December 10, 2025 – The Trump administration will direct $700 million into a voluntary regenerative agriculture pilot program that builds on existing conservation programs, top health and agriculture officials announced Wednesday. The funds will be split between existing conservation programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This includes $300 million for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and $400 million for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
These funds will come from the fiscal year 2026 budgets for both programs. USDA also plans to leverage the SUSTAINS Act to bring corporate partners and likely funds into the effort. The SUSTAINS Act allows the USDA to accept private funding to support conservation programs. While it was passed by Congress in 2023, the USDA under the Biden administration sought public input on how exactly to leverage these private funds.
No companies appear to be tied to the plan yet. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said conservation efforts at the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) are currently “severely fragmented,” or simply address one part of conservation.
The new regenerative agriculture initiative aims to create a unified process that emphasizes whole-farm planning, she continued. This includes finding ways to address soil, water, farm vitality and more under one system. Such planning can improve soil health, an issue often raised by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Conservation groups welcomed the initiative, but raised questions about how it will be fully executed.
Whole-farm planning is already part of CSP, said Jesse Womack, policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. However, seeing the USDA adopt this philosophy more broadly into conservation is a positive step, he said.
Meanwhile, EQIP has often allowed producers to implement conservation practices individually, which is helpful for farmers taking a first step in this style of farming, he continued. “I think it’s really cool to imagine for folks experimenting with practices for the first time, that that experimenting is happening as part of a larger plan,” Womack said.
Farm Action, a nonprofit that advocates for small farms, celebrated the investment but emphasized that the administration must ensure there is adequate staffing at NRCS to allocate funds “quickly and fairly.” The service has lost at least 2,400 employees since January due to Trump administration efforts to reduce the federal workforce. In its 2026 budget request, the administration suggested eliminating NRCS technical assistance. In the final appropriations bill that funds the USDA and other agencies, Congress took a more moderate approach, but still cut nearly $100 million.
“Regenerative agriculture requires whole-farm, science-based planning, and right now the agency lacks the army of specialists needed to help farmers design and implement those plans,” Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. Starman also said regenerative agriculture efforts need to include phasing out synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. The incentives under the new initiative for Integrated Pest Management “fall short” in creating an off-ramp from these chemicals, she continued. Health Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. joined Rollins at Wednesday s announcement, calling the initiative the “fulfillment of a promise” made in the second MAHA Commission report. Kennedy has rallied against pesticides throughout his career. But so far, pesticide critics who have long backed Kennedy are questioning whether the administration is prepared to take substantial action.
During the announcement, Kennedy dismissed concerns that recent Environmental Protection Agency approvals of pesticides and PFAS chemicals are threatening a key pillar of his supporters. “We’re in discussions with Lee Zeldin at EPA and we’re very very confident of his commitment to make sure to reduce toxic exposures to the American people,” Kennedy said.
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