The Reconciliation Farm Bill: Is Conservation a Silver Lining?

Sep 17, 2025

By Jonathan Coppess

Whether they know it or not, those grasping for optimism in dark times often turn to a concept first coined by the poet John Milton in 1634: the silver lining in a dark cloud (Milton, 1634; Keahey, March 22, 2021; etymonline.com, “silver lining”; Merriam-Webster, “silver lining”). As discussed at length, the Reconciliation Farm Bill made a series of problematic and concerning changes to farm support policy; all changes, however, were to farm subsidy and crop insurance policy designs (farmdoc daily, July 31, 2025; August 14, 2025; August 21, 2025; August 28, 2025; September 4, 2025). The Reconciliation Farm Bill also revised the funding for some of the conservation programs and this article approaches Milton’s “sable cloud” once more, this time in search of a possible silver lining.

Background

Section 10601 of the Reconciliation Farm Bill increased the budget authority for four of the major conservation programs: Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP); Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP); Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP); and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) (P.L. 119-21). Unlike other farm assistance, the conservation funding increase was not paid for by cutting food assistance in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Instead, those funding increases were offset by eliminating the additional appropriated funds for those programs enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169; farmdoc daily, November 7, 2024; October 10, 2024; Policy Design Lab, Issue Brief).

Discussion

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the Reconciliation Farm Bill’s changes to conservation policy as saving $1.8 billion over the ten years of the score (CBO, July 21, 2025). This is a bit of mathematical illusion due to the method of CBO scoring for conservation and the difference between budget authority (BA)—the amount Congress authorized—and outlays, the projected amount of that BA that CBO thinks will be spent based on historic spending rates. The January 2025 CBO baseline for these four (EQIP, CSP, ACEP, RCPP) conservation programs was $37.75 billion in BA (FY2026-2035) but slightly less, $37.257 billion, in outlays for those ten fiscal years (CBO, January 2025). The January baseline also projected $15.7 billion in remaining outlays (FY2026 to 2031) of the $18 billion appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). Rescinding the IRA appropriation produced a reduction in outlays, which was used to increase the budget authority. Figure 1 illustrates the CBO score for the conservation provisions (Sec. 10601) of the Reconciliation Farm Bill. Note that the CBO score was for the ten fiscal years 2025 to 2034.

Source : illinois.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.