The owner of a small Augusta County sheep and goat farm was expecting a deposit in his account for improvements to a water system, but instead of the promised reimbursement, he got an email with some bad news.
On Feb. 4, Howard Wilson said he was told all payments associated with the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, had been paused to comply with an executive order by President Donald Trump.
Wilson told AFP that he recently spent $10,150 on a watering system that would allow him to practice rotational grazing at Mcknancy Farm in Bridgewater.
The cost-sharing program was supposed to reimburse roughly 50 percent of his costs.
On Jan. 29, he said a representative from the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, or NRCS, inspected the installation and approved it for payment. He was told the payment would be in his account in seven to 10 days.
“This was a large investment for me that I would not have made without getting assistance from NRCS,” Wilson told AFP on Friday.
He’s not holding his breath that any payment is forthcoming.
“I am left absorbing this cost with little to no hope I will ever receive the money the NRCS had contracted with me to provide.”
Staff at the USDA were told to freeze all payments to grantees for any activity carried out since the president took office and allegedly go through each recipient’s paperwork for words including “underserved communities” and “underrepresented producers” to ensure compliance with the president’s DEI executive order, according to a story in The Washington Post.
A USDA spokesperson told The Post that “there is not a blanket freeze on funds at USDA.”
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the USDA will honor contracts that were already made directly to farmers. She said the department would release $20 million in funding for contracts for the environmental quality incentive program, the conservation stewardship program and the agricultural conservation easement program.
The USDA said it would continue to review IRA funding to ensure programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers, not “DEI programs or far-left climate programs.”
“It is clear that some of this funding went to programs that had nothing to do with agriculture — that is why we are still reviewing,” said Rollins.
Multiple court rulings have challenged Trump’s excessive executive orders and resulting freezes, but even when a judge has demanded the restoration of funding, the administration has been slow to comply.
“The freezing of funds created uncertainty for farm families who had already invested in improvements to their land after receiving a financial commitment from the federal government,” said Zippy Duvall, American Farm Bureau Federation president.
Duvall said he met with Rollins late last week and conveyed concerns over the funding delays. He was thankful that the USDA agreed to release $20 million for contracts signed with farmers.
“We’re thankful the administration recognized the importance of making good on the first tranche of agreements,” Duvall said. “We look forward to future announcements about fulfilling previously signed contracts. We stand ready to work with her to address the growing list of challenges facing agriculture.”
Funding freezes aren’t the only challenges facing farmers; they are eyeing potential retaliatory tariffs that could impact them on multiple fronts.
Farms are also facing hardship as all humanitarian food assistance from the U.S. International Agency for Development has been stopped. In Virginia, 11 large-scale farms fulfilled direct orders for USAID.
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Crystal Graham
