Other Ag News:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Tel. 347.563.6408
Release: Transparency and Oversight Needed to Ensure New USDA Reorganization Avoids Disrupted Services for Farmers, Processors, and the PublicWashington, DC, April 23, 2026 – Today, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the reorganization of the Research, Education, and Extension (REE) and Food Safety mission areas. This reorganization will move over 200 technical and administrative staff from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) out of the National Capital Region (NCR), relocate staff from the Economic Research Service (ERS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and the National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) staff to St. Louis or Kansas City, and close one of USDA’s historic research centers, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC).
While the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) supports USDA’s stated goals of enhancing effectiveness, accountability, and service delivery, USDA’s reorganization plans lack transparency and have disregarded input from farmers and the general public. Previous reorganizations have led to loss of staff and knowledge, and with REE and FSIS already struggling with staffing, the advancement of USDA’s reorganization plan risks undermining their core functions.
“The 2019 relocation of ERS and NIFA drained talent and crippled productivity, conditions now at risk of being repeated. The further relocation of ERS, NIFA, and NASS staff will likely bring about service disruptions and a greater loss of institutional knowledge. In addition, despite the significant public feedback to the contrary, the reorganization would close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, disrupting decades of invaluable agricultural research,” said Nick Rossi, NSAC Policy Specialist.
“The relocation of FSIS personnel was entirely absent from the USDA Reorganization plan in 2025. Without stakeholder input and proper forewarning, this abrupt relocation could lead to service disruptions for inspection personnel, undermining initiatives to support small and very small processors. We look forward to further public documentation explaining how this move will support these processors,” said Connor Kippe, NSAC Policy Specialist.
In September 2025, NSAC submitted feedback to USDA during a public comment period regarding the Reorganization Plan.
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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/
The post Release: Transparency and Oversight Needed to Ensure New USDA Reorganization Avoids Disrupted Services for Farmers, Processors, and the Public appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
(Washington, D.C., April 23, 2026) — Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a reorganization of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to modernize operations, streamline support functions and better align the agency with the nation’s agricultural landscape.
As part of this effort, USDA will establish a new National Food Safety Center (NFSC) in Urbandale, Iowa, which will serve as the primary hub for FSIS administrative, technical and support operations.
(Washington, D.C., April 23, 2026) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research, Education, and Economics (REE) Mission Area today announced a reorganization and leadership restructuring to better align its work with USDA priorities, improve operational efficiency, and deliver results more effectively for American farmers, ranchers, and producers.
In 2010, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law, initiating a shift in the US food safety landscape. FSMA spurred an array of regulations intended to reduce contamination, mitigate foodborne illness, and make it easier to halt and track foodborne illness or chemical contamination. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) engaged heavily in this rulemaking process in support of scale-appropriate regulation, guidelines for diversified farm and food operations, and further training resources to make sure that smaller food businesses, farms, and those using sustainable agriculture practices would not be disproportionately burdened by these new requirements.
In the decade and a half since FSMA became the law of the land, the Food and Drug Administration has finalized some of the required regulations; however, many of these new regulations have been mired by delays. Some of these delays have been necessary, prompted by significant stakeholder engagement and proper timelines, a function of the participatory rulemaking process. Other delays, however, have been driven by rescinded and reproposed rules. For example, the Agricultural Water Standard was found to be overly cumbersome for many types of farm and food businesses, while not proving a meaningful reduction in foodborne illness, and was not finalized as part of the initial Produce Safety Rule. It was only recently finalized, and the plan for enforcement was initiated in 2023, with compliance dates for the smallest farms into 2027.
With the implementation of these rules staggered over time, farmers and food businesses have found themselves in an increasingly complicated regulatory environment that often only utilizes exemption as the main way to ensure scale-appropriate regulations. This blog post examines some of FSMA’s overlapping requirements, as well as the remaining FSMA regulations that have still not been finalized. While this Government Accountability Office (GAO) report covers all of FSMA, this post covers only those portions of greatest concern to small, diversified farms and food businesses.
Those statutory requirements contained within FSMA of greatest concern to sustainable agriculture practitioners, and focused on in this blog post, are :
- Section 103: Hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls
- Section 105: Standards for produce safety
- Section 204: Enhancing tracking and tracing of food and recordkeeping
As these rules derived from this statue have come to overlay each other, and often have different exemptions depending on product, size of organization, and legal structure of the entity (non-profit, farm, packer, retail food) it has become increasingly complex to navigate, especially for those diversified, small to medium sized farms that are key in the development of more sustainable agriculture across the US. These rules have also caused and continue to cause a variety of financial burdens for farms that are smaller and more diversified. Much of this work has been done without the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) being able to showcase reduced foodborne illness attributable to the rules themselves as well.
Until this moment, a midmortem of the rollout of the entirety of FSMA (though there have been reviews of subsets of the law) has not been conducted by a government entity, only partially by outside stakeholders.
This recent GAO report provides an overview of what parts of FSMA are completed, partially completed, and not completed, as well as offers more general recommendations. Most of the requirements identified in FSMA (41 out of 46) have been completed, showing clear FDA progress towards full implementation, though the report also notes many of the stakeholders felt the delay in doing so resulted in confused and unclear incentives for investments in food safety technologies.
The report makes a variety of recommendations for FDA going forward, across all of the statutes of FSMA. 3 of the 7 recommendations are most relevant to a sustainable food safety audience:
GAO: The Commissioner of FDA should ensure that the Human Foods Program establishes milestones and timelines for updating the agency’s good agricultural practices for fruits and vegetables and publishes them as required by FSMA’s section 105. (Recommendation 5)
- NSAC’s perspective: If the FDA is to approach reevaluating the Good Agricultural Practices, it should do so in coordination with the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), pre- and post the development, given their historic and current involvement with farmers and food safety practitioners.
The FDA Commissioner should ensure that the Human Foods Program develops a plan with milestones and timelines for establishing a product tracing system to enhance FDA’s existing foodborne outbreak response processes, and that it establishes the system as required by FSMA’s section 204. (Recommendation 6)
- NSAC’s perspective: While NSAC supports the finalization of the Food Traceability Rule, referred to here, there is still work to be done to provide adequate resources and training to small farms and food businesses.
The Commissioner of FDA should ensure the Human Foods Program and the Center for Veterinary Medicine develop and implement a performance management process to assess the results of FDA’s rules and their contribution to the prevention of foodborne illness. This process should include setting goals to identify results to achieve, collecting information to measure performance, and using that information to assess results and inform decisions for each rule. (Recommendation 7)
- NSAC’s perspective: While some attempts have been made to track the overall impact of FSMA, further data is needed on almost all of the rules that directly connect specific interventions within rules to food safety outcomes. Any further tweaking of the rules into the future will require further documentation to showcase the potential food safety outcomes in the context of other forms of analysis, such as costs to producers.
NSAC has been deeply involved in both formal and informal processes to shape these statutes and rules, and is glad to see FDA has made progress towards the finalization of all the rules. The development of the performance management data analysis should have come on consequentially with the rules. This GAO report is a welcome and more comprehensive addition to the different analyses of FSMA over the years.
However, there have been mitigating factors for the food research, investigation, and enforcement section of the FDA, including a lack of funding commensurate with its responsibilities and a complete reorganization into the Human Food Program. Developing methods to analyze both the efforts already made and the remaining rules yet to be fully implemented will improve transparency for farmers and food businesses. It will bring clarity to many on how their efforts and investments have contributed to a safer food system.
It may also help create further rationale for increases in food safety training funding or more precise targeting of food safety programs. Programs such as the Food Safety Outreach Program at USDA or some of the objectives of the Cooperative Agreement Program for State Implementation at FDA provide portions of this funding and have experienced declining real funding over time. If the FDA invests further in the proposed management system, it may reveal further instances where funding for training might best be allocated and help close the gap between the goals of FSMA and the reality, in an equitable way for all farms and food businesses.
The post GAO Reports on the Mixed Success of Food Safety Rules appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
(Edinburg, TX, April 17, 2026) — Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins and Lieutenant General William H. “Butch” Graham, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) commanding general, led the groundbreaking for the new sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base in Edinburg, Texas.
Today, we’re wrapping up our myth busters series by taking a closer look at the global impact of African swine fever (ASF), what an outbreak could mean for the United States, and how you can help keep this disease out of the country.
Myth #1: ASF has been detected in the United States.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Tel. 347.563.6408
Release: Hundreds Call for Strong Investments in Farmer-Led Research, Urban Agriculture, and Conservation in FY2027 AppropriationsWashington, DC, April 16, 2026 – Yesterday, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), alongside hundreds of organizations, delivered letters calling for strong investments in Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Agriculture Appropriations legislation. The letters, which focused on the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP), and Conservation Operations and Conservation Technical Assistance, arrive as Congressional Appropriators are drafting spending legislation, and several weeks after the Administration released its own FY2027 budget proposal.
The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program is the only regionally based, farmer driven, and outcome-oriented competitive research program that involves farmers and ranchers directly as the primary investigators in research and education projects. SARE provides grants directly to producers, which removes the financial risk of testing new ideas for making their operations more economically viable, productive, and sustainable. To meet the current demand for farmer driven research, stakeholders are requesting full funding for SARE at its authorized level of $60 million.
“Farmers and ranchers are at the center of everything SARE does, from important leadership positions at the national level, to participating in the regional grant review process, to designing and implementing projects for on-farm research. This farmer led model that SARE champions ensures that funding continues to go to America’s most innovative farmers and ranchers,” said Nick Rossi, NSAC Policy Specialist. “Despite nearly 40 years of helping farmers develop and adopt cutting edge practices and systems, SARE has yet to receive its fully authorized funding, and every year more than half of eligible farmer/rancher grants go unfunded.”
The Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP) offers programs and services that support the unique needs of agricultural production in urban, suburban, and indoor settings, ensuring business success and an ample supply of nutritious foods in their communities. OUAIP grants, cooperative agreements, and programming have reached 43 states and Puerto Rico, despite being significantly underfunded. This year, stakeholders are requesting funding at the authorized level of $25 million.
“The combined effect of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) staff losses and cuts to nutrition programs makes OUAIP awards and timely implementation even more essential for organizations and local stakeholders to fill the gaps left in communities. Previous awards have funded incubator farms and community garden infrastructure, as well as producer training and youth education; all of which have been difficult for producers to access in traditional USDA service centers,” commented Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist.
Conservation Operations and Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) funds facilitate the administration of USDA conservation programs by supporting our conservation workforce, conservation planning, and the extension of specialized technical assistance to producers. According to USDA, CTA funds supported over 4,400 full time NRCS positions in every state in the nation in 2025, as well as TA providers at third-party organizations. This year, NSAC partnered with the National Associations of Conservation Districts, as well as a long list of stakeholders, in requesting $1.05 billion for Conservation Operations.
“Producers across the country depend on the availability of on-the-ground technical assistance to implement effective conservation practices. These funds support conservation professionals providing detailed, unbiased agronomic advice to producers in every state, most often at the county level. It’s no surprise to see such strong support from organizations and producers alike for these investments at a time when producer access to TA is so dramatically reduced,” said Jesse Womack, NSAC Policy Specialist.
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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/
The post Release: Hundreds Call for Strong Investments in Farmer-Led Research, Urban Agriculture, and Conservation in FY2027 Appropriations appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
(Washington, D.C., April 15, 2026) – Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins alongside U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, and Maine Senator Susan Collins announced the creation of the new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Seafood. This first of its kind office will prioritize customer service and ease of navigation for American seafood cultivators, producers, and processors to access USDA programs.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Release: Coalition Urges Congress to Bolster Domestic Markets, Fund Local and Regional Food Procurement in Farmer Relief PackageWashington, DC, April 15, 2026– Today, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), National Farmers Union, American Farmland Trust, and National Association of State Departments of Agriculture led an agricultural coalition letter urging Congress to include funding for local and regional procurement of domestically produced agricultural products in any upcoming farmer economic relief package.
“Reliable markets are foundational to farmers’ success – now is the moment to ensure that any agricultural economic relief package invests in stable domestic markets that will support farmers both today and well into the future,” said Mike Lavender, Policy Director for NSAC. “Congress can spur federal investments in locally-led procurement that will open market opportunities for small and mid-sized farmers – supporting their financial resilience, and solidifying their connectivity to their local communities.”
As family farmers and ranchers continue to face severe economic pressure driven by market volatility, rising costs, trade disruptions, and extreme weather, the groups emphasized that additional assistance will be necessary. The letter argues that Congress should pair near-term relief with investments that build stronger domestic markets and create reliable demand for American-grown products.
“Local and regional supply chains are not only a cornerstone of rural economic resilience—they are essential to national food security,” the letter states.
The coalition pointed to bipartisan, bicameral legislation already introduced in Congress, including the Strengthening Local Food Security Act (S.2338) and the Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act (H.R. 4782), as models for implementation.
The groups also highlighted USDA’s previous Local Food Purchase Assistance and Local Food for Schools programs as proof that the approach works. Those programs helped states, Tribes, and territories purchase approximately $850 million in locally grown food from over 15,000 farmers and ranchers, strengthening regional supply chains and expanding market opportunities for small and mid-sized producers. Together, these programs stimulated nearly $1.6 billion in economic activity.
“Family farmers are squeezed by low prices, rising costs, and deep uncertainty. Investing in local and regional food procurement isn’t just good policy — it’s how we keep family farms viable and rural communities strong,” said Rob Larew, President of National Farmers Union.
“Congress has an opportunity to deliver both immediate relief and long-term resilience by including funding for local and regional food procurement in their upcoming farmer assistance package,” said John Piotti, President and CEO of American Farmland Trust. “These investments create reliable demand for farmers and ranchers, provide nutritious food to communities across the country, keep more dollars circulating in rural communities, and help ensure that American agriculture can thrive well into the future.”
“NASDA members are advocating for Congress to include robust funding for procurement of regionally produced food in any upcoming farmer economic relief package,” NASDA CEO Ted McKinney said. “Strategic investments in these programs directly support small and medium-sized American farmers and ranchers, strengthen local and regional supply chains and expand access to a variety of nutritious foods in communities across the country. Prioritizing procurement of local products can help deliver meaningful economic relief to U.S. farmers while advancing food security, improving nutrition outcomes and building a more resilient food system for the future.”
Read the full letter here.
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The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net
The post Release: Coalition Urges Congress to Bolster Domestic Markets, Fund Local and Regional Food Procurement in Farmer Relief Package appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
(Washington, D.C., April 14, 2026) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture announces payments under the 2026 Pima Agriculture Cotton Trust Fund and the 2026 Agriculture Wool Apparel Manufacturers Trust Fund. The U.S. textile industry has historically enjoyed strong support and assistance from the U.S. Government; however, various trade agreements and other unfair practices during the last 20 years have resulted in a decline not just in textiles, but across domestic manufacturing in general.
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