USDA’s End of Diversity Efforts in Farm Programs Will Mean ‘Less Food for the Community’

By Héctor Alejandro Arzate

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will no longer take a farmer’s race or gender into consideration for many of its loans and benefit programs.

The decision was announced on Thursday by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who terminated the practice under President Donald Trump’s mandate to slash diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

In recent decades, the USDA has taken efforts to reform its history of discrimination through programs meant to support “socially disadvantaged farmers” — which includes Black people, women, and veterans. Yet, the USDA ruled last week that it already “sufficiently addressed” past discrimination and that continuing to practice “race- and sex-based remedies” are no longer necessary or legal.

“We are taking this aggressive, unprecedented action to eliminate discrimination in any form at USDA,” Rollins said in a statement. “It is simply wrong and contrary to the fundamental principle that all persons should be treated equally.”

Although veteran and beginning farmers will still be explicitly considered for some programs, the move is the latest blow to federal resources for underrepresented farmers and ranchers across the country.

Since taking office in January, the Trump administration’s USDA has taken aim against hundreds of DEI programs and grants worth millions of dollars. Many have been paused for review or terminated — including in mid-June, when the agriculture department announced more than 145 awards worth $148.6 million were cut.

Mike Lavender is the policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which represents more than 160 agriculture organizations across the country. The coalition’s goal is to advocate on Capitol Hill for policy reform, but Lavender said the past few months have introduced more uncertainty for the overall U.S. food system and the farmers who rely on USDA funding and opportunities.

“They already have to deal with weather. They already have to deal with pests and input prices. Limiting their variables, limiting the uncertainty, is always a good thing,” Lavender said. “Unfortunately, what we've seen from the first six months or so from this administration, is the injection, consistently, of uncertainty for farmers by freezing contracts that farmers lawfully held, by terminating contracts, by terminating projects unexpectedly, by canceling market opportunities for farmers.”