As 2025 comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting on a year that reshaped the food and farm policy landscape: from major disruptions in federal agencies, to stalled policymaking in North Carolina, and a historic government shutdown, farmers and communities continue to feel the impacts.
At CFSA we are always guided by our members and the priorities we hear from producers – this year, those included restoring disrupted grant programs, building stronger local food systems, and reforming an inequitable disaster relief process. We connected farmers to policymakers, gathered data, compiled stories and secured co-sponsors for new bills.
Let’s take a look at all that’s happened in 2025, and what priorities await in 2026.
Shocks to Local Food Systems
In March 2025, USDA abruptly paused and then later terminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, a nationally popular program with bipartisan support that helped farmers grow and sell produce to local schools, hospitals, and institutions. LFPA provided the base funding over the last two years for CFSA’s FarmsSHARE program, which supported 18 North Carolina food hubs to purchase food from more than 300 local farms for free distribution to communities facing food insecurity. CFSA has connected affected farmers and food hubs to policymakers to share their stories, and secured co-sponsors on bills to restore local food procurement funding.
Other programs, like Local Food for Schools and Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC), saw their programs terminated and funding slashed, affecting farms throughout the Carolinas. Through PCSC, farmers and ranchers worked with USDA and technical service organizations like CFSA to implement on-farm conservation practices, participate in important research trials exploring climate mitigation, and expand market opportunities to help meet increased consumer demand for climate-smart products.
The most recent farm bill extension lapsed in September and, before it could be re-extended, Congress failed to pass its annual appropriations bill and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history began.
In addition to USDA’s massive furloughs, the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) was placed on a statutory and operational pause. LAMP is the umbrella program for countless local food grants, including the Farmers Market Promotion Program, Regional Food System Partnerships, Value-Added Producer Grants and more.
Another farm bill extension on November 12 extended the life of LAMP for another ten months, but the long-term outlook remains uncertain.
USDA Staffing Crisis
Government food safety and local food system agencies saw significant staff losses in 2025, threatening their ability to serve farmers.
Research agencies, such as the National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) and the Economic Research Service (ERS), provide critical market and data analysis for farmers and food systems. These agencies have lost between 20-30% of their staff this year, undermining reliable research into food prices and market trends.
The Farm Service Agency (FSA), which administers loans, payments, and disaster recovery to farmers and landowners through state and county offices, was considered understaffed and largely inaccessible to farmers before they lost an additional 13% of their national staff this year. A depleted FSA has already struggled to administer timely payments under the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program, yet further FSA office closures are expected.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides direct support to farmers and ranchers for their conservation planning and contracts, and has been one of the hardest divisions hit, losing more than 25% of its staff in 2025. Low staffing levels and increasing demand from producers means even longer wait times and lower acceptance rates to programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which CFSA helps farmers administer through our Conservation Planning Technical Assistance Program.
A proposed USDA reorganization will almost certainly exacerbate widespread staff losses and programmatic disruptions. One of the major tenets of the reorganization plan is the movement of USDA staff and offices away from the Washington, D.C. region to regional hubs, likely leading to further resignations and gaps in staffing.
Reconciliation and the Future of the Farm Bill
In Summer 2025, Congress passed a major budget package (the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” through the Senate’s reconciliation process, which allows certain budgetary changes to become law with a simple majority rather than the usual 60-vote threshold. The bill included elements normally found in a farm bill, like commodity program subsidies and crop insurance adjustments, but not as part of a comprehensive farm bill package.
The bill also slashes a record $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), increases work requirements for recipients, and eliminates the SNAP-Ed program.
The most recent Farm Bill was passed in 2018, with programs housed within the bill being sustained by periodic extensions in the seven years since. For decades, farm bills have depended on bipartisan urban-rural coalitions to jointly pass a package. In 2025, the unilateral approach to reconciliation saw nutrition and commodity support pitted against each other, undermining bipartisan trust and breaking the cardinal rule of farm bill negotiations. As a result, a contentious, piecemeal approach to future farm bills may well become the norm.
2026 and a Way Forward
In 2026, CFSA is advocating for a number of “marker bills” that will shape farm and food policy in a future farm bill, including:
- Strengthening Local Food Security (SLFS) Act of 2025 – helps small and mid-sized farmers sell more locally grown food to schools and community programs, boosting farmer income while giving families better access to food.
- Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act – helps small and mid-sized farmers sell more local food through state and tribal programs, creating stable markets for producers while improving access to fresh, nutritious food for families in need.
- Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) – advances a more resilient and competitive regionally-rooted meat processing sector by updating the Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) program, increasing size eligibility and improving state cost shares.
- Organic Science and Research Investment (OSRI) Act – strengthens USDA’s organic research and data programs by boosting funding, coordination and support for organic and transitioning farmers so that innovations in soil health and sustainable production can benefit all producers.
- Save Our Small (SOS) Farms Act – modernizes federal farm safety net programs to make crop insurance and disaster assistance more accessible for small, specialty and beginning farmers, helping them stay on the land despite economic and climate challenges.
In North Carolina, CFSA continues to advocate for a non-recurring injection of state funds to allow FarmsSHARE to keep connecting farmers with food hubs.
In South Carolina, there is a real chance to increase conservation tax credits and advance regional meat processing reciprocity, further clearing bottlenecks in SC’s livestock sector. Planning for an SC Local Food Day is also underway for the spring legislative session.
Throughout 2026, we will continue mobilizing grassroots action in the Carolinas, delivering timely analysis and supporting our members and partners as we build momentum for a sustainable, resilient and equitable farm future.
