HHS, USDA, and EPA Announce Over $1B in Investments and Plan to Accelerate Progress on Farm Modernization and Long-Term Food Supply Security

Background:

The Executive Order (14212) establishing the MAHA Commission directed the involved agencies to work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world. American farmers are critical partners in the success of the Make America Healthy Again agenda. President Trump’s recent executive order regarding elemental phosphorus and glyphosate is focused on ensuring national and food supply security by guaranteeing an adequate domestic supply of these materials on which our agricultural industry currently relies. This plan and these investments show that the federal government also recognizes the need to accelerate farm modernization and long-term food supply security.

Three-Pillar Plan to Accelerate Progress:

1. Better understand risks of chemicals to individual and population health
2. Increase federal government investment in regenerative agriculture practices and education
3. Spur private sector innovation in farming modernization by reducing red tape and matching private funding

Research Focus:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and National Institutes for Health (NIH) will develop a research and evaluation framework for cumulative exposure across chemical classes in the food supply. This research will focus on using and developing New Approach Methodologies to overcome prior barriers to fully understanding human health and environmental risks of chemical contaminants, and addressing these risks for even greater food security and safety.

Investment Highlights:

• $840 million from USDA
  • The Regenerative Pilot Program focuses on whole-farm planning that addresses major resource concerns—soil, water, and natural vitality—under a single conservation framework.
    • USDA is dedicating $400 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and $300 million through the Conservation Stewardship Program to fund regenerative agriculture projects and practices in FY26.
  • The Strengthening Agricultural Systems Program aims to help transform the U.S. food and agricultural system to increase agricultural production while enhancing farmer prosperity. The Program does so through funding large-scale projects that seek to solve key problems that USDA identifies as of local, regional, or national importance. Projects under this $140 million program will support new uses and markets of agricultural products, innovative solutions to pests and diseases of plants or animals, and combatting food and diet-related chronic diseases.
  • USDA is leveraging existing authorities to create public-private partnerships within Natural Resources Conservation Service conservation programs. These partnerships will allow USDA to match private funding, thereby stretching taxpayer dollars further and bringing new capacity to producers interested in adopting regenerative practices while ensuring that private land rights are maintained.
• $200 million from the Department of Health and Human Services
  • $100 million grand prize challenge from NIH for researchers to identify creative solutions for evaluating the exposure, diagnosis, and treatments of cumulative chemical exposures on individual health.
  • $100 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to identify new and innovative and cost-effective technologies that reduce reliance on chemical crop protection tools in order to improve human health, including the health of farmers, such as electrothermal and electrical weeding technologies, robotic weeding systems, precision mechanical weed control, thermal weed control, biological and non-toxic herbicides, mulching systems, and integrated systems.
• $30 million from EPA
  • Grand prize challenge for cost-effective alternatives to pre-harvest desiccation use of pesticides, which is a potential contributor to human exposure. This challenge will lead to reduced usage of pesticides while providing new innovative tools for farmers to use.