The Department of Agriculture is slowly reviving farm conservation projects started under a Biden administration climate program, now stripped of references to climate change.
Around 90 projects formerly funded through the Biden administration’s partnerships for climate-smart commodities grants have been awarded new contracts meeting the Trump administration’s non-climate and related guidelines, the Agriculture Department said.
In addition to steering the program away from its original focus on climate, the Trump administration requires that at least 65 percent of the grant money go directly to farmers, rather than to organizations or vendors involved in the projects. That’s a change that’s won praise among farm groups — at least in concept — while presenting challenges in practice.
“I think that was actually a wise thing to do,” said Bryan Sievers, director of government relations at Roeslein Alternative Energy, a waste-to-energy company using a $70 million grant to restore grasslands in Missouri and Iowa and make biogas from a combination of prairie plants and manure.
