Government Shutdown Could Cancel NOSB Fall Meeting
Starting on October 1, 2025, all USDA employees in the National Organic Program (NOP) have been furloughed. When USDA issued its “Lapse of Funding Plan” on September 30, detailing how the agency would respond to the federal government shutdown, the Agricultural Management Service (AMS) included the National Organic Program (NOP) in its list of “significant agency activities that will cease during a lapse.”
Matthew Dillon, from the Organic Trade Association, says that the main way the shutdown may impact organic certification is through possible disruptions in the USDA’s Organic Integrity Database, which is used by certifiers for new certifications and certification changes. Programs like the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) and Organic Market Development (OMD) grant activities will continue because they are administered by third parties, though reimbursements from USDA may be delayed.
Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, it could also impact the Fall 2025 National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting, scheduled for November 4-6 in Omaha, Nebraska. If the shutdown ends before October 16, the meeting will continue in-person as planned; if staff return sometime between October 16 and 22, the meeting will be all virtual; and if Congress doesn’t agree on a budget before October 22, the meeting will be canceled entirely.
While 49 percent of all USDA employees are furloughed during the shutdown, less than 9% of AMS employees are on furlough. That’s because the bulk of AMS employees (84%) are part of programs that are not funded by annual appropriations. Many of these programs — including dairy, poultry, meat, grain and tobacco grading and specialty crop inspections — are funded by user fees and assessments and thus are unaffected by the government shutdown.
The fact that the NOP is not funded by user fees may come as a surprise to certified organic farmers, who pay anywhere between “a few hundred to several thousand dollars” in organic inspection and certification fees. But all of those fee dollars go to third-part certification agencies; the NOP itself was funded by $24 million from appropriations in 2024. That’s a mere 0.07 percent of the total $32.6 billion in USDA appropriations and about $1400 for each of the country’s approximately 17,000 USDA-certified organic farms.
Fortunately, both the House and Senate budget bills are keeping the NOP funded at $22.8 million, only a slight reduction from last year’s appropriation. It’s not the NOP that’s causing the holdup that led to the government shutdown, and once the appropriations bill is finally passed, NOP will go back to business as usual. Most certified organic growers will probably agree that they would rather deal with the delay caused by an occasional government shutdown than pay an extra $1,400 per year to fund the program with user fees.
