Farmers Sue Trump Over Funding Freeze That Is Bankrupting Them

Farmers across the country are suing the Trump administration for freezing the funding of a USDA grant program that made payments to farmers for investing in “green agriculture.” The program and funding was put in place by the Biden Administration, and  many farmers joined the program to help gain access to federal funding. With the funding now gone, farmers are on the hook for the large out-of-pocket investments they made that were supposed to be funded by grant payments, and they don’t have the money to cover the costs now.  Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Several years ago during the Biden administration, the administration started something called the Climate Smart Program. That program was for American farmers who know all too well the dangers of climate change because they experience it every year, possibly more so than other folks. It was to help farmers do several different things, all related of course, to keeping farmers afloat while combating climate change. Everything from giving them grants to expand their grazing lands, so that way droughts were not affecting them as much for their livestock, helping them replenish the soil that was being lost each year due to erosion from areas that had heavy floods or heavy rains. And of course, giving them money to put solar panels on their farms. And all of this was funded by the Biden administration through the US Department of Agriculture. Farmers across the country took part in this program. They wrote out their grants.

They got approved by the administration, and they received a guarantee that we will give you x amount of dollars to do the things you're saying you're gonna do. In response to that, farmers here in the United States went out and they bought new equipment, they bought new land, or they leased new land that, you know, they have to make monthly payments on. Same with that massively expensive farming equipment that can cost $500,000 a pop. And they put the solar panels up there, which again, they, they sign these contracts to make monthly payments for the next 10, 20 years. All because they knew the money from the government is on the way. Then Trump came into office and canceled all the grants. So these farmers, some of whom had invested millions of dollars by taking out millions in loans to expand their lands or bring in new soil to replenish what was being lost under the Climate Smart Program, they're on the hook for millions of dollars in loans that they now can't afford.

They can't make the monthly payments. So they're at risk of losing their farmland, all because of the government backed outta the contract they had signed with them because the Trump administration froze all the funding. Well, now a group of uh, uh, about a dozen or more environmental groups is representing these farmers as they sue the Trump administration to get the money that they were promised, which is great for them. But unfortunately, because that money is now been dried up for a couple months, a lot of these farmers can't wait more months. You know, the bank is not gonna care

That you're in litigation trying to get the money back so you can pay the loan on the new piece of property you bought, or the new piece of equipment you want, or you bought. The bank's gonna come and just take it and you're gonna go into foreclosure. You could go into bankruptcy as some of these farmers already say, listen, we shelled out the money upfront. They were gonna pay us back, and now we are out the money. They're not paying. I'm about to lose everything. Other farmers have admitted they've had to lay off dozens of workers. So in these small rural communities, dozens of people overnight without a job, all because the Trump administration didn't care for Biden's Climate Program. It wasn't hurting anybody. You know, maybe some power companies that were getting a little bit less money each month because a few farms had solar panels. But other than that, it was just these farmers doing what they do, providing food for the entire country.