Farm Foundation has announced the recipients of its prestigious 2025 awards, recognizing outstanding individuals dedicated to addressing critical issues in food and agriculture. The honorees exemplify Farm Foundation’s work of fostering innovation, leadership, and thoughtful public policy dialogue.

The recipients of the 2025 Farm Foundation Awards are:

Innovator of the Year: Robbie Dye, CEO, and Tyler Speer, COO, co-founders of Our Farms.
Emerging Leader Award: Dr. Shandrea Stallworth, Senior Agronomist and Global Resource, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Regenerative Agriculture, Nestlé Purina North America.
RJ Hildreth Public Policy Award: Dr. Keith H. Coble, Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University.
Book of the Year: Land Rich, Cash Poor by Brian Reisinger, award-winning writer, rural policy expert, speaker, and consultant.

“We received a remarkable range of inspiring nominations this year, and these four honorees stood out for their exceptional contributions,” said Tim Brennan, vice president of programs and strategic impact at Farm Foundation. “Their dedication to tackling critical issues in food and agriculture is vital to improving our food system.”

The awards ceremony will take place during the July 2025 Farm Foundation Round Table meeting in Spokane, Washington.

2024 recipients of Farm Foundation Awards include Dr. Jayson Lusk of Oklahoma State University; Dr. Robert Fraley, former executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto Company; Dr. Yangxuan Liu of the University of Georgia; and Dr. Stephen Adejoro of the Livestock Industry Foundation for Africa.

For more information about the recipients and the Farm Foundation Awards, visit: https://www.farmfoundation.org/programs/farmfoundationawards/

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Water withdrawals for irrigating crops in Wisconsin reached their highest level ever reported in 2023 as a flash drought prompted growers to pump more water from high capacity wells, according to a state report.

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Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate would order the U.S. Department of Agriculture to resume frozen payments to farmers on contracts that have already been signed. (Photo by Gregory Conniff for the Wisconsin Examiner)

A group of U.S. Senate Democrats introduced legislation Monday that would order the agriculture department to resume paying farmers on contracts already signed.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are stiffing our farmers and processors — taking away resources these folks were guaranteed, threatening small businesses’ ability to stay open and people’s livelihoods,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), one of 17 cosponsors.

In addition to 15 Democrats, two independent senators who caucus with them, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, signed on to the bill.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stopped reimbursing farmers and farm organizations for money they’ve spent, despite contracts they have already signed with the agency. The contracts call for farmers to be reimbursed for expenses they incur under the contracts.

Honor Farmer Contracts Act, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), would require USDA “to release illegally withheld funding for all contracts and agreements previously entered into by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” Baldwin’s office said in a statement announcing the legislation.

Under President Donald Trump, “USDA has refused to make reimbursement payments to fulfill signed contracts, without any indication of when or whether farmers will be paid the money they paid out and are owed,” Baldwin’s office said.

Farmers and organizations serving them contract with the USDA for various programs to connect with local markets and improve their productivity. The department then pays farmers back for the expenses they incur under those contracts. The department’s failure to pay strains finances both for the individual farmers and for the organizations that work with them under the programs, Baldwin’s office said.

The legislation would require USDA to unfreeze all signed agreements and make all past due payments as quickly as possible. It would also bar the department from canceling agreements or contracts unless there has been a failure to comply with their terms and conditions.

The bill would prohibit the department from closing county offices, field offices or centers of the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service or the Rural Development Service without notification at least 60 days in advance and justifying the closing to Congress.

On March 7, Baldwin said the USDA had resumed another previously stalled stream of funding, $6.5 million in grants for dairy businesses to diversify and market their products.

Baldwin has also demanded the Trump administration to reverse its cancellation in March of a program connecting farmers to local food banks.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Tuesday it will release previously authorized grant funds to farmers and small rural business owners to build renewable energy projects — but only if they rewrite applications to comply with President Donald Trump’s energy priorities.

The move has left some farmers perplexed — and doubtful that they’ll ever get the grant money they were promised, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on fossil fuels and hostility toward renewable energy. 

Some of the roughly 6,000 grant applicants have already completed the solar, wind or other energy projects and are awaiting promised repayment from the government. Others say they can’t afford to take on the projects they’d been planning unless the grant money comes through.

A Floodlight analysis shows the overwhelming majority of the intended recipients of this money reside in Trump country — congressional districts represented by Republicans. 

After hearing of the USDA’s latest announcement Wednesday, Minnesota strawberry farmer Andy Petran said he suspects many previously approved projects won’t be funded. He’d been approved for a $39,625 grant to install solar panels on his farm. But like many other farmers nationally, Petran got word from the USDA earlier this year that his grant money had been put on hold.

“It’s not like any small farmer who is looking to put solar panels on their farms will be able to put a natural gas refinery or a coal refinery on the farm,” Petran said. “I don’t know what they expect me to switch to.”

Petran was counting on the benefits that solar power would bring to his farm.

After getting word in September that the USDA had approved his grant application, he expected the solar panels would not only reduce his electricity bill but allow him to sell power back to the grid. He and his wife figured the extra income would help expand their Twin Cities Berry Co. and pay down their debt more quickly.

Petran’s optimism was soon extinguished. A USDA representative told him earlier this year that the grant had been frozen.

His 15-acre farm about 40 miles north of Minneapolis operates on a razor-thin margin, Petran said, so without the grant money, he can’t afford to build the $80,000 solar project.

“Winning these grants was a contract between us and the government,” he said. “There was a level of trust there. That trust has been broken.”

In its announcement, issued Tuesday night, the USDA said grant recipients will have 30 days to review and revise their project plans to align with President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which prioritizes fossil fuel production and cuts federal support for renewable energy projects.

“This process gives rural electric providers and small businesses the opportunity to refocus their projects on expanding American energy production while eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals,” the USDA news release said. “… This updated guidance reflects a broader shift away from the Green New Deal.”

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the release that the new directive will give rural energy providers and small businesses a chance to “realign their projects” with Trump’s priorities. 

It’s unclear what this will mean for grant recipients who’ve already spent money on renewable energy projects — or those whose planned projects have been stalled by the administration’s funding freeze.

The USDA didn’t directly answer those questions. In an email to Floodlight on Wednesday, a department spokesperson said the agency must approve any proposed changes to plans — but offered no specific guidance on what or whether changes should be made.

“Awardees that do not respond via the website will be considered as not wishing to make changes to their proposals, and disbursements and other actions will resume after 30 days,” the email said. “For awardees who respond via the website to confirm no changes, processing on their projects will resume immediately.” 

IRA funding targeted

The grant funding was put on hold after an executive order issued by President Trump on his first day in office. It froze hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy under President Joe Biden’s massive climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

The law added more than $1 billion to the USDA’s 17-year-old Rural Energy for America (REAP) program.

About 6,000 REAP grants funded with IRA money have been paused and are being reviewed for compliance with Trump’s executive order, according to a March 5 email from the USDA’s rural development office to the office of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland. 

A lawsuit filed earlier this month challenges the legality of the freeze on IRA funding for REAP projects. 

Earthjustice lawyer Hana Vizcarra, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, called the latest USDA announcement a “disingenuous stunt.”

“President Trump and Secretary Rollins can’t change the rules of the game well into the second half,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “This is the definition of an arbitrary and capricious catch-22.” 

Under the REAP grant program, farmers pay for renewable and lower carbon energy projects, then submit proof of the completed work to the USDA for reimbursement. The grants were intended to fund solar panels, wind turbines, grain dryers, irrigation upgrades and other projects, USDA data shows.

At a press conference in Atlanta on March 12, Rollins said, “If our farmers and ranchers, especially, have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole.” 

But some contend the administration is unfairly making farmers jump through more hoops.

“This isn’t cutting red tape; it’s adding more,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest-based environmental advocacy group. “The USDA claims to deliver on commitments, but these new rules could result in awarded grants being permanently frozen.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a longtime farmer and Maine Democrat who sits on the House agriculture committee, said she thinks it’s illegal and unconstitutional for the administration to withhold grant money allocated by Congress. Beyond that, she said, it has hurt cash-strapped farmers.

“This is about farmers making ends meet,” she told Floodlight. “It’s not some ideological issue for us.”

GOP lawmakers silent

Using USDA data, Floodlight identified the top 10 congressional districts that received the most grants. They’re all represented by Republicans who have said little publicly about the funding freezes affecting thousands of their constituents. It’s impossible to tell from the USDA data which REAP grants will get paid out. 

The congressional district that received the most REAP grants was Iowa’s 2nd District, in the northeastern part of the state. Farmers and business owners there got more than 300 grants from 2023 through 2025. The district is represented by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has previously voiced support for “alternative energy strategies.” 

“More than half of the energy produced in Iowa is from renewable sources, and that is something for Iowans to be very proud of,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in June 2022. 

Hinson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter. 

The No. 2 spot for REAP grants: Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad. In that district, which spans southern Minnesota, more than 260 farmers and rural businesses were approved for REAP grants. 

Finstad’s office did not return multiple emails and calls requesting comment. His constituents have been complaining about his silence on funding freezes. They’ve staged at least two demonstrations at his offices in Minnesota. Finstad said he held a Feb. 26 telephone town hall joined by 3,000 people in his district.

In a Feb. 28 letter to a constituent, Finstad said Rollins has announced that the USDA will honor contracts already signed with farmers and that he looks forward to working with the administration “to support the needs of farm country.”

Finstad is no stranger to the REAP program. Before becoming a congressman, he was the USDA’s state director of rural development for Minnesota. In that role, he was a renewable booster.

“By reducing energy costs, renewable energy helps to create opportunities for improvement elsewhere, like creating jobs,” Finstad said in a 2021 USDA press release. That has since been deleted from the agency’s website.

Rollins, meanwhile, called herself “a massive defender of fossil fuels” at her confirmation hearing, and she has expressed skepticism about the findings of climate scientists. “We know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” Rollins said at the Heartland Institute’s 2018 conference on energy.

She has also said that she welcomes the efforts of Elon Musk and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency team at the USDA.

Losing trust in government

Jake Rabe, a solar installer in Blairstown, Iowa, said he has put up more than 100,000 solar modules in the state since getting into the business in 2015. More than 30 of his customers have completed their installation but are awaiting frozen grant funding, he said. At least 10 more have signed the paperwork but are hesitant to begin construction. Millions of dollars worth of business is frozen, he said. 

On top of that, Rabe said, the state’s net metering policies — in which solar users get credits for any excess power they send back to the grid — are set to expire in 2026.

“I kind of feel like it may be the beginning of the end for the solar industry in Iowa with what’s going on,” said Rabe, who owns Rabe Hardware.

Despite it all, he remains a Trump supporter. 

“Under the current administration, I think we’re doing things that are necessary for the betterment of the entire United States,” he said.

On March 13, Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA on behalf of five farmers and three nonprofits. They’re seeking a court order to compel the Trump administration to honor the government’s grant commitments, saying it violated the Constitution by refusing to disburse funds allocated by Congress. 

Vizcarra, the Earthjustice lawyer, said she is disturbed by the lack of concern from Congress, whose powers appear to have been usurped by the administration.

She added, “These are real people, real farmers and real organizations whose projects have impacts on communities who are left with this horrible situation with no idea of when it will end.”

One of the plaintiffs, Laura Beth Resnick, grows dahlias, zinnias and other cut flowers on a small farm about 30 miles north of Baltimore.

Florists are her customers, and demand for her flowers blooms during cold-weather holidays like Thanksgiving. Each of her three greenhouses is half the length of a football field, and heating them during those months isn’t cheap, Resnick said. The power bill for Butterbee Farm often exceeds $500 a month.

So a year ago, Resnick applied for a USDA renewable energy grant, hoping to put solar panels on her barn roof — a move that she estimated would save about $5,000 a year. In August, the USDA sent word that her farm had been awarded a grant for $36,450.

The cost of installing solar panels was $72,000, she said. So she paid a solar contractor $36,000 upfront, expecting that she’d pay the rest in January when the federal grant money came in. The solar panels were installed in December.

But the federal government’s check never arrived. A Feb. 4 email from a USDA representative said her request for reimbursement was rejected due to the Trump administration’s recent executive orders. 

Resnick said she sought help from her elected representatives but got “pretty much nowhere.” 

After hearing about the USDA’s announcement Wednesday, Resnick said that based on the response she’s previously gotten from the USDA, she’s not confident she will get her grant money.

“I’ve lost my trust in the USDA at this point,” she said. “Our project is complete, so we can’t change the scope of it.”

Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, said he supports the legal fight against the funding freeze. 

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are scamming our farmers,” Van Hollen said in a statement to Floodlight. “By illegally withholding these reimbursements for work done under federal grants, they’re breaking a promise to farmers and small businesses in Maryland and across the country.”

Renewable projects on hold

Since 2023, when IRA funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned about $21.3 billion through programs to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data, including the REAP program.

Those grant payments were processed until Jan. 20, when the Trump administration announced its freeze.

Trump’s decision was in line with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation aimed at reshaping the U.S. government. That document called for repealing the IRA and rescinding “all funds not already spent by these programs.”

Environmental groups have sharply criticized the administration’s move, and several lawsuits are challenging the legality of the freeze of IRA funding.

At a recent public roundtable, Maggie Bruns, CEO of the Prairie Rivers Network, which supports Illinois communities’ transition to clean energy, listed REAP grants that have been held up in Illinois, where her multifaceted environmental nonprofit is based. A $390,000 grant for a solar array at the grocery store in Carlinville; $27,000 for solar panels at an auto body shop in Staunton; $51,000 for a solar array for a golf course in Alton. 

Since 2023, farmers and businesses in Illinois have been approved for more than 590 REAP grants, making the state the third highest in number of recipients in the United States, Floodlight’s analysis shows. In an interview with Barn Raiser, Bruns said the decision to freeze such grants has caused unneeded stress for farmers. Before the executive order, USDA’s rural development team had worked hard to bring dollars for renewable energy projects to Illinois farmers, she said. 

“That’s the thing we should be celebrating right now,” Bruns said, “and instead we have to fight to make sure that money actually does land into the pockets of the people who have gone ahead, jumped through all these hoops and are attempting to do the right thing for their businesses and their farms.” 

In January, Dan Batson’s nursery in Mississippi was approved for a $400,367 REAP grant — money that he planned to use to install four solar arrays. He intended to use that solar energy to power the pumps that irrigate more than 1 million trees, a move that would have saved the company about $25,000 a year in electricity costs. 

Seated in a wooded area about 30 miles north of Biloxi, his 42-year-old GreenForest nursery ships potted magnolias, hollies, crepe myrtles and other trees to southern states. Until a couple of months ago, Batson had been excited about what the grant money would mean for the business. 

But when he saw news about the funding being held up earlier this year, he called a local USDA representative who confirmed the funds had been frozen. Batson had already sent the solar contractor $240,000. Now, his plans are on hold.

“I just can’t do the project if I don’t get the money,” he said.

Tuesday’s announcement from the USDA makes him no more confident he’ll get the money, he said.

Batson said he’s a fiscal conservative so he understands the effort to cut costs. “But,” he said, “the way they’ve gone about it has disrupted a lot of business owners’ lives.” 

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

Barn Raiser is a nonprofit newsroom covering rural and small town America.

Farmers in Trump country were counting on clean energy grants. Then the government moved the goalposts. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin lawmakers will weigh whether to allow hunting of sandhill cranes and provide aid to corn growers experiencing damage from the birds under a bill introduced this month.

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Wisconsin workers may be among the most at risk in the nation as other countries begin to impose retaliatory tariffs.

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In an email to WPR, a USDA spokesperson called the initiatives "pandemic-era" programs with "no plan for longevity," and said the department was returning to "long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives."

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Juli and Katie McGuire pack apples at Blue Roof Orchard in Belmont, Wisconsin. Blue Roof is among the producers that took part in the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, now canceled by the Trump administration. (Photo by Sharon Vanorny/Courtesy of Wisconsin Farmers Union)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has abruptly stopped a program that has helped more than 280 Wisconsin farmers move their products to local food banks around the state, to the consternation of participating farmers.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers in a press release berated the administration of President Donald Trump for “trying to walk back promises to Wisconsin’s farmers and producers” and urged the administration to restore the 2025 Local Food Purchase Assistance program.

Funding for the program was approved and signed into law “years ago,” Evers said.

Over the past two years, 289 Wisconsin farmers took part in the program, distributing $4 million worth of food products across the state, said Julie Keown-Bomar, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, and participants were looking forward to continuing for a third season.

“It’s very disturbing that the federal government would renege on a federal contract that was already approved by Congress,” Keown-Bomar said in an interview.

“It was an enormous benefit to the farmers who counted on those purchases,” Keown-Bomar said. The program helped farmers have some certainty about their income, she added, and some hired new employees to handle the added production and distribution of goods.

“It really helped strengthen the food distribution system and create local food networks that were not there before,” she said.

Along with the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, the USDA told school nutritionists on Friday it would end a companion program that connects farmers with local schools. Politico reported Monday on the cancellation of both programs.

Politico quoted a USDA spokesperson who said funding announced in October “is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.” The unnamed spokesperson said the programs “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”

Evers’ office said the loss of the two programs would cut off farmers nationwide from more than $1 billion in support and would cut “Wisconsin’s promised funding by nearly $6 million.”

“The Trump Administration must stop turning their backs on America’s Dairyland and betraying our farmers, producers, and agricultural industries by trying to gut funding Wisconsin’s farmers and producers were promised,” Evers said.

He also took the administration to task for  tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, now on hold until early April.

“With President Trump’s 25 percent tariff taxes that are going to cause prices to go up on everything from gas to groceries and his escalating trade wars that could affect our farmers’ and producers’ bottom lines, these reckless cuts to critical federal programs couldn’t come at a worse time,” Evers said.

The local food programs marked the second time in less than a month that Wisconsin politicians have pushed back on Trump administration agriculture policies.

On Feb. 26, U.S. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins demanding that the department restart suspended grants for dairy farmers under the Dairy Business Innovation initiative. The program, begun in the 2018 Farm Bill, provides aid to dairy farmers to diversify and market products as well as expand their businesses.

“The uncertainty surrounding DBI funding is incredibly alarming because it threatens the future of many dairy businesses that were promised this support to grow and remain competitive,” Baldwin wrote in her letter to Rollins. She added that the “unnecessary and ill-advised disruption could have widespread economic consequences, particularly, for small dairy operations in Wisconsin that drive our rural economies.”

The suspension put 88 Midwestern dairy businesses on hold for $6.5 million in funds that had been appropriated in 2023, Baldwin said, including 30 in Wisconsin.

On Friday, Baldwin announced that USDA had restarted the program.

Evers noted Tuesday that complaints from his office, Baldwin and dairy industry leaders had successfully reversed the suspension, and called on the Trump administration to also reverse its decisions on the food bank and school food programs.

The governor’s office also criticized Trump for having “threatened to cut thousands of jobs from USDA,” including firing about 6,000 federal employees who were subsequently reinstated.

Evers’ 2025-27 budget proposal has been relying on the local food program funding, and includes a request for $770,000 over two years in conjunction with that money. His office said Tuesday that the loss of the program heightens the importance of a $30 million initiative in his budget proposal to help Wisconsin farmers and producers distribute their products across the state, and called on the state Legislature to approve that, among other items. 

Fired U.S. Department of Agriculture workers in Wisconsin are weighing their next steps after a federal board reinstated thousands of the agency’s probationary employees on Wednesday.

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Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.

Since taking power Jan. 20, the Trump administration has quickly frozen funding and fired federal workers en masse. USDA terminations started Feb. 13, the day Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was sworn in. Rollins welcomed the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to find parts of the USDA budget to cut.

Terminated employees helped farmers build irrigation systems, battled invasive diseases that could “completely decimate” crops that form whole industries and assisted low-income seniors in rural areas in fixing leaky roofs. That work will now be significantly delayed — perhaps indefinitely — as remaining employees’ workloads grow, the employees said.

“It’s really crippling the agency,” said Bryan Mathis, a former USDA employee based in New Mexico.

Caught up in the terminations are single parents and new moms, recent hires and longtime employees, and military veterans. Some had uprooted their lives months ago to start their new career. Justin Butt, also based in New Mexico, said that without the health insurance and parental leave offered by his federal job, he and his wife may hold off on having a child.

Many of the USDA employees were on probationary status, meaning they had worked less than a year (or three years, in some instances) in the civil service. However, several had put in years working for the government and had been permanent employees at other federal departments.

The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” said Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”

The USDA did not return a request for comment. In an interview with Brownfield Ag News, Rollins said her department has done “significant reinstatements” but added new job cuts might be coming. “I do think that moving forward, it will be more intentional,” she said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents farmers and rural communities across the country, said cuts at USDA should be “strategic.” The farm bureau has supported the Trump administration.

“Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” Sam Kieffer, the farm bureau’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “USDA plays a vital role in ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, from loan officers and disaster recovery experts to food inspectors, animal disease specialists and more.

“We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars,” the statement continued, “but we urge the administration to empower the Secretary to make strategic staffing decisions, knowing the key roles USDA staff play in the nation’s food supply.”

Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email — which promised federal workers a buyout — hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee said.

As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.

The firings were haphazard. 

Many received the same email late at night on Feb. 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, Feb. 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he said. 

Another employee said his job title was listed incorrectly on the termination letter. One said they had received an award days before their termination. Several employees said their supervisors had no idea they were fired.

Mathis, who worked for the Forest Service, received a phone call on Monday, Feb. 17, a federal holiday, from a higher-up, who told him he was fired, he said. His direct supervisor was instructed to terminate him but refused. 

“It kind of went up the chain,” he said.

Doug Berry, who worked for the USDA’s Rural Development agency in Texas, said, when he attempted to get a copy of his performance review, it was “mysteriously blank.” He then asked his supervisor to write him a recommendation but was rebuffed. The supervisor mentioned an interview Berry gave to USA TODAY, in which he said his agency “helps the towns that voted for Trump every day.”

“I don’t know who’s watching what, but as soon as they saw my comments, any good will evaporated,” he said.

Another former USDA employee, who requested anonymity to protect job prospects, said the terminations will result in a leadership void. The job cuts affected training intended to give the new generation of leaders a holistic view of the agency.

“It’s just going to create a lot of chaos,” the employee said.

DOGE claims cuts are for efficiency

DOGE’s stated goal is to improve efficiency across the government, but former employees said they were already working on improving government service efficiencies.

When one former employee joined the department six months ago, they faced a five-year backlog. They had worked through three years when they were terminated, said the employee, who is based in a Western state and requested anonymity to protect future job prospects. Now, other workers will “have to pick up the slack,” meaning delays for projects that farmers and ranchers want done.

Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she said. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”

Gaspar, based in Florida, said she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she said. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”

Rural development workers axed

One of the USDA’s many responsibilities is providing financial assistance to rural, low-income communities. For example, a small town in central West Virginia requested USDA’s help to find funding for a new police cruiser. 

Rural Development was also coordinating a plan to help impoverished families access transportation to medical care, said Carrie Decker, a single mom of four children who worked in the West Virginia office. “You have three generations sharing one vehicle, and people have to work and get to school, so finding time to go to a dentist appointment is not high on the priority list,” she said. The project now lacks USDA support, which could delay it.

After the Trump administration took over, she and her coworkers were instructed not to perform community outreach, which was “90% of what we do,” Decker said. Decker worries the lack of investment in rural areas — which Trump largely won in his reelection bid — will have long-lasting consequences.

“We’re going to see less funding into these critical access places that really, really need to have it and have needed it for decades,” she said. “I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.”

Two primary goals of rural development are to provide affordable housing and to help maintain low-income seniors’ homes.

One former USDA employee in the South, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, said they were hired to help expedite environmental compliance reviews, which were required before any funding was disbursed. Before they started, the employee said, another employee performed these duties on top of a full-time job.

The situation delayed help to seniors, the employee said. “Their roof is being covered up by a tarp because it’s been blown off by a storm, and they can’t get their grant money to get their roof fixed until compliance reviews are done,” they said. Former coworkers would “basically hound the guy to get it done. It wasn’t efficient.”

Risks of possible crop disease outbreaks

The USDA also invests heavily in preventing diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply. 

But the department fired employees working to address the bird flu that’s contributing to skyrocketing egg prices, according to NBC News. The USDA said it was trying to rehire them.

Matthew Moscou worked at a lab in Minnesota, where he helped monitor diseases that could wipe out wheat production in the U.S., he said. He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now, he said. 

“They’ve destroyed the institution,” he said.

Without labs like this, crop diseases, such as wheat-killing stem rust, could flourish, he said. 

“Either we’re going to have to rethink how we’re doing this whole thing, or we’re going to have a significant collapse in the long run,” Moscou said. “This current push has really cut us off at the knees.”

Since Investigate Midwest interviewed Moscou, he has been reinstated, at least temporarily, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Mass terminations have cut USDA ‘off at the knees,’ ex-employees say is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

William Rutter, USDA plant pathologist and nematologist, examines sprouting plants for research on managing Meloidogyne enterolobii and other root-knot nematodes. This photo was taken at the U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina, on Jan. 28, 2021. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA.)

Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.

Since taking power Jan. 20, the Trump administration has quickly frozen funding and fired federal workers en masse. USDA terminations started Feb. 13, the day Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was sworn in. Rollins welcomed the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to find parts of the USDA budget to cut.

Terminated employees helped farmers build irrigation systems, battled invasive diseases that could “completely decimate” crops that form whole industries and assisted low-income seniors in rural areas in fixing leaky roofs. That work will now be significantly delayed — perhaps indefinitely — as remaining employees’ workloads grow, the employees said.

“It’s really crippling the agency,” said Bryan Mathis, a former USDA employee based in New Mexico.

Caught up in the terminations are single parents and new moms, recent hires and longtime employees, and military veterans. Some had uprooted their lives months ago to start their new career. Justin Butt, also based in New Mexico, said that without the health insurance and parental leave offered by his federal job, he and his wife may hold off on having a child.

Many of the USDA employees were on probationary status, meaning they had worked less than a year (or three years, in some instances) in the civil service. However, several had put in years working for the government and had been permanent employees at other federal departments.

The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” said Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”

The USDA did not return a request for comment. In an interview with Brownfield Ag News on Tuesday, Rollins said her department has done “significant reinstatements” but added new job cuts might be coming. “I do think that moving forward, it will be more intentional,” she said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents farmers and rural communities across the country, said cuts at USDA should be “strategic.” The farm bureau has supported the Trump administration.

“Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” Sam Kieffer, the farm bureau’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “USDA plays a vital role in ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, from loan officers and disaster recovery experts to food inspectors, animal disease specialists and more.

“We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars,” the statement continued, “but we urge the administration to empower the Secretary to make strategic staffing decisions, knowing the key roles USDA staff play in the nation’s food supply.”

Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email — which promised federal workers a buyout — hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee said.

As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.

The firings were haphazard.

Many received the same email late at night on Feb. 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, Feb. 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he said.

Another employee said his job title was listed incorrectly on the termination letter. One said they had received an award days before their termination. Several employees said their supervisors had no idea they were fired.

Mathis, who worked for the Forest Service, received a phone call on Monday, Feb. 17, a federal holiday, from a higher-up, who told him he was fired, he said. His direct supervisor was instructed to terminate him but refused.

“It kind of went up the chain,” he said.

Doug Berry, who worked for the USDA’s Rural Development agency in Texas, said, when he attempted to get a copy of his performance review last week, it was “mysteriously blank.” He then asked his supervisor to write him a recommendation but was rebuffed. The supervisor mentioned an interview Berry gave to USA TODAY, in which he said his agency “helps the towns that voted for Trump every day.”

“I don’t know who’s watching what, but as soon as they saw my comments, any good will evaporated,” he said.

Another former USDA employee, who requested anonymity to protect job prospects, said the terminations will result in a leadership void. The job cuts affected training intended to give the new generation of leaders a holistic view of the agency.

“It’s just going to create a lot of chaos,” the employee said.

DOGE claims cuts are for efficiency

DOGE’s stated goal is to improve efficiency across the government, but former employees said they were already working on improving government service efficiencies.

When one former employee joined the department six months ago, they faced a five-year backlog. They had worked through three years when they were terminated, said the employee, who is based in a Western state and requested anonymity to protect future job prospects. Now, other workers will “have to pick up the slack,” meaning delays for projects that farmers and ranchers want done.

Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she said. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”

Gaspar, based in Florida, said she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she said. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”

Rural development workers axed

One of the USDA’s many responsibilities is providing financial assistance to rural, low-income communities. For example, a small town in central West Virginia requested USDA’s help to find funding for a new police cruiser.

Rural Development was also coordinating a plan to help impoverished families access transportation to medical care, said Carrie Decker, a single mom of four children who worked in the West Virginia office. “You have three generations sharing one vehicle, and people have to work and get to school, so finding time to go to a dentist appointment is not high on the priority list,” she said. The project now lacks USDA support, which could delay it.

After the Trump administration took over, she and her coworkers were instructed not to perform community outreach, which was “90% of what we do,” Decker said. Decker worries the lack of investment in rural areas — which Trump largely won in his reelection bid — will have long-lasting consequences.

“We’re going to see less funding into these critical access places that really, really need to have it and have needed it for decades,” she said. “I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.”

Two primary goals of rural development are to provide affordable housing or to help maintain low-income seniors’ homes.

One former USDA employee in the South, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, said they were hired to help expedite environmental compliance reviews, which were required before any funding was dispersed. Before they started, the employee said, another employee performed these duties on top of a full-time job.

The situation delayed help to seniors, the employee said. “Their roof is being covered up by a tarp because it’s been blown off by a storm, and they can’t get their grant money to get their roof fixed until compliance reviews are done,” they said. Former coworkers would “basically hound the guy to get it done. It wasn’t efficient.”

Risks of possible crop disease outbreaks

The USDA also invests heavily in preventing diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply.

But the department fired employees working to address the bird flu that’s contributing to skyrocketing egg prices, according to NBC News. The USDA said it was trying to rehire them.

Matthew Moscou worked at a lab in Minnesota, where he helped monitor diseases that could wipe out wheat production in the U.S., he said. He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now, he said.

“They’ve destroyed the institution,” he said.

Without labs like this, crop diseases, such as wheat-killing stem rust, could flourish, he said.

“Either we’re going to have to rethink how we’re doing this whole thing, or we’re going to have a significant collapse in the long run,” Moscou said. “This current push has really cut us off at the knees.”

Editor’s note: Since Investigate Midwest interviewed Moscou, he has been reinstated, at least temporarily, according to his LinkedIn profile.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

An effort to give farmers the "right to repair" their own tractors and other equipment has taken off in Wisconsin in recent weeks.

The post Wisconsin lawmakers, attorney general, push for ‘right to repair’ farm equipment appeared first on WPR.

Two early-career scientists from Wisconsin were terminated from the Midwest Climate Hub as part of the Trump administration's massive cuts to the federal workforce, leaving them — and their research — in the lurch.

The post These workers helped Wisconsin farmers navigate changing weather. DOGE fired them. appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Friday afternoon that some of its programs funding renewable energy projects are “operating as normal,” but left open the question of whether billions more in loans and grants promised to farmers, small rural businesses and electric cooperatives would be honored. 

The day before, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had said the department would continue to review spending under the Biden administration’s sweeping climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, “to ensure that programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers” and not “far-left climate programs.”

Among those waiting for clarity are Travis and Amy Forgues of western Wisconsin. About two years ago, the couple bought the Hidden Springs Creamery, an 80-acre sheep dairy nestled in the hills of Westby, Wisconsin. Twice a day they milk 300 sheep to make cheese, including a creamy feta that last year won second place in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition.

As part of their effort to modernize the farm, the Forgueses decided to install a solar array to power their operation. To offset the $134,000 cost of installation, they applied for a $56,000 Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Last year, they got approved for the grant and built the solar array, never doubting that the USDA would pay once the project was completed, as outlined in the contract they signed with the feds. 

But last week, the Forgueses said they received an email from the USDA saying the program had been paused, leaving them scrambling to figure out how to pay for the rest of their new solar array.

“You can’t have people spend this kind of money and then just pull the rug from (them),” said Travis Forgues. “I didn’t spend the money thinking maybe I’ll get it back. I spent the money because we had a signed contract.”

The pause was the result of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on his first day in office freezing hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy — including REAP.

At least 7,500 farms and rural businesses across the country have received REAP grants from the USDA since 2023, according to a Floodlight analysis of USDA grant data.

On Friday, a USDA spokesperson said some funding for REAP would operate as normal, but only if it came through the Farm Bill. That apparently won’t help the Forgueses or potentially thousands of other farmers like them who had more than 25% of their project paid for by the USDA. That’s the cutoff point where funding from the Farm Bill stopped and funding from the Inflation Reduction Act started.

Since 2023, when Inflation Reduction Act funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned approximately $21.3 billion through programs that could be used to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data.

The legality of the continued freeze in federal funding remains unclear.

On Friday, a federal judge in Rhode Island kept in place a temporary restraining order from Jan. 31 that ordered the Trump administration to stop withholding federal funds appropriated by Congress. Attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, led by New York, argued that the broad funding freeze violated the separation of powers and several other laws.

The lone attorney representing the Trump administration argued that the agencies were exercising their lawful discretion.

Rural electric companies also hit

Some programs, like REAP, go directly to farmers looking to place solar panels or wind turbines on their land. Others, like the New Era program, help rural electric cooperatives build renewable energy to lower members’ monthly bills. New Era was not among the programs cited by the USDA spokesperson as operating as normal.

The Yampa Valley Electric Association, which serves Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming, expected to get $50 million from the USDA’s New Era program, according to Carly Davidson, the co-op’s public relations specialist. 

New Era is the USDA program dedicated solely to renewables that has allocated the most money, more than $4.3 billion in grants since 2023, according to a Floodlight analysis. 

The Yampa Valley association was planning to use the money to purchase renewable energy to keep electricity costs low for its members, Davidson wrote in a statement. The project is still in the planning stages, but it would provide both solar generation and battery storage, according to Yampa Valley Electric. 

Connexus Energy, Minnesota’s largest consumer-owned electric cooperative, was hoping to use its $170 million in New Era grants to build out its renewable generation portfolio, spokesperson Stacy Downs said. The co-op, which serves over 146,000 customers, still hopes the funds will come through so it can add solar, wind and hydropower, as well as battery storage, Downs said, adding, “We’re still hoping to be receiving them.”

Electric infrastructure program intact

The largest USDA energy program, the Electric Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee Program, offers money to rural co-ops, which use it to expand or upgrade their power grids with new transmission lines and smart-grid technology. That program, which allows for the connection of more renewables, has loaned out $12 billion since 2023. 

On Friday, a USDA spokesperson stated that the program was operating as normal, along with four other USDA programs that could potentially be used to reduce carbon emissions: Rural Energy Savings Program, REAP Program with funding appropriated through the Farm Bill, Guaranteed Underwriter Program, and High Energy Cost Grants.

“These freezes seem to be intentionally chaotic and unclear,” said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, executive director of Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a nonprofit that helps farmers adopt sustainable practices and that also receives money from the USDA.

“We are fielding calls every day from farmers who are mid-project, and their contractor wants to know when they’re going to be paid.”

Rural businesses, farmers still waiting 

Patrick Hagar, co-owner of Squashington Farm near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, is feeling that uncertainty. Hagar and his wife purchased a 20-acre farm three years ago in southern Wisconsin, where they grow organic produce.

Last fall, they put money down to purchase a solar array that will end up costing them $50,000, he said. They were promised $15,000 back from the USDA through a REAP grant.

“The vast majority of the fossil fuel energy and carbon outputs are being put forth by a small (group) of really wealthy businesses,” Hagar said. “I don’t think that absolves small farms and small businesses from trying to do what they can.” 

But, he added, “It’s frustrating to have a signed contract for something, and feel like, you know, you live in a country where a signed contract doesn’t mean what a signed contract has always meant.”

And it’s not just farmers affected by the freeze. Small rural business owners who qualify for various USDA renewable grants and loans are also waiting to see what happens with USDA’s review of funding — money the agency has already agreed to pay.

Atul Patel, owner of the Holiday Inn in Frackville, Pennsylvania, planned to install a solar system on his hotel costing just over $360,000.

“We would like to be energy independent,” Patel said. “In this area, the lights flicker a lot.”

Patel said he put 20% down on the project and was planning to finish the installation once the weather improved in the spring. 

He added, “Our fingers are crossed.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

‘Chaotic’ USDA funding freeze stalls rural renewable projects is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has approved a proposal to expand a Pierce County dairy factory farm, but critics have objected. Shown is a Wisconsin dairy CAFO, photographed in 2013. (Wisconsin DNR photo)

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approved a permit allowing a Pierce County factory farm to expand from 1,700 cows to 6,500 despite heavy local opposition. 

On Friday, the DNR granted the Ridge Breeze Dairy approval for its permit under the Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES), which regulates the manure and associated nutrient runoff created by the farm. The dairy had previously been forced to re-submit its permit request after it was discovered the owners had listed properties as locations where manure would be spread without ever contacting those property owners. 

In its approval, the DNR said it had assessed the dairy’s nutrient management plan and found that all the properties listed were able to handle the spreading of manure created by the expanded farm. 

“The department reevaluated the nutrient management plan and field restriction maps based on comments received during the 30-day comment period and public hearing,” the DNR’s final determination states. “The department also required additional documentation to demonstrate Ridge Breeze Dairy’s ability to apply manure and process wastewater to fields in their nutrient management plan not under common ownership with Ridge Breeze Dairy. As a result, some fields were removed from the plan. Needed corrections were made by Ridge Breeze Dairy and included in the updated nutrient management plan.”

Opponents of the expansion say, however, that the dairy has still not gotten agreements from every property owner listed in the permit. 

“Promises that the DNR would require Ridge Breeze to submit signed agreements with landowners have been broken,” a news release from Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW) states. “Instead, the DNR is only requiring signed affidavits from operators who rent land from landowners. These affidavits claim that landowners agree to receive manure from Ridge Breeze Dairy. However, landowners have come forward to state that they have no such agreement with Ridge Breeze despite being listed on signed affidavits.”

With the permit approval, Ridge Breeze Dairy will now become the largest factory farm operating in the seven county region of Barron, Buffalo, Dunn, Pepin, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties.

Ridge Breeze is operated by the Breeze Dairy Group, which runs a number of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) across the state. The group has six factory farms totalling more than 10,000 cows around Wisconsin. The company has a history of manure spills at several of its properties. At the Pine Breeze in Waushara County, DNR records show nine manure spills in the last 11 years, totalling 150,000 gallons of spilled manure. 

Last year, Breeze Dairy Group purchased the Emerald Sky Dairy in the town of Emerald in St. Croix County shortly after the previous owners were granted permission to expand the operation from 1,600 to 3,300 cows. That operation has a history of harmful manure spills causing long-term damage to water and fish kills.

Last summer, hundreds of residents attended a hearing to testify against Ridge Breeze’s expansion. During the three-hour hearing, no one spoke  in favor of the expansion. The DNR’s determination opens a 60-day window in which the decision may be contested in court. Opponents said they would explore the possibility. 

“Massive livestock operations like these tear up roads, contaminate water and shut down small farms across the state, but this is just a bad permit for a rogue corporation,” Danny Akenson, a community organizer with GROWW said. “They operated a concrete factory without county permits, ignored DNR orders and have stated they won’t comply with local ordinances. We will be taking the next 60 days to explore contesting the DNR’s deeply flawed determination.”

Fights over the construction or expansion of factory farms have popped up across western Wisconsin. A number of communities in the area have passed ordinances that give local government the authority to require a permit that addresses a factory farm’s effect on local water, roads and environment. Judy Krohn, who worked on the committee that established a CAFO ordinance in Maiden Rock, said in a statement that the DNR’s Ridge Breeze decision shows the importance of local control. 

“Our fact-based ordinance provides rules and regulations to address citizens’ concerns, and is applicable to any factory farm using town roads and farmlands for manure hauling and disposal,” Krohn said. “At capacity, Ridge Breeze Dairy will generate more than 80 million gallons of manure every year that will have to go somewhere. It is urgent that towns in Pierce, Pepin and St, Croix Counties develop similar ordinances to protect the water, roads, health, safety and property values of their residents.”

Mercedes Falk, executive director of the nonprofit Puentes/Bridges, which takes Midwestern dairy farmers to Mexico to meet their workers' families, talks with Teresa Juarez Tepole in her home | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

VERACRUZ, MEXICO — John Rosenow climbed into a pickup truck in Zongolica, a small city in rural southern Mexico, squeezing into the front with several friends and relatives from Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the back of the truck, six more people crowded onto benches, holding onto each other as the truck bounced over rutted dirt roads, climbing into the clouds as it traveled among little mountain villages in the state of Veracruz. The truck slowed down for a girl herding goats across the road and passed tiny wooden houses perched on the steep mountainside, with chickens in the yard and a few cows tied up by their horns.

“This never gets old,” said Rosenow, a 75-year-old dairy farmer from Waumandee, Wisconsin, who has made the same trip every winter since 2001, often joined by other dairy farmers who come to visit the families of their Mexican workers. He warned the group he might cry when he met up with some of his former employees. One current employee he’s particularly close to, Roberto, was contemplating moving home in December, but decided against it. “Man, that was the best Christmas present,” he said.

Along the way, the group saw wooden shacks with no indoor plumbing, dirt floors and tin roofs sitting next to big brick houses with shiny tile floors — the bigger houses built with money sent home by Mexican workers laboring in the U.S.

Economic interdependence and decades-long relationships have long bound dairy farmers in Wisconsin and nearby Minnesota to Mexican workers and their families. 

Of Rosenow’s 18 employees, 13 are from Mexico. That’s not unusual. Latin American workers, most of them from Mexico, perform an estimated 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms. The money they send home has lifted many of their families out of poverty. And without them, dairies like Rosenow’s would go belly-up. Yet almost all of the immigrant workers who milk cows in the U.S. lack legal status. That’s because, while the U.S. government provides visas for migrant workers who pick seasonal crops and for immigrants with specialized technical skills, there is no U.S. visa program for low-skilled labor in year-round industries like dairy.

In San Juan Texhuacán, about an hour up the mountain from Zongolica, Rosenow and the group visited Fatima Tepole, 42, who milked cows on a farm in Minnesota for four years, from 2012 to 2016, saving enough money to build a house next door to her parents and siblings and to start her business, a little school supply store. 

“Here the average worker can make 300 pesos a day,” (about $15) she said. “There you can make that much in an hour.” (Her estimate is close to what Mexican government data shows: Mexico’s average monthly salary is the equivalent of $297 U.S. dollars, or about $15 per day for a five-day workweek. Subsistence farmers in rural Veracruz generally make less and work longer hours.)

The visitors from the U.S. gathered in Tepole’s parents’ kitchen to learn how to make tortillas on a wood-burning stove. Then Tepole and her family served them a feast – meat stewed in green chili sauce with fresh tortillas and cheese and bean tostadas. Tepole had hosted many other Bridges groups over the years, including the farmer she worked for in Minnesota. “You’re the first Americans deported by Donald Trump!” she joked. 

Building a house — ‘our biggest dream’

Tepole’s sister-in-law, Celeste Tzanahua Hernández, 31, stood near the stove while the group ate. “We thank you for visiting us,” she said. “It’s good that other people know that we’re not all bad people — that people know and can value the work and sacrifices we are making.”

Tzanahua Hernández’s husband, who previously milked cows and now works at a sawmill, has been away from his two children, ages 5 and 12, for the last three and a half years while working in the U.S., she said. They expect him to return in a few months.

Waiting for him has been “a heavy emotional burden,” she said. But with the money he sends home, supplemented with her earnings as a preschool teacher, they’ve been able to build a home — a spacious, open-plan living area and modern kitchen attached to the compound where the extended family lives — buy a used car and afford school tuition, music lessons, tae kwon do, dental work and doctor’s appointments for the children.

When he comes home, her husband is planning to buy some equipment and set himself up in business as a builder.

Lately the family has been worried about Trump’s deportation threats.

“My husband saw ICE at a restaurant. It scared him a lot. That would not be the best way to have to come home,” Tzanahua Hernández said. “He has a car there. He wants to sell it. My dad is worried about what will happen if he goes to jail, or if he has to leave with no money — and how they treat immigrants on the border.”

The family has urged him to send home his valuables: “If he has some good shoes, good things, start sending them home so he doesn’t lose them,” Tzanahua Hernández said.

“He comforts us by saying that the situation is not so dangerous,” she added. “But we see the news reports — the young men who had recently arrived and now have been deported. … He says he feels better knowing that now our house is built, which was our biggest dream.”

Tepole and other Mexican workers estimated that it costs $25,000 to $35,000 to build a small house — the goal of many who are sending home money from jobs in the U.S. The strength of the dollar means the money people earn in the U.S. goes much farther in Mexico.

“For the first year you work there, you pay off your debt to cross the border,” Tepole said. Border crossings can cost between  $11,000 and $15,000, workers told the Examiner. “If you work really hard you can do that in seven or eight months,” Tepole said. “After another year, you have enough to start building. But you are also covering expenses for your family. So it depends on those expenses how far you get. After that, in two or three more years you can finish your house if you give it your all.”

“Young people can do it faster,” she added. “It takes more time if you are paying expenses for your kids.”

Money sent home to Mexico by workers in the U.S. is the country’s largest single source of foreign income — more than Mexico brings in from tourism, exports of manufactured products or petroleum sales. In 2023 Mexico received $63.3 billion in remittances from its citizens who labor in the U.S. — about 4.5% of total GDP — according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mexico ranks second only to India for the size of the contribution made by people working abroad to their home country’s economy. And the amount of money sent home by Mexican workers in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years, by roughly 32% between 2019 and 2023, according to the same report. Beyond covering families’ basic expenses, remittances drive economic development, “providing households with the means to save money and make investments in education, upskilling, and community improvement,” the report found.

On the U.S. side, undocumented workers pay about $97 billion in total taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. About $26 billion of that goes to fund Social Security and $6 billion for Medicare — programs from which those workers are excluded. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking immigrants are taking money out of the pot,” says David Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative in New York. His group has done a lot of research over the years “to show how immigration is a big contributor to the overall economic success of this country,” Kallick adds. “But the economic damage done by tearing people away from their jobs is even bigger.” 

“You’re talking about 19% of the labor force and $4.6 trillion in economic output,” Kallick says of immigrant workers’ overall contribution to the U.S. economy. Deporting the estimated 11 million workers in the U.S. without legal status would have devastating ripple effects from the loss of farms, restaurants, construction projects, home health care and child care, he says. “We have a broken immigration system that has made it possible for people to become very much part of the economy across the board, and yet to be trapped in the lowest wage jobs in every sector.” 

“The reality,” he adds, “is there are not enough U.S.-born people to take the place of millions of people doing these jobs who are undocumented.”

One unintended consequence of the militarization of the U.S./Mexico border is that workers without authorization who would otherwise go home to Mexico have stayed in the U.S. for longer stints in recent years, knowing that once they go home they might never be able to cross the border again to come back.

‘When they go, it’s sad’

Up the hill from Fatima Tepole’s house, her friend Teresa Juarez Tepole, age 48, has four adult children between the ages of 26 and 33 who are working in the U.S, while she takes care of their children. Mercedes Falk, a translator on about 20 dairy farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the director of the nonprofit group Puentes/Bridges, which organized the trip to Mexico, told Teresa that the farmer one of her sons works for in Minnesota is “an incredible person,” who wants to give her son special training so he can advance in his job. Teresa was glad to hear it. “He has confidence in my son,” she said, smiling.

When her children were very small their father died, Teresa said, and she barely scratched out a living by taking in washing and making tortillas. Sometimes the family was hungry.

She couldn’t afford to send the children to school beyond the early grades. From the time they were little, they helped with the washing and making tortillas. Her oldest son started working in a bakery as a teenager. “They’d give him four or five loaves of bread and he would bring them home, because I couldn’t afford to buy bread,” she said.

Now they’ve all gone to the U.S. “to see their kids grow up, to give them an education, too, because here there’s no money.”

Her granddaughter is in secondary school. “I can’t read or write well, but I tell my granddaughter she has to study hard because her mother is suffering so she can study,” she said. 

Teresa’s 30-year-old daughter has been in the U.S. for the last three and a half years. She picked fruit for the first year and a half and for the last two years has been milking cows on a dairy farm in Minnesota.

“When they go, it’s sad,” Teresa said. “You don’t know how long it will take them, when they’ll arrive, how they’ll be treated … I cried a lot.”

Even though she is proud of her children, she misses them, she said. “When they were growing up, at dinner time we always sat down together.”

And now, on top of the loneliness, there is more worry, she said. “With the president there, I start thinking of my kids and, my God, there they are and what if he throws them out? What if they’re mistreated? … There’s nothing to do but put ourselves in God’s hands, may he protect us.”

Hoping there aren’t mass deportations

At each stop on the Puentes/Bridges trip, people asked about Trump’s planned deportations.

Rosenow told several families that Brooke Rollins, Trump’s agriculture secretary, has said that deportations won’t hurt dairy farms. Rollins testified during her confirmation hearings that she supported Trump’s plan for mass deportations but that she would work with the administration to “make sure none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business.”

“I’m counting on that,” Rosenow said. During the trip, his wife called with another worry: Trump’s tariffs were reportedly about to wreak havoc with exports of butter to Canada and drive up the price of the peat moss they import to make the compost they sell on their farm.

At a stop outside the little town of Astacinga, the conversation again turned to deportation. Rosenow stopped to visit the family of his favorite employee, Roberto, 45, and Kevin, Roberto’s 21-year-old son, who came North a few years ago to work with his dad on the farm. 

In the kitchen, Rosenow told Roberto’s mother, Concepciona Acahua Macoixtle, 62, , with Falk translating, “Roberto is my best friend. He gets along with anybody. And he has become a better golfer than me.” The two men golf together every week during the season, and Roberto has become something of a local celebrity on the golf course in Buffalo County.

Rosenow got out his phone to show a picture of Roberto playing golf.

Roberto’s wife, Veronica, asked how her son Kevin was behaving. Assured by Rosenow that he was “a delight,” she then turned to her other worry. “Is there a lot of immigration enforcement up there?” she asked.

“There are a lot of rumors, but I have a lot of confidence in the secretary of agriculture,” Rosenow said, once again explaining that he’s relying on Rollins’ assurance that farms won’t go out of business because of immigration enforcement. 

“If not, tell my husband to come home,” Veronica said. “Or his boss should get him a visa.”

“I’d do it in a moment,” Rosenow said, as Falk translated.

Falk explained that six-month visas are for seasonal work and dairy farmers can’t apply for them for their workers. Roberto’s mother nodded. “You have to work every day.”

“Some people are getting grabbed by immigration,” she said. Restaurant workers from nearby Astacinga were deported to tent cities in the north of Mexico, she said, adding, “that’s why we’re worried about our children.”

Veronica’s son Aaron, 15, wanted to go up North, too, but Kevin calls and lectures him about staying in school, his mother told the group. Now he’s going to high school in Astacinga and will graduate in a couple of years, Veronica said. 

Concepciona’s grandchildren have vastly different lives from her own life growing up, or that of her children. Her mother died when she was 4 and she never went to school. Instead she tended the family’s sheep when she was young and met her husband at 18, when both were working in the fields cutting sugar cane.

When they were raising their children, Concepciona said, “We all lived together in one kitchen room. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food. They didn’t have shoes sometimes. They didn’t always have tortillas.”

As a teenager, Roberto went to work and took care of his little siblings, sending home money from jobs in Mexico City and later Kentucky, so they would have enough to eat. He first went to the U.S. when he was 16, but returned several times — the last time was when Meagan, 10, was born. He hasn’t been home since she was 3 months old.

“I told him to come home, but he doesn’t,” Concepciona said. “It’s not that he doesn’t want to. The problem is here there’s no money. There, he can earn money to help with his kids’ education. Ten years he’s been there.” She began to cry. 

“My mother- in-law has lost all five of her sons. They’re all up there,” said Veronica. 

During the years Roberto has spent in the U.S., he has built a home for his parents, and Veronica has overseen the excavation and building of their own two-story home with a carport, which looks like it was transplanted to the mountainside from a U.S. suburb. Brick pillars frame a heavy metal gate, behind which a manicured grass lawn is surrounded by a low rock wall and a garden full of fruit trees, palms and rose bushes. 

Veronica and Roberto also purchased more land nearby, where they keep a flock of sheep. With some of his earnings Roberto has helped his nieces go to college. One is finishing up studying to be a teacher and lives with Veronica, she said.

Meagan, a fifth grader, has always gotten good grades, Veronica said proudly. Meagan gave the U.S. visitors an impromptu performance of the Mexican national anthem in Nahuatl — she’d been practicing for a competition at her bilingual Spanish/Nahuatl school.

As the Puentes group got ready to leave, Concepciona said, “Tell my boys to take care. Ask when they are coming. They always say August, December. Then the next December comes and they don’t arrive.”

“The problem is the risk if they don’t have papers,” said Veronica, “so they can’t come back.”

This article is Part One in a series. In Part Two, the U.S.-born son of a deceased Mexican dairy worker meets his extended family in Mexico for the first time. 

An Eau Claire County farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Seven western Wisconsin Republican lawmakers did not appear at an event hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Chippewa Falls Friday as farmers from the area said they were concerned about the effect that President Donald Trump’s first month in office is having on their livelihoods. 

Madison-area U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth), state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) and state Reps. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) were in attendance. 

U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden, state Reps. Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Treig Pronschinske (R-Mondovi) and Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and state Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) were all invited but did not attend or send a staff member. 

“All four of us want you to know that there are people in elected office who want to fight for you,” Phelps said. “Because I think there’s a lot of fear that comes from the fact that we’re seeing a lot of noise and action from the people who aren’t and some of the people that didn’t show up to this. So I hope that you will also ask questions of them when you get a chance.” 

Multiple times during the town hall, Pocan joked that Van Orden was “on vacation.” 

Emerson, whose district was recently redrawn to include many of the rural areas east of Eau Claire, told the Wisconsin Examiner she had just been at an event held by the Chippewa County Economic Development Corporation where a Van Orden staff member did attend, so she didn’t understand why they couldn’t hear about how Trump’s policies are harming local farmers. 

“I get that a member of Congress can’t be at every meeting all the time, all throughout their district,” Emerson said. With 19 counties in the 3rd District, “it’s a big area. But I hope that they’re hearing the stories of farmers and farm-adjacent businesses, even if they weren’t here. There’s something different to sit in this room and look out at all the farmers, and when one person’s talking, seeing the tears in everybody else’s eyes, and it wasn’t just the female farmers that were crying, the big tough guys, and I think that talks about how vulnerable they are right now, how scary it is for some of these folks.”

Carolyn Kaiser, a resident of the nearby town of Wheaton, said she’s never seen her congressional representative, Van Orden, out in the community. Despite Van Orden’s position on the House agriculture committee, Kaiser said her town needs help managing nitrates in the local water supply and financial support to rebuild crumbling rural roads that make it more difficult for farmers to transport their products.

“When people don’t come, it’s unfortunate,” Kaiser said. 

Emmet Fisher, who runs a small dairy farm in Hager City, said during the town hall that he was struggling with the freeze that’s been put on federal spending, which affected grants he was set to receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Fisher told the Examiner his farm has participated in a USDA program to encourage better conservation practices on farms and that money has been frozen. He was also set to receive a rural energy assistance grant that would help him install solar panels on the farm — money that has also been held up.

The result, he said, is that he’s facing increased uncertainty in an already uncertain business.

“We get all our income from our farm, young family, young kids, a mortgage on the farm, and so, you know, things are kind of tight, and so we try to take advantage of anything that we can,” he said. “[The] uncertainty seems really unnecessary and unfortunate, and it’s very stressful. You know, basically, we have no idea what we should be planning for. The reality is just that in farming already, you can only plan for so much when the weather and ecology and biology matter so much, and now to have all of these other unknowns, it makes planning pretty much impossible.”

A number of crop farmers at the event said the looming threat of Trump imposing tariffs on Canadian imports is alarming because a large majority of potash — a nutrient mix used to fertilize crops — used in the United States comes from Canada. Les Danielson, a cash crop and dairy farmer in Cadott, said the tariffs are set to go into effect during planting season.

“How do you offer a price to a farmer? Is it gonna be $400 a ton, or is it gonna be $500 a ton?” he asked. “I’m not even thinking about the fall. I’m just thinking about the spring and the uncertainty. This isn’t cuts to the federal budget, this is just plain chaos and uncertainty that really benefits no one. And I know it’s kind of cool to think we’re just playing this big game of chicken. Everybody’s gonna blink. But when you’re a co-op, or when you’re a farmer trying to figure out how much you can buy, it’s not fine.”

A recent report by the University of Illinois found that a 25% tariff on Canadian imports — the amount proposed by Trump to go into effect in March — would increase fertilizer costs by $100 per ton for farmers.

Throughout the event, speakers said they were concerned that Trump’s efforts to deport workers who are in the United States without authorization  could destroy the local farm labor force, that cuts to programs such as SNAP (commonly known as food stamps) could cause kids to go hungry and prevent farmers from finding markets to sell their products, that cuts to Medicaid could take coverage away from a population of farmers that is aging and relies on government health insurance and that because of all the disruption, an already simmering mental health crisis in Wisconsin’s agricultural community — in rural parts of the state that have seen clinics and hospitals close or consolidate — could come to a boil.

“Rural families, we tend to really need BadgerCare. We need Medicaid. We need those programs, too,” Pam Goodman, a public health nurse and daughter of a farmer, said. “So if you’re talking about the loss of your farming income, that you’re not going to have cash flow, you’re already experiencing significant concerns and issues, and we need the state resources. We need those federal resources. I’ve got families that from young to old, are experiencing significant health issues. We’re not going to be able to go to the hospital. We’re not going to go to the clinic. We already traveled really long distances. We’re talking about the health of all of us, and that is, for me, from my perspective as a nurse, one of my biggest concerns, because it’s all very interrelated.”

Near the end of the event, Phelps said it’s important for farmers in the area to continue sharing how they’re being hurt by Trump’s actions, because that’s how they build political pressure.

“Who benefits from all the chaos and confusion and cuts? Nobody, roughly, but not literally, nobody,” he said. “Because I just want to point out that dividing people and making people confused and uncertain and vulnerable is Donald Trump’s strategy to consolidate his political power.”

“And the people that can withstand the types of cuts that we’re seeing are the people so wealthy that they can withstand them. So they’re in Donald Trump’s orbit, basically,” Phelps said, adding  that there are far more people who will be adversely affected by Trump’s policies than there are people who will benefit.

“And you know that we all do have differences with our neighbors, but we also have a lot of similarities with them, and being in that massive group of people that do not benefit from this kind of chaos and confusion is a pretty big similarity,” he continued. “And so hopefully these types of spaces where we’re sharing our stories and hearing from each other will help us build the kind of community that will result in the kind of political power that really does fight back against it.”

The ongoing tariff battle between the U.S. and its three largest agricultural trading partners is worrying Midwestern farmers.

President Donald Trump imposed an additional 10% tariffs on all imports from China. Soon after, China retaliated with tariffs on U.S. products. Trump also proposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico — which have been paused for 30 days.

The president said he’s using the tariffs to force Canada and Mexico to increase border security. In a statement from the White House, the Trump administration said previous presidents “failed to fully leverage America’s economic position as a tool to secure our borders against illegal migration and combat the scourge of fentanyl.”

Bryant Kagay grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle in northwest Missouri. He believes tariffs should be narrowly targeted and used sparingly. He said he fears the recent tariffs could hurt farmers.

“It just seems like a very heavy-handed approach towards negotiation, and I just fear it will impact our ability to have future trade negotiations with some of these countries,” Kagay said.

Kagay said ideally, tariffs would be used as a tool to enforce best trade practices, not as a tactic in immigration negotiations.

“The idea that we can use tariffs as a bargaining chip or leverage to get concessions that are really unrelated to the products and industries most affected by the tariffs, I can’t say I’m really comfortable using them that way,” he said.

According to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, the top agricultural exports from the state are soybeans, corn, pork and soybean meal. The state’s top agriculture export partners include China, Mexico and Canada — as well as some countries in Europe and Southeast Asia.

Approximately 16.2% of U.S. corn is exported, much of that going to Mexico. A larger share of the country’s corn crop is used domestically for livestock feed and ethanol production.

Ben Brown is an agriculture economist with MU Extension and specializes in row crop policy and farm finance. He said about 86% of U.S. cotton is exported, as well as 50-60% of grain sorghum and approximately 45% of U.S. soybeans — with about half of that going to the Chinese market.

“It wasn’t that long ago that one out of every three rows of soybeans grown here in the United States was going to China,” he said. “Today, it’s probably more like one out of every four rows goes to China … still relatively large.”

American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall was alarmed when Trump announced tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

“Farm Bureau members support the goals of security and ensuring fair trade with our North American neighbors and China, but, unfortunately, we know from experience that farmers and rural communities will bear the brunt of retaliation,” Duvall said in a news release.

Duvall said the announced and proposed tariffs put farmers in a “tough spot.”
“More than 20% of U.S. farm income comes from exports, which are dominated by these three markets,” he said. “Just last year, the U.S. exported over $30 billion in agricultural products to Mexico, $29 billion to Canada and $26 billion to China — our top three markets and nearly half of all exports by value combined.”

In a letter to the White House, the American Farm Bureau urged caution.

“We ask that you carefully consider the impact on American farmers and ranchers, associated businesses and rural communities when determining potential trade actions,” the letter stated.

The National Farmers Union, another group representing agriculture producers across the country, similarly asked the president to reconsider tariffs due to the economic impacts on farmers.

“The position that the Farmers Union has is pretty much identical to the position that the Farm Bureau has on tariffs,” said Richard Oswald, vice president of the Missouri Farmers Union. “It’s just not a good idea.”

Oswald farms in northwest Missouri with his family, growing corn and soybeans while his children raise livestock. He’s especially concerned about what retaliatory tariffs could mean for corn and soybean markets.

“We just don’t utilize those soybeans at home,” he said. “If we don’t sell them, we have nothing to do with them.”

Oswald said his farm is trying to reign in spending as much as possible given the unknown impacts tariffs may have on farm budgets this crop year, but, he said, there’s only so much that can be done.

“If we’re going to produce a crop, we still got to buy fertilizer, and we still got to buy seed, we still got to buy fuel, and that’s pretty hard to pare that back,” Oswald said.

Brown said tariffs can “play both ways” — meaning tariffs on U.S. products have the ability to disrupt the marketplace and it can take time for farmers to find new buyers. Tariffs on imports can make international goods more expensive for domestic consumers, potentially making a domestic version of the product more attractive, if it’s available.

“I will say that it’s more complex than just saying that tariffs are bad for U.S. agriculture,” said Brown. “They’re bad for products that we export to other destinations around the world.”

Tariffs increase the unknowns in an already somewhat volatile industry. Brown said commodity prices have been up and down throughout the month of January.

While yields for Midwestern staples like corn and soybeans have increased over the past two decades, so have the costs of the fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and equipment required to cultivate the crops. Brown said the 2023 crop was the most expensive ever in Missouri.

Fertilizer, ethanol spared for now

After the Trump administration announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, each country retaliated with tariffs on U.S. products. The Canadian government is proposing 25% tariffs on $30 billion in goods the country imports from the United States. The implementation of those tariffs has been delayed while the countries’ leaders negotiate.

Brown said the agriculture industry was spared when Canada chose not to tax U.S.-produced ethanol.

“I think the U.S. corn industry breathed a little sigh of relief because they are our largest international buyer of ethanol, and ethanol was not included in that list,” he said.

Similarly, Canadian exports of potash — a fertilizer used in soybean production — was spared from the United States tariff list.

“There was a lot of concern from U.S. producers leading up to a potential implementation (of tariffs), that potash and fertilizer prices could increase drastically, just based on how much fertilizer and potash we get from Canada,” Brown said.

Tariff déjà vu

Tariffs implemented during the first Trump administration caused soybean prices to drop, affecting Midwestern farmers specifically.

Kagay is a Missouri Farm Bureau member and a fourth generation farmer who came back to the family business around six years ago. He experienced the impact of tariffs in the previous Trump administration and has watched the markets he sells to jump around the last few weeks as tariffs are proposed and implemented.

“It’s just frustrating to see the value of your product drop so substantially … mostly due to government policy,” he said.

On his farm, they are doing whatever they can to prepare and brace for potential impact this time around. Kagay said he filters every decision “through a lens of potential volatility and uncertainty in the market.”

Kagay purchased seed and fertilizer for this year’s crop prior to Trump taking office, “to be ahead of the game, ahead of any potential tariffs, and make sure we had those secured before the uncertainty came into office,” he said.

At the time, the federal government offered a “Market Facilitation Program,” or payments to farmers negatively affected by the trade war.

“It’s unclear what type of assistance would even be available this go around,” said Brown, the MU Extension agriculture economist.

“If those payments are made available to everyone, I probably won’t turn them away,” Kagay said. “But I really do not like receiving direct payments from the government when free trade would just increase the value of my product.”

Tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico could affect Midwestern agriculture is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Farm Foundation, in collaboration with PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation, is proud to announce the launch of the Next Generation Farmers Program, an initiative designed to equip young agricultural entrepreneurs with the skills, education, and resources needed to thrive in today’s farming sector.

Recognizing the growing challenges young farmers face – including limited access to education and training – the Next Generation Farmers Program will provide vital scholarships, training, and mentorship opportunities. This initiative is intended to serve as a critical steppingstone in helping the next generation of U.S. farmers build strong, sustainable businesses to feed the world for years to come.

Gregg Halverson is a farmer from North Dakota who grows potatoes for Frito-Lay and has a long-held affiliation with Farm Foundation. Halverson emphasizes the benefits this program can have for the agricultural community in the U.S. “I believe there is a lot of interest and passion for agriculture among our young people, but the high barriers to entering this field can be discouraging. The programs that Farm Foundation and the PepsiCo Foundation are building will have a direct impact on helping these young agriculturists gain a footing in the production ag sector.”

As a key supporter of this initiative, the PepsiCo Foundation has committed to a multi-year financial investment, furthering its efforts to support the agricultural community. This funding will help provide essential resources to young farmers via the Next Generation Farmers Program, fostering long-term success in an increasingly demanding industry.

“By investing in the future of agriculture, we are ensuring that young farmers have the tools and guidance they need to build viable and resilient businesses,” said Shari Rogge-Fidler, President and CEO at Farm Foundation. “We are proud to partner with the PepsiCo Foundation to drive meaningful change and support the next generation of agricultural leaders.”

“The PepsiCo Foundation’s work focuses on the creation of sustainable and innovative solutions, including ways to support a more resilient, sustainable agricultural system to help feed the world’s growing population,” said C.D. Glin, President of the PepsiCo Foundation and Global Head of Social Impact at PepsiCo. “We are proud to partner with the Farm Foundation once again to further our pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) agenda and to support the next generation of farmers by providing the tools and resources they need to succeed.”

This latest initiative builds on a Farm Foundation, PepsiCo, and the PepsiCo Foundation collaboration, Field to Future, a two-year cohort program designed to create career opportunities within the agriculture industry at large.

Farm Foundation encourages other stakeholders to prioritize building a future for farmers. Through donations and advocacy, individuals and organizations can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of American agriculture and empowering young farmers with the knowledge, resources, and networks necessary for success.

For more information about the Next Generation Farmers Program and how to get involved, please visit https://farmfoundation.org/nextgenfarmer or contact Tim Brennan, Vice President of Programs and Strategic Impact at Farm Foundation at tim@farmfoundation.org

About Farm Foundation:
About Farm Foundation®: Farm Foundation is an accelerator of practical solutions for agriculture. Our mission is to build trust and understanding at the intersections of agriculture and society. We accomplish this by leveraging non‐partisan objective dialogue, information, and training, catalyzing solutions, and creating multi‐stakeholder collaboration. Our vision is to build a future for farmers, our communities, and our world.

About PepsiCo:

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated nearly $92 billion in net revenue in 2024, driven by a complementary beverage and convenient foods portfolio that includes Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and SodaStream. PepsiCo’s product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including many iconic brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales. 

Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Beverages and Convenient Foods by Winning with pep+ (PepsiCo Positive). pep+ is our strategic end-to-end transformation that puts sustainability and human capital at the center of how we will create value and growth by operating within planetary boundaries and inspiring positive change for planet and people. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com, and follow on X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @PepsiCo. 

About the PepsiCo Foundation:    
The PepsiCo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PepsiCo, invests in the essential elements of a sustainable food system with a mission to support thriving communities. Working with non-profits and experts around the globe, we’re focused on helping communities obtain access to food security, safe water and economic opportunity. We strive for tangible impact in the places where we live and work—collaborating with industry peers, local and international organizations, and our employees to affect large-scale change on the issues that matter to us and are of global importance. Learn more at www.pepsicofoundation.com.  Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn.  

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Farm Foundation has named Dr. Sunghun Lim as its 2025 Agricultural Economics Trade and Sustainability Fellow.

Dr. Lim is an Assistant Professor of International Agribusiness and Director of the LSU Global Value Chains Program in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at Louisiana State University.

“We are pleased to welcome Dr. Lim to our esteemed Agricultural Economics Fellowship program,” says Tim Brennan, vice president, programs and strategic impact at Farm Foundation. “His research interests in international trade and agricultural policy set the stage for a fruitful collaboration towards advancing Farm Foundation’s ongoing work in agricultural trade and international sustainability policy.” 

Farm Foundation’s Agricultural Economics Fellow program is a yearlong program for a faculty agricultural economist. The 2025 fellowship is focused on integrated systems approaches to understanding and overcoming the challenges in developing a greater understanding of how trade and sustainability are interconnected and are impacting the food and agricultural sectors in the United States and beyond in rapidly changing circumstances.
In addition to being mentored by staff in USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist, Lim in turn will mentor participants in the Farm Foundation and USDA Economic Research Service Agricultural Scholars program, among other engagements. 

His research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Nature Communications, NBER Book Series, Food Policy, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Handbook of Agricultural Economics, and The World Economy.

He earned his BS in Economics in 2013 and his MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics in 2015 from the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2020.

Dr. Lim is Farm Foundation’s fifth Agricultural Economics Fellow and succeeds Dr. Sandro Steinbach (North Dakota State University), Drs. Trey Malone (University of Arkansas), Amanda Countryman (University of Colorado), and Alejandro Plastina (University of Iowa).

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