Former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and former Agriculture Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie have told The Hagstrom Report the goals of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program that they started in the Biden administration will continue under the reformulation of the program announced last week by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. When Rollins announced the change, the headline on the USDA press release read, “USDA cancels Biden era slush fund, reprioritizes existing funding to farmers.”
She also said the name of the program had been changed to Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative, and that “USDA has identified changes to align the initiative with current Trump administration priorities.”
In an email late Wednesday, Vilsack, now the CEO of the World Food Prize Foundation, said, “The headline of the press release conveys one narrative, but it is the details of the simply renamed program that provides the true narrative.”
“The program continues to provide payments to farmers, ranchers and producers for conservation practices that will improve soil health and water quality,” Vilsack said.
“[With] the continued use of incentives to farmers provided for those practices the program will also continue to have the effect [of] reducing greenhouse gas emissions and storing carbon in the soil. With the program’s focus on markets farmers, ranchers and producers will continue to be rewarded with better prices getting paid for what they grow and for how they grow it.”
Folks are free to call [it] whatever they want, but the department continues a commitment to more, new and better markets for farmers, ranchers and producers. All the basic elements of the program are the same: incentives for practices that have positive results for which participants are rewarded with better markets. The continuation of these basic elements under the circumstances of crippling retaliatory tariffs is extremely important now,” Vilsack said.
In the news release, Rollins emphasized that under the Biden administration “the majority of these projects had sky-high administration fees which in many instances provided less than half of the federal funding directly to farmers. … With this action, USDA is cutting bureaucratic red tape, streamlining reporting, lowering the paperwork burden on producers and putting farmers first.”
Much of that reporting was related to the Partnerships goal of proving that programs to cut carbon emissions work and that the products from these farming methods could be sold at higher prices for the benefit of the farmers. Asked how the purpose of the program could be verified without the reporting requirements, Vilsack responded, “There will have to be some evaluation, otherwise the market won’t pay the premium. The premium is linked to being able to establish and prove an environmental benefit. So, by contract with the buyer there will have to be some way of certifying a result. It is essentially the same program with a different name.”
Bonnie said in an email, “I’m pleased Secretary Rollins has agreed to extend Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities, largely intact albeit under another name. Don’t let the bombastic statement fool you, Secretary Rollins learned from producers just how popular and effective this program is.”The National Association of Conservation Districts, one of the Partnerships grantees, said in an email, “USDA has reformed and overhauled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative into the Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative. NACD’s climate-smart grant with USDA will be terminated, with an invitation to submit a revised proposal that aligns with the goals of the AMP.”
“NACD welcomes this opportunity to submit a revised proposal,” NACD CEO Jeremy Peters said in the email.
“Healthy, productive land is essential for agricultural prosperity, and resilience also depends on producers’ access to financial assistance, new markets, and improved supply chains. We are pleased to support the ‘Farmer First’ policy, success of which depends on the important technical assistance provided by conservation districts.”
–The Hagstrom Report