A Closer Look at USDA’s “A Deregulatory Agenda for American Agriculture and Consumers”
At a press conference in San Antonio, Texas, on February 26, 2026, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced two major USDA initiatives. The one that got the most publicity was the new “One Farmer, One File” unified computer system. This partnership with AI giant Palantir will make it faster and easier for farmers to receive USDA payments.
Rollins’s second announcement was a little more cryptic. During a visit to the farm of Texas Farm Bureau President Russell Boenig, she announced a USDA “package of deregulatory actions taken by the Trump Administration to cut red tape, unleash innovation, and increase affordability for farmers, ranchers, and consumers.” It’s formal name is “A Deregulatory Agenda for American Agriculture and Consumers.”
What’s on this deregulatory agenda, and what could it mean for eco-ag? Here are a few of the items on the agenda that seem most concerning:
In addition to a general rollback of environmental regulations, there are several clauses that will make it easier for private entities to degrade our public lands. Rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule will pave the way for logging companies to penetrate some of the most remote areas of National Forest lands, fragmenting wildlife habitat and degrading important recreational landscapes. Similarly, the USDA’s plan to “unleash critical mineral production” will make it easier for mining companies to get resource extraction rights to federal land.
The plan also calls for increasing grazing on public lands, even though many National Forest and BLM lands are already being degraded by overstocking. The “Grazing Action Plan” will not only make it easier to stock more animals than a piece of land can support; it will also “expand disaster relief” for ranchers so that when they lose animals due to poor land management practices, taxpayers will foot the bill.
Agricultural workers at the bottom of our food system will also lose out under the new regulations. A proposed rule (currently open for comment) will increase line speeds in poultry- and pork-processing plants. As labor rights advocates have argued for years, faster line speeds increase the rate of workplace accidents and repetitive motion injuries.
Finally, USDA plans to “streamline” biotechnology regulations, making it easier for biotech companies to release genetically engineered organisms with less regulation, safety testing, or labeling.
What all of these actions have in common is that they make it easier for the dysfunctional conventional agriculture system to continue business as usual. By supporting farmers and ranchers who degrade America’s public lands, the deregulation plan disincentivizes them from transitioning to more regenerative practices.
If the USDA really wanted to do what was best for America’s food system, it would instead offer programs that make regenerative, environmentally responsible land management a prerequisite for federal funding or grazing contracts.
