What we do know is that the USDA moved quickly to get farmers enrolled in RPP contracts.
According to data Civil Eats obtained through a FOIA request, more than 3,600 RPP contracts were signed between January and July 31, 2026. As of Sept. 16, the USDA spokesperson said, the total had jumped to 5,100.
But the speed is likely because agents were able to enroll any farmer who came in wanting EQIP or CSP funds for an already popular practice, experts said. During the Minnesota call, for example, NRCS agents highlighted 6 of the 15 practices on the regenerative list and noted that they were “in our top 10 practices” for EQIP every year.
The highlighted practices were cover crops, conservation crop rotations, nutrient management, no-till, reduced till, and pest management conservation systems.
“If it’s a regen practice, it’s counting toward our regen goal,” Kloubec said.
In other words, practices farmers were going to do anyway may be recorded as “regenerative.”
“The [Regenerative Pilot] program is well-intended. But it’s not revolutionary.”
But most experts said while other advanced regenerative practices like agroforestry could have been included, they felt that the regenerative practices USDA is prioritizing within RPP are all good. And they pointed to three benefits of RPP contracts over a typical EQIP or CSP contract. Compared to typical conservation contracts, RPP contracts are longer, at a minimum of five years, giving farmers more time to make adjustments and see benefits. Farmers are also required to do soil health testing.
“That is so wildly important,” said Jesse Womack, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “If you know that your biologically active soil is going to provide more plant nutrition for you than you otherwise would have accounted for, then we can start talking about very serious reductions in applied fertilizer, which has incredible environmental benefits. Soil health testing is possibly one of the most important emerging management tools we have to help folks become more profitable per acre with less inputs.”
Womack was also enthusiastic about the fact that RPP requires farmers to engage in “whole farm planning” with NRCS agents, although it’s unclear how much that process differs on the ground from the planning that farmers typically do. Kroeck, who went through the application process, couldn’t identify how that aspect was different compared to past conservation applications he’s completed.
Robert Bonnie, a former USDA official who oversaw NRCS under former President Barack Obama and worked on climate-smart farm practices under Biden, said a good NRCS agent should be helping farmers identify resource concerns across their whole farm anyway.
“The [Regenerative Pilot] program is well-intended and is a good use of NRCS money. The practices are good, and there’s a lot of demand for them,” he said. “But it’s not revolutionary, it’s a continuation of what NRCS has been doing for a long time. My concern is that in order to make programs like this successful, you have to have the staff to implement them.”
Ranchers gather in drought stressed pasture as they take part in the Soil Health Academy, which teaches regenerative agriculture techniques in 2022 in Cimarron, New Mexico. (Photo credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
In the email, the USDA spokesperson said that the agency’s field staff have been driving the adoption of regenerative practices by working with farmers on their land to provide knowledge and technical assistance.
“The Regenerative Pilot Program was a national campaign, which spurred discussion between operators and conservation planners on NRCS’s primary regenerative practices, that may have not happened otherwise,” they said.
But many people who work in conservation are also concerned about how the staffing cuts Trump’s USDA implemented over the past year are impacting farmers’ access to conservation programs more broadly, and especially RPP as a new program.
In Minnesota, NRCS agents said they were down about 100 employees and that their staff was working long hours to meet the RPP goals.
“This was implemented in a period where NRCS staff has been pretty well eviscerated. There are counties across the country that no longer have a single NRCS staffer available to producers,” Womack said.
One possibility is that in the rush to get contracts signed quickly, with fewer staff, NRCS could award larger contracts to a smaller group of big farms. Many worried that would happen anyway, since Congress let payment limits within EQIP expire in 2018.
“When you have very few hands to spend that money and really big budgets, the pressure becomes to work with bigger farmers on more expensive contracts.”
“I’ve heard a number of folks express real concern that perhaps there was not the kind of access and competitive edge that there should have been for small- and mid-size farms to take advantage of this pilot,” Womack said, because at the field office level, there’s pressure to get the money allocated each year out to farmers, especially when it’s an administration priority.
“When you have very few hands to spend that money and really big budgets, the pressure becomes to work with bigger farmers on more expensive contracts,” he said. “That pretty explicitly disadvantages smaller farms.”
According to USDA data analyzed for Civil Eats by a former USDA budget specialist, the average dollar amount across contracts increased by 70 percent, although the agency did not give out more of the largest contracts at the very top. The USDA spokesperson said that since the numbers for 2026 are not complete, “it’s too premature to evaluate contract size.”
Happ, at IATP, worried that reduced staffing would also lead to NRCS agents prioritizing the least complicated practices, which don’t have the same climate and other environmental benefits as more advanced regenerative projects. “They’re going to want to get farmers in and out the door. They’re going to want to minimize paperwork,” he said. “So, they’re probably going to focus on the practices they already know.”
In Maine, Kroeck said when he asked his agent about applying for RPP, she groaned. She is nothing but helpful, he said, but she was the only NRCS staff member in the county at the time and was also covering another office half-time, so figuring out a new program application was a burden. She helped him anyway and thought he had a good chance, but his application was rejected for reasons that are unclear based on the program’s requirements.
Jason Russell’s application was also rejected after a long application process.
Russell runs Big Boulder Farms just north of Cedar Rapids in Iowa, where he raises livestock and grows grain, with a focus on regenerative practices.
Last year, he decided he wanted to try grazing his cattle on his cropland to improve the health of the soil. “It’s kind of a different way of doing things,” he said. “You don’t just do permanent pasture. You take part of your cropland and run cattle on it for a year to kind of reset it.”
His agent thought the system would be a great fit for RPP, so he applied to pay for the fencing he would need to install. But after almost a year of planning, measuring, getting quotes, and filling out paperwork, he was turned down. “They said there’s no money available because they just want to concentrate on existing pastureland, not putting animals on existing cropland,” he said. “I was confused.”
In an email, a USDA spokesperson said that in the future, NRCS will host stakeholder roundtables with farmers and partner organizations. “These sessions will provide an opportunity to gather direct feedback on the pilot’s implementation and identify ways to refine and strengthen the program,” they said. The promised Regenerative Advisory Council the agency said it would launch with RPP and which is still listed on its website, however, has been scrapped.
