Yves here. Even though fully-warranted concerns about ultra-processed food have taken center stage in the better-late-than-never campaign to improve diets in advanced economies, another focus has been animal farming and soi-disant organic farms. The MAHA crowd is selling the idea that they are going to improve standards by touting regenerative farming. But it’s old factory farming in a new bottle.
By Matthew Dominguez, the US executive director at Compassion in World Farming, where he leads a team dedicated to improving the welfare of farmed animals and advancing a food system that is better for animals, people, and the planet. Originally published at Common Dreams
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in her recent USA Today and Newsweek opinion pieces, has worked hard to present herself as a champion of American farmers and a steward of healthier food options. Alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she spoke of the values these farmers embody—independence, grit, patriotism—and celebrated a $700 million regenerative agriculture initiative as proof that this administration is delivering for rural America.
But if you pull back the curtain on Secretary Rollins and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the narrative changes. What looks like a bold vision for “regeneration” quickly reveals itself as a political performance designed to distract from the USDA’s business-as-usual that props up industrial agriculture, not family farmers.
Secretary Rollins held up Alexandre Family Farm as the face of America’s regenerative future. But the truth: The farm is under scrutiny for animal abuse so severe it stands in direct contradiction to everything regenerative agriculture represents.
A USDA investigation obtained through the Freedom of Information Act documented multiple violations of organic and animal-welfare standards. The company has since admitted to serious abuses—including cows dragged with machinery, horn-tipping without pain relief, a teat cut off an animal with mastitis, diesel poured on animals, and animals dying after being left without adequate feed and care. No amount of marketing can turn that into regeneration. It is factory farming with better lighting.
A healthy America requires new, bold regenerative policies, not branding.
Choosing that farm as the model for USDA’s regenerative agenda signals to large industrial livestock companies that even amid serious animal cruelty, the USDA will still hand them a spotlight—and, in many cases, more public dollars. It also sends a message to the farmers Secretary Rollins claims to represent: Their government will not reward those who do the hard, unglamorous work of true regenerative agriculture. Instead, it will reward those who invest in scale, branding, and access, not better practices.
Secretary Rollins frequently praised states as “laboratories of innovation,” a sentiment that should have encouraged rural communities. Yet she is pushing the EATS Act and its twin, the Save Our Bacon Act—federal preemption bills that would wipe out states’ ability to regulate for safer, healthier, and more humane agricultural products sold within their borders. Notably, EATS and SOBA face bipartisan opposition from more than 200 senators and representatives in Congress.
You cannot celebrate state innovation while trying to make it illegal.
Backed by the factory-farm-aligned National Pork Producers Council, both bills would undermine more than 1,000 state health, safety, and animal-welfare laws. These bills would give the largest global agribusinesses the power to override local standards and flood American markets with cheap, low-welfare meat. And they would directly undercut the regenerative and higher-welfare family farms she claims to support.
The USDA’s $700 million regenerative package reveals the same pattern. In reality, it is a drop in the bucket. For decades, federal policy has pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s largest factory farms. From 2018 to 2023 alone, the top 10,000 livestock feeding operations—mostly CAFOs—captured more than $12 billion in federal aid. The largest 10% of producers now take nearly 80% of subsidies,while small and midsize farms receive nothing.
Secretary Rollins knows this—yet her policies do nothing to change it.
The contradiction is glaring: She praises American farmers’ independence while advancing policies that strip them of market protections and empower their largest competitors. She leads an agency that celebrates rural resilience while continuing to concentrate power and resources in the hands of giant corporations.
True regenerative agriculture—the kind practiced by real farm families—requires pasture, biodiversity, humane animal treatment, and a financial landscape where independent farmers can survive. But these farmers are forced to compete against industrial operations that are more heavily subsidized and are now welcomed to call themselves “regenerative” regardless of their animal handling and herd-management practices.
Across the United States, regenerative ranchers, pasture-based dairies, higher-welfare hog farmers, and diversified small producers are already showing what a healthier and more resilient US food system can look like. Consumers want this shift. States are supporting it. Rural communities depend on it. Yet the USDA continues to position factory farming as the American standard—and now as the regenerative standard.
If this administration truly wants to protect American farmers, the path forward is clear.
Stop calling industrial operations regenerative when they are not. Stop pushing federal legislation that handcuffs states and abandons small producers. Stop directing billions toward industrial livestock giants while offering pennies to the people doing the real work of regeneration. And start listening—to independent farmers fighting consolidation, rural communities bearing the cost of industrial expansion, and consumers demanding humane treatment of animals.
A healthy America requires new, bold regenerative policies, not branding. We welcome Secretary Rollins to bring forward those types of policies.
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This sounds exactly like what happened when Federal gov developed national organic standards in the 1990’s, leading to watered down regs and opening the gates to the age of ‘industrial organic’ producers, like Cal-O. However, as a small farm regenerative producer who is connected to many other similar farms in the Northeast, I will affirm that the NRCS (an arm of the USDA) is in fact supporting many regenerative practices at any scale, and not just for pennies, as the writer alleges. We are talking about 5 to 7 figure grants to small farms and startups for innovative operations utilizing silvopasture and agroforestry. Some of this came in under Biden and was disrupted by Trump, but other programs continue uninterrupted. This is first person experience, not hearsay, and I can testify to the high quality and practices of the grant recipients, unlike what is reported to have occurred at Alexandre Family Farms. As always, when choosing farms to support – know your producer, not just their PR.
Thanks for your insight.
I normally try to avoid saying things that would allow people online to track me down, but I’ll break that rule here a bit. I work for NRCS (mainly on the engineering side, but I’ve picked up a lot of the agronomic stuff out of necessity, while still remaining fairly ignorant regarding forestry). I’ve been with the agency for close to two decades now. Everyone in my office were stunned at the severity of the Trump administration’s program cuts. The CSP program, which is the best tool we have to financially support not just rural farmers, but rural landowners who are willing to perform conservation and wildlife habitat work, was cut by about 95%. That program put over $1 million per year into my poverty-ridden county, and there is no telling how many times that money changed hands before it left the county (a great many, I would bet).
I am not a fan of Republicans or Democrats (or liberals or conservatives in general), and I will tell you that it is disgusting how these groups play games with these programs. This round of cuts were part of Trumps wealth re-distribution policies, but also a reaction to nonsense that the Democrats did during the Biden admin – I shall explain:
A lot of what NRCS does (and myself personally as well) is to observe what individual farms/farmers do in the course of their business. Some farmers are incredibly experimental, and some discover things by chance. A good NRCS employee develops relationships/friendships with farmers and knows what they are doing (farmers, like anyone, like to share their successes, also). When something appears to work (agronomically or financially from a conservation standpoint) NRCS’s job is to take notice and get others’ to try these techniques, and if it looks promising, to conduct experimental trials, and so on. Most NRCS practices that reduce erosion, pollution, increase productivity and profitability all came from farmers originally.
So, the Biden admin shows up, and to score political points, writes legislation into the Inflation Reduction Act that rebrands already existingNRCS practices and payment structures as “climate smart” activities that will reduce climate change. Now some of these practices do that, but they have all been on the books for many years and their original intent was to increase soil health and productivity (more carbon in the soil vastly increases soil health and productivity- it is carbon sequestration by default, but NRCS has been promoting it for years because it reduces erosion, promotes biodiversity, which both increase productivity and profitability). Now, because the Democrats rebranded this stuff as climate smart (a dishonest attempt to claim credit for something they did not do, IMO), the Republicans came in and had to smasmodically blot out anything associated with addressing climate change. The actions of the Biden and second Trump admin have been ridiculous, but IMO, the Trump admin looks to be far more harmful.
Now, I will say that although rural support for Republicans is high, it is not as devout as people should assume. Most people I know support Republicans because they are seen as the lesser evil. Democrats and liberal aligned media have been demonizing rural people as poorly educated and backward for many decades, and rural support for Republicans is mostly a reaction to this. In the 30’s and 40’s the Grange movement was huge here (was founded not far away) and Democrats ran the county. So- this is important to understand because although there is a minority who back Trump no matter what, most people are getting upset, and I think the Trump admin is taking notice. I predict a bloodbath in the midterms (not that Democrats will do much better, of course), so although I have not seen the details, these regenerative ag noises coming from the Trump admin look to be a band-aid rebrand. My guess is that they will rebrand existing work that NRCS does (just like the Democrats did under Biden), and claim credit. I will also add that $700 is quite stingy considering the recent cuts that have been made, and I am doubtful that it will come near restoring previous levels. I also doubt that this will end the noises that have been increasing in volume for the last 10 years coming from conservative policy think-tanks, etc that have been calling for eliminating the CTA program (CTA is basically what pays the wages of NRCS employees), and although they have not specifically stated it, I believe that the aim here is to privatize NRCS, so that consultants can capture more of the Farm Bill funding (and thus likely stripping even more farming resources from farms and rural communities).
I will also confirm that NRCS funding, if anything, favors smaller farms. When NRCS awards funding, the organization tries to base it on conservation impact. This system is not perfect, but every application is ranked based upon the conservation impact. Sometimes the focus is on particular watersheds that have been proven to be impacted by pollutants, sometimes it is on air quality, sometimes erosion- you get the idea. Farm size is never part of the equation when NRCS makes a funding decision. I have worked on farms as small as 1 acre, on up to farms that farm 1000s of acres. Now, because there are caps on funding amounts for individual practices, the largest farms are going to surpass these caps, and small farms are not, so as I said, if anything, NRCS is favoring smaller farms. NRCS in my experience tries its best to be truly science-based, but of course every farm is unique based on region, soils, sun exposure, ground slope, weather patterns, farm finances and management styles, so not everything works everywhere, but they try, at least in my experience. Every county, and every NRCS office has a unique personality, and if you are lucky, you live in a county where things mesh well. I will also agree with the previous poster that if you want the best quality food, go buy it straight from a farm, provided the farm has the desire and ability to sell directly to the public. Very few farms treat their animals poorly, but if you spend a little time talking to an individual farmer, and take a look at their farm from the road, you will very quickly be able to spot these people and avoid them (again, they are and absolutely tiny minority, and from what I have seen this occurs more through neglect or poor financial resources than any desire to be abusive). Very few farmers are ideological- most are very pragmatic people that farm because they want to be left alone, and operate outside of the system/rat race as much as possible (libertarian would describe them best- but they are not the ideological/foolish libertarian types you see online or in media. They are the “just leave everyone alone to live their life” kind of libertarians).
Anyway, that got long, and I apologize for that, but given my experience I figured I would share a little bit. Farms are in trouble- they have been for a long time, and it has been continually getting worse, so what has been going on is basically on trend, sadly.
Hope everyone has a nice Christmas :)
Arkady, thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Amazing how even the good programs (or portions that you highlight) get run over by the tractor of our own hubris/stupidity. Such is contemporary living. Holiday wishes to all.
Thank you , Arkady!
wish there was a DM feature, because i have no clue how to access such things out here.
(i expect that they would laugh and shoo me away, anyways…everythings geared towards chemical ag, out here…hay and wine grapes…formerly peanuts)
If you use Twitter, you can look for me there under the same name- feel free to send a DM there if you would like :)
Does that mean that if clever pro-farming Republican officeholders were to “de-brand” the NRCS soil-health grants and practices as “climate-related” and went back to status-quo-ante “branding” them as soil-health and agri-proctuctivity enhancements; that those clever pro-farming Republican officeholders could trick the TrumpenVance Administration into tolerating the restoration of those programs and grants to status-quo-ante levels?
Maybe those clever pro-farming Republican officeholders could call such a status-quo-ante restoration bill by the name of ” The We-Love-Our-Farmers Soil Health and Profits Enhancement Act”.
Ray Archuleta was an NRCS soil-etc. scientist who developed and also found out and brought back from Brazil a lot of the soil life and managed agroecology knowledge that Gabe Brown used to develop his methods. Brown referrences and highligts Archuleta in his book and some of his videos.
” Ray the Soil Guy” —-> https://www.raythesoilguy.life/
” Global Earth Repair Foundation” —> https://globalearthrepairfoundation.org/ray-archuleta/
And here’s a whole lotta buncha images of Ray Archuleta, each with its own URL of origin, any one-or-more of which may be interesting; for those who wish to do their own lateral wormhole image-to-URL searches.
Just because TrumpenVance’s Secretary of Agriculture is spraypainting “regen-ag” on big-biz regenefake ag does not make real regenerative as real as it was when its inventors invented it. It still is . . . in the right clean green hands.
And however soi-dissant Big Corporate Organic may be about its “truth in organitude” soi-dissanting, there are still organic producers which are the real thing and neither soi nor dissant. They are out here and they can be found.
And of course the homedweller with a real yard or a real community garden plot can do their own real organic garden vegetable growing. Nothing stops them right now today.
So in other words it’s in line with everything else about this Potemkin Village administration. Trump is running a reality show, not a government.
Unfortunately for him he is now an over the hill TV has been descending Norma Desmond’s staircase–“I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Bring on the white coats.
” paging Doctor Miller, Doctor Vance, Doctor Miller” . . .
( and of course my tiny reply-comment just above was also a referrence to a very short bit extracted from a Three Stooges movie. I found it on You Tube under ” Calling Dr. Howard Dr. Fine Dr. Howard”.
“The Three Stooges – Calling Dr. Howard Dr. Fine Dr. Howard”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cW7F6VlQc8
Second your comment, Carolinian, Its reality TV all over… We are the United States…
I’m more interested in what is happening locally, shop at the farmer’s market, sorry to say, never bought meat from Whole Foods, Earth Fare.. no matter what the label claims. Unless I know I can track the farm.
My work involves staying connected to our communities and educating my patients and clients.
I did a brief write up on USDA organic certification during my graduate program; my classmates had their jaw dropping moments.
One caveat, the prices can be prohibitive for what a real regenerative farm actually produces, one way would be to keep upping the demand and prices get evenly distributed. I’m aware that not everyone is privileged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_parity
https://viacampesina.org/en/2024/08/parity-pricing-supply-management-and-fair-income-for-family-farms-a-note-from-the-us/
all this ‘what the market will bear” nonsense is just silly…and makes it unprofitable to grow a veggie for sale unless yer huge.
markets are a human creation..not a holy mountain.
and money is a tool, not a fetish object.
https://archive.foodfirst.org/what-is-parity-and-why-you-should-care/
a better explanation than the wiki, above…man, google and wiki have really gone downhill…its almost as if the ptb want to hide “parity pricing for ag”,lol.
its essentially, ordinary business. a producer figures his cost, then adds a bit, and thats the price.
today, however…and for a long time…if it costs me $3 to produce a tomato…i cant charge$3.25…i can only charge what “the market can bear”(filtered through all those imported tomatoes and tomato-like things that come out of giant corporate ag)…which is likely a lot less than $3.
if market price is $1…tough shite,lol…i lose $2 on every tom i produce.
i cant think of another business that is forced to operate this way.
I think one problem, amfortas, is the way our fine “market” system handles externalities. With factory farming, all the externalities are bad–water pollution, adverse health effects for those who eat the food, CO2 emissions, etc.–but the producers don’t pay for them. With truly regenerative farming, the externalities are positive–soil improvement, higher nutrition without adverse health effects, some CO2 extraction–but the producer doesn’t get paid for these positive effects.
If we were serious about MAHA and climate change, we’d be charging Big Ag huge amounts of money for the externalities they’re causing while regenerative farmers would receive payments for the positive effects of their work on top of what they get for the crop.
We could impose the James Hansen fossil-carbon feebate plan for starters. In theory at least.
https://csas.earth.columbia.edu/sites/csas.earth.columbia.edu/files/content/Fee-and-Dividend-Miller-Hansen-20191110-1.pdf
” Dr James Hansen – A carbon fee and dividend plan is a crucial part of social and environmental justice ”
https://redgreenandblue.org/2020/09/22/dr-james-hansen-carbon-fee-dividend-plan-crucial-part-social-environmental-justice/
” Carbon fee and dividend ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend