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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Hailed by some as a landmark commitment to sustainable farming, the Trump administration’s Regenerative Pilot Program (RPP) is drawing scrutiny from agricultural experts and farmers who question whether it represents a genuine new investment in regenerative agriculture or merely a strategic reallocation of existing conservation funds. While the program has disbursed significant funds, its design and the broader context of federal agricultural policy, including ongoing staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), raise concerns about its true impact and long-term effectiveness.
The Executive Order and Initial Enthusiasm
In June 2026, President Donald Trump signed the first executive order (EO) specifically dedicated to "advancing regenerative agriculture," a move that was met with cautious optimism by proponents of sustainable farming. Researcher Jonathan Lundgren, a prominent advocate, expressed hope on LinkedIn, stating, "This EO now engages the administration’s resources into supporting regenerative agriculture on an expanded scale. We are cautiously optimistic that this first step will support our bottom-up efforts to change the culture of food in the U.S. and globally." This executive directive aimed to "maximize the funding" and "expand the reach" of the USDA’s Regenerative Pilot Program, which had been announced in late 2025.
Regenerative agriculture, a holistic farming approach, focuses on restoring soil health, increasing biodiversity, improving water cycles, and enhancing ecosystem services. Its practices often include cover cropping, no-till farming, diverse crop rotations, integrated pest management, and managed grazing. Advocates argue these methods can significantly reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint, sequester carbon, and boost farm resilience in the face of climate change. The EO signaled a high-level recognition of these benefits, promising a federal push to integrate such practices more widely across American farmlands.
Unpacking the Regenerative Pilot Program (RPP)
The USDA, through its Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), is the primary agency tasked with implementing the RPP. By mid-September 2026, the agency reported exceeding its initial goals, having issued $851.7 million across 5,100 RPP farmer contracts. These contracts were distributed through two long-standing conservation initiatives: the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). A USDA spokesperson affirmed to Civil Eats that the agency aimed to set aside 25 percent of future EQIP and CSP funds specifically for RPP contracts, a figure they noted was consistent with the average spending on these practices between 2022 and 2025 within EQIP.
However, a deeper dive into the program’s structure reveals that the RPP does not introduce new federal money into the system. Instead, it reallocates existing funds. Keith Kloubec, a state conservationist in Minnesota, candidly explained the mechanism during an early September meeting with local NRCS officials: "It’s all one big pot of money, we’re just carving it out." This "pot" is funded by Congress through annual appropriations for EQIP and CSP, programs that have historically supported a broad range of environmentally beneficial farming practices.
The RPP’s design mandates that farmers adopt at least one "primary" regenerative practice to qualify for funding. However, funds can also be allocated for "facilitating" practices on the same farm. The USDA spokesperson clarified that approximately $468.9 million of the total disbursed funds went directly to the specified regenerative agriculture practices, while $382.9 million supported other, related conservation efforts. This split underscores the blend of direct regenerative investment with broader conservation support within the program.
A Look at the Numbers: Investment or Re-Prioritization?
Critics argue that the RPP, without new financial injections, essentially re-labels existing conservation efforts. Anne Schechinger, senior director of agriculture and climate research at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), expressed significant reservations. "I would definitely say this administration is making decisions that are leading to less regenerative farming overall," she stated.
Schechinger’s analysis of USDA data revealed that before the RPP’s inception, EQIP alone had already allocated substantial sums to practices now classified as "regenerative." In 2023, $314 million was directed to these practices, and in 2025, the figure rose to $471 million. Notably, in 2024, when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provided a significant boost to overall conservation funding, the USDA channeled a remarkable $776 million into practices then labeled "climate-smart," many of which overlap with the current regenerative list. While a direct comparison to the RPP’s combined EQIP and CSP figures is complex, it strongly suggests that the USDA had already been investing comparable, and in some years, even greater amounts into these practices before the RPP was established.
This dynamic sharply contrasts with the approach taken by the previous Biden administration. Former President Joe Biden, in collaboration with congressional Democrats, secured a massive infusion of new money for EQIP and CSP through the IRA in 2022. This additional funding was specifically earmarked for climate-smart farming, leading to a historic increase in available funds and enabling more farmers to adopt sustainable practices. Under the Trump administration, however, no such new funding has been provided for the RPP.
Michael Happ, program associate for climate and rural communities at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), acknowledged the inherent value of the practices prioritized by the USDA. "We’re supportive of anything that can get more folks enrolled in conservation programs and get more conservation on the ground," Happ said. However, he questioned the actual net increase in investment. "This is a set-aside of existing funds for practices that are already really popular. The first question I had was, ‘Will this actually invest more in these practices?’ I’m not sure if I can answer that question yet."
Congressional Budgetary Headwinds and the Farm Bill
Further complicating the outlook for conservation funding are recent legislative maneuvers by Republicans in Congress. The "One Big Beautiful Bill" moved extra conservation funds initially allocated by Democrats in the IRA into permanent conservation programs, removing the specific climate-focused requirements. While this move theoretically increased the total money available for conservation, it also diluted the climate mandate.
More critically, the proposed farm bill currently making its way through the Senate, influenced by Republican proposals, could lead to a significant reduction in available funds for EQIP in the coming years. Experts, including agricultural economists from the University of Illinois, estimate these changes could result in the rejection of over 56,500 farmer applications. This potential $2 billion cut to EQIP funding has alarmed environmental and agricultural groups. MAHA Action, the political arm of a popular advocacy group, along with prominent advocates like Alexandra Muñoz and Kelly Ryerson, vociferously criticized these cuts on social media platform X, with Ryerson asserting the bill would "defund the regen ag pilot." This budgetary uncertainty casts a long shadow over the RPP’s ability to sustain its goals.
Defining "Regenerative": Practices Under Scrutiny
While the RPP aims to support regenerative agriculture, the specific practices prioritized by the USDA have also drawn scrutiny. MAHA Action characterized the RPP as a program "helping farmers quit chemicals." However, a review of the RPP’s list of primary practices shows only one explicitly linked to reducing pesticide use: Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM aims to minimize pesticide application through various strategies but does not necessarily eliminate their use entirely.
Moreover, some of the most commonly funded practices under RPP, such as cover crops and no-till farming, can paradoxically lead to increased herbicide use in commodity fields. While beneficial for soil health, a reliance on chemical weed control can become necessary in no-till systems to manage weeds without mechanical disturbance. This raises questions about the program’s holistic impact on reducing synthetic input reliance, a key tenet of many regenerative approaches.
Despite these caveats, many experts acknowledge the inherent value of the practices the USDA is prioritizing. Jesse Womack, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), noted, "The [Regenerative Pilot] program is well-intended. But it’s not revolutionary."
Farmer Experiences and Accessibility Challenges
The RPP’s rollout has not been without its practical challenges for farmers. Seth Kroeck, who operates Crystal Spring Farm, a certified organic vegetable and livestock farm in Brunswick, Maine, initially welcomed the program’s potential. He appreciated the idea that it might better accommodate organic farms, which often integrate multiple practices simultaneously. "I have had a lot of contracts with NRCS over the years and one of my gripes has been they have so few programs geared toward organic and organic production systems," Kroeck explained. "They don’t take into account that organic growers are stacking systems and stacking practices. We never got credit for any of those. As I understood it, it was going to be multiple practices, and you got credit for stacking a bunch of them and they didn’t necessarily have to be new practices to you."
The USDA spokesperson confirmed that the program allows funding for both primary and "facilitating" practices, citing the example of prescribed grazing, which might also necessitate funding for fencing or watering facilities. However, Kroeck’s application was ultimately rejected, and the exact number of organic farms successfully awarded RPP contracts remains unclear.
Jason Russell, who runs Big Boulder Farms in Iowa, focusing on regenerative livestock and grain production, also faced rejection after a lengthy application process. Russell sought RPP funding to implement a novel grazing system on his cropland. "It’s kind of a different way of doing things," he said. "You don’t just do permanent pasture. You take part of your cropland and run cattle on it for a year to kind of reset it." After nearly a year of planning and paperwork, his application was denied. "They said there’s no money available because they just want to concentrate on existing pastureland, not putting animals on existing cropland," Russell recounted, expressing confusion over the decision.
Operational Hurdles: The Staffing Crisis
A critical impediment to the RPP’s effectiveness, and indeed to broader conservation efforts, is the significant staffing shortages at local USDA field offices. In Minnesota, NRCS agents reported being down approximately 100 employees, forcing existing staff to work extended hours to meet RPP goals. "This was implemented in a period where NRCS staff has been pretty well eviscerated," said Jesse Womack of NSAC. "There are counties across the country that no longer have a single NRCS staffer available to producers."
Robert Bonnie, a former USDA official who oversaw NRCS under the Obama administration and worked on climate-smart practices under Biden, echoed these concerns. While acknowledging the RPP’s good intentions and the value of its practices, he emphasized, "My concern is that in order to make programs like this successful, you have to have the staff to implement them."
This shortage has several implications. There’s a risk that in the rush to disburse funds with limited personnel, NRCS agents might prioritize less complex, more common practices over advanced regenerative systems, simply to minimize paperwork and streamline the process. "They’re going to want to get farmers in and out the door," Happ suggested. "So, they’re probably going to focus on the practices they already know."
Furthermore, with payment limits within EQIP having expired in 2018, concerns have emerged that reduced staffing could lead to larger contracts being awarded to fewer, bigger farms. Womack noted, "When you have very few hands to spend that money and really big budgets, the pressure becomes to work with bigger farmers on more expensive contracts. That pretty explicitly disadvantages smaller farms." Data analyzed for Civil Eats by a former USDA budget specialist indicated a 70 percent increase in the average dollar amount across contracts, though the agency maintained it was "too premature to evaluate contract size" for 2026.
Perceived Benefits Amidst Challenges
Despite the overarching concerns, experts and farmers identified several positive aspects of the RPP, particularly when compared to typical EQIP or CSP contracts. RPP contracts are longer, with a minimum duration of five years, providing farmers more time to implement practices, observe results, and make necessary adjustments.
A key benefit universally praised is the program’s requirement for soil health testing. "That is so wildly important," Womack emphasized. "If you know that your biologically active soil is going to provide more plant nutrition for you than you otherwise would have accounted for, then we can start talking about very serious reductions in applied fertilizer, which has incredible environmental benefits. Soil health testing is possibly one of the most important emerging management tools we have to help folks become more profitable per acre with less inputs."
Additionally, the RPP mandates "whole farm planning" with NRCS agents. While Kroeck, the Maine farmer, found little distinction between this and previous conservation application processes, Bonnie noted that a skilled NRCS agent should inherently assist farmers with holistic resource concerns. The USDA spokesperson stated that the RPP "spurred discussion between operators and conservation planners on NRCS’s primary regenerative practices, that may have not happened otherwise." This focus on comprehensive planning, even if not entirely new, is seen as beneficial for integrated regenerative systems.
The Path Forward: Unmet Promises and Future Engagements
Looking ahead, the USDA has committed to hosting stakeholder roundtables with farmers and partner organizations. "These sessions will provide an opportunity to gather direct feedback on the pilot’s implementation and identify ways to refine and strengthen the program," a USDA spokesperson said. However, a significant promise remains unfulfilled: the Regenerative Advisory Council, which the agency initially stated would be launched with the RPP and is still listed on its website, has reportedly been scrapped.
The Regenerative Pilot Program, while politically significant as the first executive order-backed initiative for regenerative agriculture, stands at a crossroads. Its ability to truly advance sustainable farming practices nationwide hinges not just on its well-intended design but on sufficient funding, robust staffing, and a clear, consistent commitment to fostering genuinely transformative agricultural systems beyond mere re-labeling. As the 2026 farm bill debates intensify and USDA staffing challenges persist, the program’s future impact remains a subject of considerable debate and concern across the agricultural landscape.
