Just as the fight over federal grants canceled in the last fiscal year is settling down, a new skirmish looks ready to unfold at the Department of Agriculture.
The agency said Monday it’s not committing to spending money Congress just appropriated for rural development grants to assist minority producers, one of several small programs meant to help farms and other small businesses in rural areas.
The $3 million line item is in the fine print of the joint explanatory statement accompanying the annual appropriations bill President Donald Trump recently signed into law for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1.
It appears at odds with the administration’s opposition to grants that favor certain racial groups or “socially disadvantaged” populations, which officials consider divisive and discriminatory.
A Democratic Senate Appropriations aide said the grants — which the USDA awards each year through competitive applications — are a carve-out for socially disadvantaged groups through rural cooperatives.
Awardees can use the money to help agricultural co-ops craft business plans, among other activities, as long as at least half of the cooperative’s board of directors belongs to a socially disadvantaged group.
While reports accompanying spending bills aren’t themselves laws, they represent the intent of the Republican-led Congress, which chose to ignore the administration’s request to zero out the grants for the year.
Asked if the USDA intends to spend the funds as lawmakers directed, a spokesperson said the department is awaiting advice from its lawyers.
“The ability to distribute the grants is currently under review with the agency’s Office of General Counsel and the agency is waiting on official word on how we will proceed,” the department said in an email.
For the current fiscal year, the administration had sought to eliminate funding for rural cooperative development grants including the “socially disadvantaged” funds, calling them duplicative and overlapping with similar programs in other agencies. Appropriators rebuffed the request.
While the rural development programs are relatively small, they affect a constituency that’s been a strength for Trump. And with farmers now stretched economically by trade battles and other headwinds, the administration has been making extra efforts to retain support in rural strongholds.
Grants to minority producers face a few complications in the Trump administration. For one, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has been outspoken against programs targeted at racial groups, including overseeing the cancellation of previously awarded contracts early in the new administration.
A week ago, Rollins took on the state of California’s efforts to boost land ownership by minority and tribal farmers.
In a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rollins said the USDA has “substantial constitutional concerns” about California’s Agricultural Land Equity Task Force’s draft report promoting redistribution of farmland to “priority producers and land stewards.”
Rollins said in her letter to the Democratic governor, “Hardworking farmers, ranchers, and agricultural producers all deserve a shot at the American dream and they should not be stigmatized, demeaned or shut out of opportunities because of their race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”
Earlier this year, the USDA also announced it was ending the use of the term “socially disadvantaged” in many programs, following court rulings and the administration’s position that past discrimination in USDA programs has already been resolved.
In canceling 145 USDA grants related to diversity, equity and inclusion in June, Rollins declared in a news release, “Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda.”
In addition to its resistance to programs geared toward DEI, the USDA has shown that it doesn’t necessarily see itself bound to all congressional directions on appropriations.
In one of the more direct confrontations, the Forest Service earlier this year shifted funds away from grants to states in order to pay workers who took a deferred resignation offer.
Organizations such as the National Cooperative Business Association and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition have advocated for the grants. The USDA didn’t publish a notice of availability for the socially disadvantaged grants in fiscal 2025 despite an appropriation from Congress.
For the separate rural cooperative development grants, the USDA ultimately did announce the availability of funds 11 days before the Sept. 15 application deadline — then awarded the grants before the end of that month.
The quick action resolved months of uncertainty, the NCBA said on its website. The organization declined Monday to comment further but touted its members’ activism on its website.
“Grassroots advocacy is critical to ensuring elected officials understand that cooperatives are a time-tested solution to the most pressing issues of our time,” the NCBA said. “There are no better advocates for better policies to support co-ops than the member-owners doing the work within their communities.”
Contact this reporter on Signal at hellmarcman.49.
