” instead of providing the funding directly to farmers.
The agency has rebranded the grant program as the Advancing Markets for Producers initiative. Organizations who were previously awarded funding can reapply to continue their projects if they direct a minimum of 65 percent of funds directly to farm payments.
Woodrow said the decision is disappointing, especially because of the progress groups like hers had already made on developing relationships with farmers.
“Farms had made plans to do no-till plantings [this spring] because they were under contract, or they were starting something new with a contract with us,” she said. “But we’re a pass through for that funding. So if the federal funding isn’t available, we don’t have reserves on hand to be able to pay our farmers.”
The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance had received just under $5 million to support small-scale producers and was one of the partners on a $50 million project led by Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative in Green Bay. A spokesperson for Edge declined WPR’s interview request, saying the cooperative was “still assessing the situation.”
According to USDA, 29 projects funded through the Climate-Smart program involved Wisconsin, with a combined total of $1 billion.
The grant funding has been on hold since the Trump administration froze a number of federal programs shortly after taking office. Woodrow said her organization is still waiting for reimbursement from work completed during the last quarter of 2024.
“We’re grateful as an organization that we have reserves that we’re able to keep staff on,” she said. “But it is a financial burden to have six months worth of expenses not reimbursed.”
Marbleseed, a nonprofit supporting organic farmers based in Spring Valley, is also waiting for reimbursement for months of completed work under their $4.5 million grant.
Executive Director Lori Stern said Marbleseed and their partners stopped signing on new farms after the funding freeze. They’ve been able to secure philanthropic funding to pay the 12 farmers who had already signed contracts for their project supporting more diverse crop rotations.
Stern said she was not surprised by the program’s end given the Trump administration’s opposition to programs addressing climate change.
“The fact that this project had ‘climate-smart’ in the title, I had a feeling that without some major kind of re-spinning of the narrative, that it was probably not going to be funded,” she said.
But Stern said the program came as a response to growing pressure on the agriculture industry to respond to a more variable climate. She said the projects were focused on documenting the financial benefits of different sustainable practices, offering farms a way to identify cost-effective practices and communicate them to climate-conscious consumers.
She said Marbleseed and its partners plan to consider how they can adjust the project in order to reapply for funding. But the new requirement that the majority of funding go directly to farms will make it difficult for groups like Stern’s to pay staff to support farms adopting new practices.
“Farmers will often pay consultants to provide [technical assistance], and this project was providing it to them for free,” she said. “It’s going to be interesting going forward to try to determine what level of support can we provide if only 35 percent of the budget is allowed to go toward those activities.”
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