During his first presidential term, Donald Trump attempted to cut funding to hunger programs, implemented agricultural tariffs, tax cuts, and record-setting payments to commodity farmers, and rolled back regulations impacting environmental pollution, labor standards, food safety, and nutrition.
Despite no big changes to agricultural policy as a result of a farm bill still stalled in Congress, President Joe Biden’s governing of the food system looked very different.
Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s priorities have centered on spending billions of dollars on food and farm infrastructure, paying farmers to implement climate-smart practices, finalizing new regulations related to the environment, labor, food safety, and nutrition, and distributing more dollars to food insecure families.
On December 29, 2024, during the final monthly meeting to track the progress of efforts launched after the 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made the case that those efforts had paid off.
“Folks from across the country have pulled together towards our common goal of ending hunger, improving nutrition, and supporting the farmers, ranchers, farm workers, and food workers who grow and produce our food,” he said. “And through that work, we have collectively made progress in transforming the food system from farm to fork.”
Some food and farm advocates have told Civil Eats they agree with that sentiment and point to major accomplishments. Others see a long list of lost opportunities that ultimately resulted in business as usual, a feeling conservatives were able to harness during the election through Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s promises to “Make America Healthy Again” under Trump.
It will be many years before the ultimate impacts—good, bad, or neutral—of the Biden administration’s many investments and regulatory changes become clear. To maintain a record as we head into the second Trump administration, we’ve produced an accounting of Biden’s most significant actions impacting food and farming during his tenure.
Taking on Consolidation and Corporate Power, and Supporting Farmer Livelihood
Six months after his inauguration, Biden issued an executive order that included 72 actions to tackle corporate consolidation across all sectors. Agriculture was the first industry mentioned, and the ways in which consolidation was driving the loss of small family farms became one of Vilsack’s most-cited talking points throughout the administration.
Under his tenure, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) restarted progress on the 100-year-delayed Packers & Stockyards Act rules meant to protect farmers from meatpacker abuses. Under President Obama, Vilsack had made some progress on those rules—only to have the work thrown out by President Trump. This time, the USDA made real strides and finalized three major rules.
Vilsack pushed the third and potentially most significant over the finish line just yesterday, making substantive changes to the poultry industry’s notorious “tournament system.” Chicken companies will no longer be able to drop base pay based on competitive metrics, for example, and will have to provide more details in grower contracts about required investments for barn and equipment upgrades, among other standard practices. Some farm groups have criticized the agency for taking too long, as it will now be easier for Republicans to withdraw the rule if they choose to. But during a press conference Monday, Vilsack defended the process. “We’ve taken this opportunity to listen to producers about what would create a fairer system,” he said. USDA withdrew a fourth rule that would have changed the definition of “unfair practices” because the agency ran out of time to finalize it. A fifth rule related to creating fairer cattle markets is still in its early stages.
Biden’s Department of Justice also obtained consent decrees in two Packers & Stockyards cases brought against poultry companies Koch Foods and Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms (with the help of USDA). Those resulted in payments to growers to make up for unfair compensation policies and Sanderson and Wayne Farms agreeing to alter their practices going forward. Vilsack’s USDA was actively investigating abuses reported by contract growers for Tyson as well, although nothing had come of that investigation by election time.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual meeting about reducing the costs of meat through increased competition in the meat processing industry in the South Court Auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on January 3, 2022 in Washington, DC. President Biden heard from Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and independent farmers. (Photo credit: Sarah Silbiger, Getty Images)
Vilsack also delivered on another change long pushed for by farmer advocates: meat labeled “Product of USA” must now come from animals born and raised in the U.S., whereas before, meat packaged in the country could carry the label even if the animal had been imported. He did not reinstate Country of Origin Labeling, the next step on that continuum that many groups are still fighting for.
Investment was also central to the USDA’s approach to consolidation in meat. The agency worked to distribute $500 million in grants to small and mid-size meatpacking plants to give them a leg up against the highly consolidated big players. The USDA also invested in local and regional food systems beyond meat, pumping extra funding into popular local food system programs, launching Regional Food Business Centers, and making it easier for schools to purchase local foods for kids’ meals.
While Biden’s USDA took a lot of action on corporate consolidation, some experts question whether the steps will add up to anything more than feel-good spending, since concentration in meat and other markets doesn’t seem to be slowing down. (The USDA says it is too soon to assess the impacts.) Plus, Vilsack and the USDA sided with meatpackers on other fronts, such as backing the repeal of California’s animal welfare law, Proposition 12, and distributing funds to big meat companies through the Climate Smart Commodities program (more on that later).
At the same time, Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Lina Khan spearheaded a revival of antitrust enforcement with profound implications for the food system and farmers. Khan’s FTC issued new merger guidelines and was successful in blocking Kroger’s takeover of Albertson’s, which would have increased consolidation in the grocery industry.
Biden’s USDA also provided loan forgiveness and direct payments to many farmers. The American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) provision to pay Black farmers for past discrimination was initially blocked in court after Texas Republican Ag Commissioner Sid Miller led a lawsuit alleging racism against white farmers. Then, Democrats in Congress created a new “race neutral” program through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That resulted in the USDA distributing $2.5 billion in loan forgiveness to 47,800 farmers labeled “distressed borrowers” and $2 billion in payments to 43,000 farmers who experienced any past discrimination in USDA loan programs, based on race, gender, or other factors.
Tackling the Climate Crisis
The Biden administration also pumped significant funds into efforts to bolster climate-smart practices on farms. The USDA’s marquee project on this front was the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program, which invested just over $3 billion of IRA money into 135 projects across the country. According to the USDA, more than 21,000 farms and 5.2 million acres of farmland are involved as of January 2025. Some of the funding went to nonprofits, states, tribes, and universities, but the biggest chunk went to businesses. Some went to giant agricultural corporations like Tyson and Land O’Lakes, which led to criticism of the program.
The IRA also added $19.5 billion in additional climate-specific funding for oversubscribed conservation programs like the Environmental Quality Improvement Project (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) to be distributed over several years. So far, the USDA has allocated about $2 billion to farmers who are using the funds to pay for practices such as agroforestry and prescribed grazing. Some experts have questioned how big of an impact some of these efforts will have, though, because how much carbon gets put into the ground and how long it stays there is still a matter of debate, especially for two of the most popular practices—no-till and cover crops.
So far, the USDA has allocated about $2 billion to farmers who are using conservation funds to pay for practices such as agroforestry and prescribed grazing.
On the global stage, the USDA created another farm-and-climate initiative, AIM for Climate, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates. That project is even more reliant on collaboration with big corporate players including Bayer, Syngenta, ADM, and PepsiCo.
But while most don’t directly touch farms, the IRA’s investments in renewable energy and Biden’s other actions to shift away from fossil fuels (such as rejoining the Paris Agreement and pausing development of new LNG terminals) might have the longest lasting impact on the food system. Experts agree that phasing out fossil fuels is the number one non-negotiable step toward securing a livable planet, and any incremental progress on that front could save farms from droughts, flooding, extreme heat, and other weather events that threaten their operations. Biden’s USDA also invested $2.2 billion in 7,200 on-farm renewable energy projects, including installing manure digesters and solar panels and $6 billion in rural electric coops.
In October, the administration unveiled a national strategy to reduce food waste, which is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It’s unclear if that strategy will remain in place under Trump.
Regulating Pesticides and Other Chemicals
Ongoing pesticide approvals and regulations generally chug along without much disruption even as administrations change. That was true under Biden, barring a few exceptions.
The most significant: After five decades of ignoring its pesticide obligations under the Endangered Species Act and several lawsuits, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took several huge steps to begin evaluating pesticides’ risks to endangered species. It finalized an herbicide strategy that will direct farmers to mitigate risks to threatened species when using weedkillers and released a draft of a similar plan for insecticides. And it began tackling a long backlog of chemicals currently in use that haven’t been properly assessed for their risks to endangered species.
