08
Jan
USDA’s New Regenerative Ag Program, Called Greenwashing, Diverts Resources Needed for Organic Transition
(Beyond Pesticides, January 8, 2026) In a press release published on December 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the creation of “a $700 million Regenerative Pilot Program to help American farmers adopt practices that improve soil health, enhance water quality, and boost long-term productivity, all while strengthening America’s food and fiber supply.” The agency specifically ties the program to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), diverting resources that could be used to support organic transition and phase out pesticides that are clearly defined as prohibited by USDA’s National Organic Program under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), but allowed in regenerative agriculture programs. Regenerative agriculture, embraced by major food companies, has been identified by Beyond Pesticides and many organizations as greenwashing because it typically allows wide use of weed killers and other petrochemical pesticides and is not defined as a transition to organic practices and compatible products. (See here.)
Public health and environmental advocates, farmers, and businesses fear that pouring funding into a loosely defined “regenerative agriculture” program will not only undermine existing efforts to transition farming and communities to more sustainable and truly regenerative systems but also contribute to greenwashing, where corporations that are enabling the climate, biodiversity, and public health crises are rewarded. (See here for Bayer advert on how it supports “Regenerative Agriculture.”)
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will administer the Regenerative Pilot Program, which is purported to divert $400 million in funds from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and $300 million from the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) for Fiscal Year 2026. The NRCS, meanwhile, has lost almost 25 percent of its staff since January 2025, according to an analysis by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in September 2025. Family farmers are often distrustful of USDA, which is seen as aligned with industrial agribusiness—as captured in a recent expose by More Perfect Union.
“A leading form of truly regenerative agriculture is organic farming,” says Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, in a press release published in response to the USDA announcement. “Decades of research shows that organic farms, on average, improve soil health, climate resilience, and soil carbon sequestration; reduce emissions; and protect biodiversity, human health, and community well-being.”
Advocates view the USDA announcement as a distraction from the Administration’s alignment with multinational pesticide corporations such as Bayer. In an amicus brief published on December 1, 2025, the Office of the Solicitor General (SG) and the White House are calling on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to grant certiorari on Bayer’s petition to shield chemical companies that fail to warn people about the potential hazards of their pesticide products. (See Daily News here.)
“We must imagine a future beyond a reliance on petrochemical, synthetic pesticides,” says Max Sano, senior policy and coalitions associate at Beyond Pesticides. “Not only must we protect and expand safeguards to hold corporations accountable for harmful products and bring long-awaited scientific integrity to the registration review process, but we must also get focused and expansive in supporting organic land management systems that can finally move us away from this toxic treadmill.”
Organic Under Pressure
Be it at the federal level or in state programs like California, the legacy of organic systems is under threat.
The beginning of 2025 marked a time of turmoil that upended years-long projects in organic and local food systems due to the far-reaching defunding of critical programs by DOGE, the now-defunct “Department of Government Efficiency.” Earthjustice and Knight First Amendment Institute (Columbia University), on behalf of Northeast Organic Farmers Association of New York (NOFA-NY) and other farmer associations, filed a lawsuit against USDA, challenging the Department’s alleged illegal purging of climate-smart agriculture datasets, resources, and pertinent information that organic farmers rely on to carry out their operations, according to the complaint filed on February 24, 2025. In addition to this, federal funding freezes in 2025 adversely impacted farmers who had made investments based on approved grants through the Organic Market Development (OMD) program and funding through the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities Program in support of organic and transitioning farmers. (See Daily News here.) See a publicly available repository of farmer stories impacted by federal funding freezes.
According to an Earthjustice press release, “Shortly after filing the [NOFA-NY] lawsuit, the plaintiffs moved the court for a preliminary injunction, which sought a court order requiring USDA to restore the removed webpages and preventing USDA from taking down additional climate-related information,” but “[d]ays before that motion was set to be heard in federal court, USDA reversed course.” The release continues, “In a letter filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, USDA now says that it ‘will restore the climate-change-related web content that was removed post-inauguration’ and that it ‘commits to complying with’ federal laws governing its future ‘posting decisions.’ USDA also says that it has begun restoring climate-related webpages and expects to substantially complete the restoration process in approximately two weeks.” (See Daily News here.)
In 2024, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) opened a comment period for the public to share their thoughts on how the state agency would internally define “regenerative agriculture” in the context of their programmatic work moving forward. Advocates raised concerns that organic was not included at all, when in reality, there are many groups, farmers, and consumers who say that an organic system should be the baseline for any definition of regenerative. CDFA’s Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel (SAP), falling short of this, proposes a framework for developing a definition:
- Being applicable, relevant, and useful for California Agriculture.
- Leading to positive impacts on California’s environmental, social, human health, and economic goals, including climate goals.
- Providing measurable and verifiable outcomes, keeping in mind variability throughout the state, and emphasizing outcomes that farmers and ranchers can easily measure and that are not economically burdensome to measure.
- Allowing for context-specific outcomes (in terms of scale, geographic location, diverse and/or innovative agricultural systems, goals, etc.)
- Include the idea that building soil health, including elements of physical quality, carbon sequestered, soil biodiversity, and alleviation of climate change (e.g., practices funded by the CDFA Healthy Soils Program) as a foundational element.
Beyond Pesticides stated in comments during a public comment period that this framework will not be effective if definitions, policies, and rules fail to meet the following criteria:
- Definition clarity and enforceability;
- Systems plan (establishes baseline for management practices intended to create resiliency and prevent pests);
- Rigorous standard for allowed/prohibited substances list with a mechanism for incorporating real-time data on hazards and alternatives into reevaluation of the allowed list;
- Certification and enforcement system (third-party enforcement);
- Process for public participation to ensure a feedback loop for continuous improvement; and
- Funding to ensure elements are carried out in a robust way
After months of deliberations, the California State Board of Food and Agriculture (SBFA) on January 10, 2025, formalized a definition of “regenerative agriculture” that is being widely criticized as undermining the transition of agriculture to certified organic practices that eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, highlights the core issue: “Strategies that allow continued use of toxic substances undermine the soil biology and biodiversity critical to healthy plants.” The CDFA definition fails to establish accountability by omitting a clear standard for inputs, such as OPFA’s National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. This omission leaves room for practices like synthetic fertilizer use, genetically engineered crops, biosolids, and synthetic pesticides—all explicitly banned in organic systems.
While the CDFA definition of regenerative is not intended for use in a certification process or statute, critics argue that without specific, measurable goals, the new definition remains open to interpretation and greenwashing. In Civil Eats reporting, Rebekah Weber, policy director for California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), states, “I could survey 100 farmers and show them this definition and they would each have a different interpretation of what this means, and the verification and accountability pieces just aren’t there.”
By not including verifiable outcomes, the new definition also fails to meet the recommendations provided by the Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The panel, composed of subject matter experts from around the state, was asked to provide input regarding the definition. A May 2023 letter from the panel to SBFA Chair Don Cameron repeatedly emphasized the need for “providing measurable and verifiable outcomes.” (See Daily News here and here and previous Action of the Week here for additional context.)
Regenerative Greenwashing
While not necessarily representative of the broader movement, some regenerative agricultural practitioners and their products have been found to fall short of organic standards and open the door to loopholes for toxic pesticide use that undermines the sanctity of alternative agricultural systems compared to the conventional status quo.
In 2024, an agrichemical industry-funded study published in International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability dissects the development of national organic standards and opportunities that can be applied in expanding the use of “regenerative” agriculture. Not surprisingly, the study authors offer support for integrated pest management (IPM) and reassurance of a rigorous pesticide registration review process before the chemicals are marketed. Similar to regenerative, IPM was advanced as a monitoring-based system with pest thresholds and the “judicious use“ of pesticides. The study includes a survey of five farmers, who farm a total of 100,000 acres, but do not have extensive experience farming organically. The authors take the position that IPM is the most viable systems approach. They state: “This approach [IPM] does not put process-limits on the use of pesticides.”
In fact, The Weed Science Society of America, the American Phytopathological Society, and the Plant-Insect Ecosystems Section of the Entomological Society of America have said that “pesticides are an important part of IPM and that restricting their use by considering them a ‘last resort’ or selecting only the ‘least-toxic pesticide’ can result in a build-up of pests and reduce the overall options for control.” Advocates find it notable and unsurprising that the Entomological Society of America (ESA) issued support of pesticide use as a feature of IPM, given recent instances of chemical industry influence alleged by scientists attending ESA’s 2023 annual meeting. See here for the Daily News analysis of U.S. Right to Know’s report on ESA. See an additional Daily News article, IPM (Integrated Pest Management) Fails to Stop Toxic Pesticide Use, to learn more about the structural failures of IPM to address moving beyond the chemical treadmill. (See Daily News here.)
A similar greenwashing dynamic occurred under the Biden Administration when CropLife America submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2021, emphasizing the recognition of pesticides as a critical tool for climate-smart farming practices as USDA developed its Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program. There was concern among environmentalists with the former administration leaning into not clearly defined “climate-smart agriculture,” rather than coordinating with the European Union’s organic agriculture targets for 2030 as a part of their Farm to Fork (F2F) initiative at the time. Instead, there was funding and focus split between climate-smart programs and the Organic Transition Initiative, when the focus could have been on using USDA National Organic Program (NOP) as a foundation for climate-smart agriculture and regenerative agriculture programs. NOP oversees third-party certification, a public comment process through a mandated federal advisory board (National Organic Standards Board—NOSB), an allowed and prohibited substances list, and other important factors.
Based on a wide array of analyses, organic land management as a baseline is crucial to address compounding crises relating to climate change, biodiversity, public health, and economic stability, while eliminating petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use. There are examples of regenerative agriculture certifications that take this approach, including Rodale Institute and Regenerative Organic Alliance’s Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label. Researchers in California quantified the reduction of total pesticide use in organic and conventional farms, noting that there was a “18–31% likely reduction in spraying of pesticides on organically managed fields compared to conventional, and a 27% likely reduction in use of pesticide products with high acute human toxicity for organic versus conventional fields” from 2013 to 2019. There is a world of difference between the pesticides used in organic and conventional production. Though conventional growers are allowed to use thousands of synthetic compounds on their crops, seeds, and soils — no matter their toxicity, as long as EPA has permitted them — Certified Organic growers are permitted to use only “natural” or naturally derived pesticide products, and a very limited number, that are subject to review by the NOSB.
In the Journal of Environmental Quality, researchers at USDA report that a 4-year organically managed corn-soybean-oat system reduces nitrogen (N) loads by 50 percent with corn and soybean yields “equivalent to or higher than conventional [chemical-intensive] in most years.” The findings from a 7-year study comparing nitrate loss in organic and chemical-intensive management found that organically managed perennial pasture reduced nitrogen loads significantly. The study, which focuses on nitrate pollution in agriculture that harms biodiversity, threatens waterways, drinking water, and public health, and releases nitrous oxide (an extremely potent greenhouse gas), was conducted at USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment. (See Daily News here.)
Call to Action
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All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
