While some federal money has been unfrozen in Pennsylvania, farmers here, and around the country, still don’t know if the Trump administration will start paying the money it committed to them. In the meantime, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture is preparing to lay off more than half its staff because of the funding freeze.
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One farmer’s view
Eleven years ago, when Mark Smith started Pittsburgher Highland Farm about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, there was plenty of water running through his 142 acres.
“For the first 3 or 4 years at this farm, we had creeks flush with water, springs flush with water year round. We had two farm ponds that were flush with water,” he said.
It was enough reliable water to support the grass-fed cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry they were raising. But that began to change six or seven years ago.
“Last year, probably being the worst,” he said. “And creeks have dried up, ponds have gone dry, springs have dissipated in the summertime.”
They invested $8,000 of their own money to install a municipal water line on the farm. But in recent years, instead of the grass drying up late in summer, it’s happening in May or June.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has programs, some dating back to the 1930s, that provide billions of dollars in assistance to manage a variety of water, soil and conservation issues. Smith says he applied.
“We had never received funding, even though we had applied numerous times,” he said.
Pennsylvania farming group received millions to help farmers
But Smith had new hope last year for assistance with their water woes. He applied to a new USDA program through Pasa Sustainable Agriculture. The Pennsylvania-based nonprofit had been awarded $55 million dollars over five years to help 2000 farmers in 15 eastern states, from Maine to South Carolina, as part of a $3.1 billion investment nationwide by the Biden administration for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodies Program.
According to Pasa executive director Hannah Smith-Brubaker, the USDA typically serves larger farms with grants and loans, but this new program was focused on smaller farms. The agency wanted help from her group to reach these farmers.
“‘Could you sort of leverage the relationships you have to reach out to these farmers and build trust with them and get them to be willing to have a relationship with USDA,’” she said the USDA asked Pasa.
Pasa has been encouraging farmers to apply for projects like fencing cattle away from waterways and planting perennial crops to help mitigate flooding. So far in Pennsylvania, Pasa said it has funded 125 farm conservation projects through this program, and 850 more farms have applied.
“Many times these are really small farms that there’s just no way they could have afforded to do this on their own,” Smith-Brubaker said. “And I would assert that, particularly when you’re asking farmers to install conservation practices, that this is a public service to people who live downstream from the farmer.”
Trump administration halts the funding
On his first day in office, a Trump executive order held up the disbursement of nearly $20 billion in agriculture-related conservation programs linked to the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
USDA has since released $20 million of that.
Trump’s USDA also froze the $3.1 billion for the climate-smart commodities program, which is not funded through the IRA, but a different pot of money. This has left Pasa and other groups, along with farmers nationwide, on the hook to pay for projects the government had committed to fund.
Smith-Brubaker found out about another cut to their program when a Pasa staffer saw Elon Musk’s post about it on X on February 14. “He posted a little Valentine’s Day rhyme,” she said.
It read, “Roses are red, violets are blue, today DOGE and 10 agencies made 586 wasteful contracts bid adieu.”
The X post mentioned an $8.5 million USDA contract with a company that provides environmental reviews of projects proposed by farmers in their applications to the climate program Pasa has been administering.
“The worst part is that the contractor was already paid. So taxpayers paid $8.5 million, and now that contractor can’t work,” she said. “And now we don’t have that contractor available to conduct about three-quarters of the work that we’re contracted to do, just because Elon Musk thought it was a fun thing to do for Valentine’s Day.”
Pasa faces staffing cuts
Smith-Brubaker said Pasa put its reputation on the line, convincing farmers to trust the federal government, and now that the program funds are frozen, it looks like that was a mistake.
“The fact is USDA entered into these agreements and farmers have planned around it financially,” she said. “You can imagine for any small business if you’ve budgeted for your cost to be covered on something and then mid-year, ‘Oh, you’re not going to get reimbursed.’ That has a big impact on your business.”
It’s been more than a month since the federal government has paid Pasa, Smith-Brubaker said. If USDA doesn’t restart funding in the next several days, her organization will need to lay off more than 70% of its staff; that’s at least 60 people losing their jobs.
