What Does USDA’s Regenerative Pilot Program Mean for Organic Farming?
On September 29, 2026, the USDA announced that it would increase funding for the Regenerative Pilot Program from $700 million in 2026 to $1 billion in 2027.
Good news for organic farming? Not really.
First launched in December 2025, the Regenerative Pilot Program (RPP) “is a conservation management approach that emphasizes natural resources through improved soil health, water management, and natural vitality for the productivity and prosperity of American agriculture and communities.”
Despite the novel name, the RPP actually just combines and streamlines the distribution of funds under two existing USDA programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). As a detailed analysis by Civil Eats points out, RPP is mostly just a rebranding of the Biden Administration’s “climate-smart” program—except that it doesn’t add any additional money on top of the normal budget for EQIP and CSP, which the climate-smart program did.
To be eligible for RPP funding, farmers work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to do a whole-farm assessment, use at least one regenerative management practice from an approved list, and do soil health testing the first and last year of the program contract. The program emphasizes the four soil health principles: maximize biodiversity, maximize continuous living roots, maximize soil cover, and minimize disturbance.
What conservation practices are eligible for the program? Things like conservation crop rotation, cover crops, nutrient management, contour farming, grazing management, and reduced or no-till. Farms can add multiple practices from this list, but only need to use one to receive funding. Since most farms are already using at least one of these practices (like nutrient management or no-till), that sets the bar pretty low.
Meanwhile, on September 30—just one day after the USDA’s announcement of increased funding for RPP—the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) came to an end, an entire year earlier than originally planned when it was launched in 2022. Over its four years, the TOPP program funded 3,100 field days, presentations, and workshops; reached 167,000 people; provided technical assistance to 7,600 people, established 4,100 mentoring pairs, and helped transition 88,100 acres into organic production.
TOPP received only a small amount of funding compared to RPP or other USDA programs—$100 million over four years, or $25 million a year. If it really wanted to promote organic farming, the USDA could have continued the TOPP program for twelve more years with the same amount of funding that it’s adding to RPP in one year alone.
The takeaway for eco-ag seems to be that the USDA is just using the term “regenerative” to mean “business as usual” and is not serious about making any meaningful changes to American agriculture. If it was, it would make transitioning to organic an end goal of the RPP—or, at the very least, extend funding for TOPP for a few more years.
