June 2, 2025 – Over the weekend, the three agencies that have the most impact on the American food system released more details on how they would cut spending to align with the broader budget President Trump outlined for fiscal year 2026.
The details were outlined in budget proposals released by each agency. They are not final: Congress still has to appropriate the funds. Also, these budgets are separate from the budget reconciliation bill currently being considered by the Senate; however, the documents further reveal the scale of the Trump administration’s plans to cut back on farm-conservation work, food and farm research, and enforcement of environmental laws.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget would cut spending by more than half, from $9.1 billion to $4.2 billion. (Over the past decade, the lowest it ever reached was $8.1 billion.) Spending cuts that could impact the food system include nearly $2 billion from a pair of programs that send money to states to help communities clean up contaminated drinking water and prevent runoff into local waterways; some of that pollution comes from agriculture and food processing. In the document, the EPA says it is “encouraging states to take responsibility of funding their own water infrastructure projects.”
The agency also proposes completely eliminating $1.4 billion in grant programs that fund projects on topics including pesticides and pollution prevention, and it cuts $61 million from money used to enforce environmental laws. In a press release, the Environmental Protection Network, an advocacy organization, said that the 49 percent cut to enforcement would undermine “the agency’s ability to uphold the nation’s environmental laws and protect public health.”
At the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed cutting $17 billion in research funding at the National Institutes of Health, $400 million from the Food and Drug Administration, and $550 million from the Centers for Disease Control. In addition to eliminating thousands of jobs, the budget proposal says the agency is “terminating, de-scoping or non-renewing over 5,000 contracts, resulting in significant savings.” It proposes allocating $500 million to a new “MAHA Initiative,” which will now also house programs dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease and childhood lead poisoning prevention that were formerly run by the CDC.
Given the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) broad reach, its proposed cuts would likely have the biggest immediate impact on farmers and eaters. The agency is proposing a $6.7 billion cut in discretionary spending across the board, including a whopping $784 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), where funds would drop from $896 million to $112 million. The savings mainly come from eliminating discretionary funds for conservation technical assistance, a term for USDA employees who help farmers do things like plant cover crops and install fencing. In the document, the agency says the NRCS will fund technical assistance through other sources and operate “with efficiencies that reflect greater reliance on state and local conservation districts.”
The USDA’s budget also zeros out future funding for the popular McGovern-Dole international food aid program which buys food from American farms for school meals in low-income countries. It cuts $600 million in research funding for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and proposes rolling back a pandemic-era change to the Supplemental Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) that allowed families to buy more fruits and vegetables.
In an emailed statement, National WIC Association president Georgia Machell said the change would lead to a drop in average monthly benefits from $54 to $13 for breastfeeding mothers and $27 to $10 for young children. “Reducing the [benefit] significantly hinders access to fruits and vegetables for low-income mothers and young children at nutritional risk, the very populations this program was designed to protect,” she said. (Link to this post.)
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