Project 2025 & the Future of U.S. Food

Project 2025 promises to “unleash American productivity.” In practice, DOGE is dismantling USDA climate, conservation, and nutrition pillars—without a replacement design—handing the field to corporate giants. Communities will have to build parallel safety nets if we want regenerative, just food systems.

Project 2025: Yanking the Guard-Rails Off the Food System

They say the plan is simple: “Shrink the state, grow production.”

Dig into the Mandate for Leadership, though, and you find a wrecking crew itching to bulldoze the barn before the new one’s framed. Here’s what they want, why it matters, and how it lands when you translate Heritage‐speak into plain English.

Scrub the USDA seal clean of “climate” and “equity”

Project 2025 calls the current mission “a progressive Trojan horse,” urging Congress to strike every reference to climate-smart farming, racial equity, even the UN’s Food-and-Ag work. The agency would be recast as a straight yield-boost machine, “defending producers from environmental extremism.” Investigate Midwest. That’s like swapping the owner’s manual for a bumper sticker: ‘Run it ‘til it breaks.

Slash the safety nets farmers and eaters both lean on

The Commodity Credit Corporation becomes a “slush fund.” Conservation Reserve acres are “paid idleness.” Crop-insurance subsidies, ARC and PLC—cap ’em or kill ’em. The logic? No cushions, no crutches—just “market discipline.” Investigate Midwest

Kick SNAP, WIC and school meals over to Health & Human Services—then tighten the screws

Heritage’s authors insist nutrition programs “belong in welfare,” not agriculture. So they’d ship them out of USDA, slap on stricter work rules, and make states jump through higher unemployment hoops to keep waivers. Civil Eats

Torch every “climate-smart” effort and erase the measuring sticks

The $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities? Canceled on April 14th, rebranded as a leaner grant pool that can’t even say “climate.” USDA’s greenhouse-gas inventory work? On the chopping block. Civil Eats  USDA. Snuff the smoke alarm, and you can swear the barn ain’t on fire.

In Summary:

• Yank the safety nets and small & mid-scale growers eat the risk.
• Starve the data and markets can’t reward soil health—or even prove it.
• Hand nutrition to welfare hawks and rural grocery demand tanks.
• Toss climate tools, and we row into a hotter, drier century blindfolded.

Reality Check — DOGE’s half-built wrecking ball

Quick scoreboard

Climate-Smart Commodities

• minus $3 B for regen pilots
• Axed outright (Apr 14 press release)
• 140+ co-ops & tribes scrambling; growers who geared up for custom cover-crop seed now stuck with the bill

Across-the-board program freeze on “green” USDA grants

• Three-month deep-freeze, still thawing after court blows and OMB audits
• NRCS field staff idle, local conservation districts furloughed, wet-season buffer projects miss planting window

Scrub every “climate” reference off USDA websites

• Internal order issued Jan 31; purge in progress
• Extension agents flying blind—can’t link farmers to soil-carbon calculators that vanished overnight

Commodity Credit Corporation “efficiency review”

• New grants on hold; payouts running late
• Elevator operators warn cash-flow crunch will spike interest on farm-operating loans by harvest

CRP “eliminate & exit” talk

• Not done yet—but signup only runs May 12 – Jun 6; renters spooked
• 22 M acres in limbo; real-estate brokers circling prairie grasslands like buzzards

House “Hungry-but-Working” Bill—

• SNAP work rules to age 65, stricter waivers
• Passed House May 22; CBO says 3.2 M lose benefits
• Rural grocery owners bracing for sales cliff; food-bank lines already stretching past the loading dock

Medicaid & food-aid haircuts in “One Big Beautiful Bill”

• Package includes $1 T in entitlement trims, now in Senate crosshairs
• County hospitals fear rise in uncompensated care; farmworker families caught in double squeeze

Systems ripple — one-two punch

Risk transfer: Pull the public safety nets and the risk doesn’t vanish; it just slides downhill onto family farms and hungry households.

Feedback loop: Freeze the science, then cite “lack of evidence” to kill the programs next budget cycle. Classic self-fulfilling policy demise.

Vacuum effect: With USDA’s lights dimmed (140 field offices closed or closing, 15k staff resignations), the only actors left with cash and data are the input giants and grain traders—ready to write whatever rules replace the old ones.

Who’s steering the tractor?

The bench is worryingly thin

Politico’s inside look found Project 2025 to be “a shoestring operation struggling with internal disagreements, political miscalculation and questionable leadership.” POLITICO

Even conservative-leaning Intelligencer described several Trump picks as “historically unqualified,” including Brooke Rollins for USDA. New York Magazine

A DNC tally shows eight Cabinet nominees are direct authors of the Project 2025 playbook, and eleven are billionaires—hardly the technocratic rebuilding team the manifesto implies. Democrats

Politico’s Cabinet tracker notes “concerns about the qualifications of some nominees, flagging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s lack of Pentagon experience and Agriculture Secretary Rollins’ sparse farm-policy résumé. POLITICO

No coherent blueprint beyond “tear it down”

The only detailed “180-day playbook” remains confidential; even Heritage staff admit most departments still have no post-cut operating model. POLITICO

Viral posts on X mock the gap: “Trump has Project 2025—also Trump has absolutely no plan.” X (formerly Twitter) X (formerly Twitter)

Farmers interviewed about the proposed kill-list for Conservation Reserve Program acres note the chapter offers “no specifics in relation to reforming or replacing the CRP—just a blanket removal.” Investigate Midwest

When government retreats, corporations advance

Center for American Progress highlights how Project 2025 would shift power from communities to corporations, gutting ARC/PLC safety nets and broadband funds while opening space for private lenders and agribusiness giants. Center for American Progress

Union of Concerned Scientists documents that Big Ag spent $523 million lobbying the last Farm-Bill cycle—ready cash to write whatever fills the policy vacuum. The Union of Concerned Scientists

Cato’s own libertarian analysis warns that subsidy repeal without anti-monopoly guardrails simply replaces “big government” with bigger corporate welfare. Cato Institute

System-level risk signals

Feedback loop: Slashing conservation dollars and data programs removes the very metrics needed to prove ROI on soil-health investments, deterring private climate finance and reinforcing the claim that programs “don’t work.”

Power shift: With USDA weakened and nutrition moved to HHS, consolidated processors and input firms can dictate price and practice, accelerating farm consolidation already flagged by UCS.

Equity shock: Cuts hit the same rural counties that lose SNAP dollars—driving both producers and eaters toward corporate, ultra-processed supply chains.

Regeneration from the County Up

A brass-tacks playbook for communities that refuse to wait for Washington, uses front-porch commonsense.

First, the bumper-sticker vision

“Healthy soil, fed kids, local wealth.”That’s the whole ball game. If DC won’t guard the commons, counties and co-ops will.

Build Soil-Health Districts the way Deschutes, OR, already has

Deschutes Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD) runs free field consults, mini-grants, and a tool library for cover-crop seeders and no-till drills. They’ve stitched together NRCS scraps, county funds, and local sponsors to keep farmers learning and testing side-by-side. Deschutes SWCD Deschutes SWCD

Tap state-funded resilience pots—Oregon’s OCFSN model

After back-to-back wildfire seasons, the Oregon legislature parked $2.65 million with the Oregon Community Food Systems Network for Farmer & Rancher Disaster Resilience Grants. Small and underserved growers can harden against heat, smoke, and drought without begging the feds. OCFSN Oregon Legislature

Lesson: States can move faster than Congress—grab a shovel while the ground is soft.

Set parallel market standards—Rainforest Alliance goes regenerative in 2025

RA’s new Regenerative Agriculture Standard rolls out next year, giving roasters, grocers, and eventually row-crop buyers a seal that measures carbon, biodiversity, and farmer income. No USDA needed. Rainforest Alliance  Rainforest AllianceReuters

Thicken mutual-aid infrastructure—co-ops, farmers-market grants, RFSP cash

USDA’s Local Agriculture Marketing suite (FMPP, LFPP, RFSP) is still live—$60 million on the street for 2025. Pair that with county revolving-loan funds and you’ve got bricks for a regional food hub, cold storage, or mobile butchery. AMS  AMS

5. Create a data commons—own the metrics, own the narrative

OpenTEAM is already networking farmers, coders, and scientists to share soil-carbon and water data in the open. Counties can plug sensors into that backbone, prove gains, and bargain for ecosystem-service paydays—no permission slip from D.C. required. OpenTEAM OpenTEAM

Your Cheese Has Already Been Moved

Look around, neighbor: the shelf you’re standing on is shaking.Project 2025 ripped out the guard-rails, DOGE is prying up the floorboards, and the board-room giants are already staking claim to the kitchen. Pretending the pantry’s stock is the same as yesterday is how you wind up hungry tomorrow. The sages would say: “Don’t rail at fate—rearrange your mind, then your actions.”

So let’s be prudent.

The federal safety nets are fraying—splice in a county soil-health district.

The data stream is drying—dig your own community well of metrics.

Nutrition money is wobbling—double-down on local co-ops and shared freezers.

Climate tools are vanishing—measure, adapt, and prove value on your own terms.

This isn’t panic; it’s posture. When the cheese moves, the mouse that hustles eats first.

Call to action:

Forward this newsletter to one neighbor who still thinks “it’ll blow over.”

Show up at your next SWCD meeting; volunteer a Saturday.

Pitch in to the data commons pilot—reply “COUNT ME IN” and we’ll plug you into the prototype crew.

The ground has shifted. Our task now is to plant new roots—deeper, local, and able to weather the tremors. Let’s get to work.