What is in USDA’s Farmers First Policy?

This week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced her Farmers First policy proposals focusing on uplifting small family farms. The agenda features USDA’s ideas to ensure Americans can start family farms and keep them running for future generations. The agenda is organized into several topics: streamlining application processes, generating reliable access to credit, providing greater access to farmland, transitioning farms to the next generation, providing greater access to markets and infrastructure, providing affordable, reliable labor, enhancing risk management and business planning tools, revisiting the definition of “small farm,” and deregulating energy and the environment.

Overview

Among the various goals, a recurring theme is USDA’s emphasis on removing governmental “red tape,” streamlining program applications, and better publicizing USDA opportunities to small farmers. To do so, USDA will launch an internal audit to find paper-based applications than can be digitized. USDA is also considering a shared services platform to make it easier to find Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Rural Development (RD)loan programs and a disaster portal for risk management and disaster assistance programs.

What’s New?

Citing the need to ensure small farmers have access to land, USDA is disincentivizing the use of USDA funds to install solar panels on agricultural land. The U.S. Forest Service is also revisiting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to provide more flexibility for farmers, ranchers, and landowners. Earlier this year, USDA paused the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities (PCSC) initiative and plans to introduce a version of the program as the Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative. The key AMP requirement is that 65% of federal funds received through the program must directly benefit agricultural producers. Lastly, as part of the Trump Administration’s broader effort to bolster American energy independence, USDA seeks to rely on American row crops to create biofuels.

Calls to Other Entities

Most of USDA’s proposals in the Farmers First policy agenda involve coordination with state and local governments to employ locally driven solutions. Others require cross-agency collaboration or Congressional action. For example, to help families operate their farms across generations, USDA calls on Congress to amend the U.S. tax code to protect family farms from the estate tax and provide other deductions. To provide affordable, reliable labor for all farms, USDA also seeks to work with the Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security to explore solutions for H-2A and H-2B visas. Finally, the agenda mentions the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to review the definition of “Waters of the United States,” which could affect permitting costs and landowners’ conservation obligations.

Key Takeaways

Although the Farmers First agenda is presented as a bold new vision for supporting small family farms, much of document repackages existing USDA programs and policy ideas. However, USDA’s commitment to make programs more accessible and streamlined signals a positive change for farmers. For other objectives, success will largely depend on effective implementation, interagency cooperation, and Congressional action.

This article was written by Kaleigh Shaw, law clerk for Janzen Schroeder Agricultural Law LLC in 2025.