WASHINGTON (DTN) -- More than 56,000 farmers could be left without conservation assistance under the Senate's farm bill proposal, which would temporarily cut EQIP funding by nearly $1.9 billion over four years to bankroll two new conservation programs.
The discussion draft proposal reduces EQIP funding between FY2027 and FY2030 before restoring higher baseline funding in FY2031, but it's a move some economists say weakens one of USDA's most popular conservation programs.
The main intent of the shift is to create and fund the Forest Conservation Easement Program and the State Conservation Assistance Program, in a budget-neutral farm bill 2.0.
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), EQIP was projected to receive about $2.85 billion in FY2027. Instead, both the Senate draft and House-passed farm bill would provide roughly $2.5 billion.
"After the brief boost in conservation investments by the Inflation Reduction Act, conservation policy has been forced to play a zero-sum game, cannibalizing its existing funding to cover any new conservation investments or policies," said Jonathan Coppess, associate professor and director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois.
Under the Biden administration and IRA dollars, $8.45 billion was expected for EQIP.
The debate stems from last year's reconciliation package, which rescinded Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding while rolling those dollars into the Congressional Budget Office baseline for future farm bills. While that permanently increased conservation funding, it did not determine how Congress would allocate the money.
Critics argue lawmakers are diverting funding many expected would remain with EQIP. The Senate Agriculture Committee disagreed, saying stakeholders had long been warned the funding levels would change.
"There may have been some expectations," said a Senate Agriculture Committee aide. But they told stakeholders during last year's reconciliation process, "Do not get married to these numbers."
The committee aide who spoke with DTN said 2025 reconciliation rules prevented Congress from creating new conservation programs, making the 2026 farm bill playing field the first opportunity to redirect those baseline dollars.
But the University of Illinois analysis found more than 56,500 valid farmer applications could go without funding in the next few fiscal years, with Wisconsin, California, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia among the states seeing the greatest impacts.
The analysis estimated potential state-level EQIP losses by using historical USDA funding allocations and calculating how many valid but unfunded farmer contracts those reductions could represent.
"Each unfunded valid contract represents a farmer seeking assistance from EQIP to implement conservation practices on their farm," Coppess said. He argued fewer conservation dollars make adopting conservation practices more "costly, risky, and complicated," reducing benefits such as cleaner water and less soil erosion.
The Senate emphasized that despite temporary reductions, EQIP funding would remain well above previous farm bill levels.
"At the end of the day, EQIP being even at like $2.5 billion is a dramatic increase over what it was in prior farm bills," they said.
In 2018, EQIP received $1.75 billion, increasing to $2.275 billion in 2023 and reaching $3.25 billion by FY2031 under the Senate proposal.
The House proposal follows a similar approach, shifting about $1 billion from EQIP while largely preserving Conservation Stewardship Program funding.
LOVED BUT OVERSUBSCRIBED
The debate comes as EQIP continues to attract more applicants than available funding.
"EQIP, as much as it's most popular, has its faults," the aide said.
The program faces high rejection rates, burdensome paperwork and reimbursement requirements for producers and lengthy application timelines.
According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, demand continued climbing in FY2025, with 118,377 applicants, an 11% increase from the previous year.
Despite growing interest, awards declined sharply. Between FY2024 and FY2025, EQIP awarded roughly 17,650 fewer contracts -- a 38% decline that coincided with the freeze on Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding. No state recorded an increase in EQIP contracts.
Coppess said the program averaged 41,600 contracts and more than $1.5 billion dollars in unfunded valid applications annually between FY2017 and FY2023.
EQIP dollars have significant livestock interests as well.
During last year's reconciliation, Republicans argued that shifting IRA conservation dollars back into farm bill programs restores traditional EQIP priorities, including a requirement that at least 50% of EQIP funding support livestock-related practices. IRA conservation funding was not subject to that livestock allocation requirement.
WHAT THE NEW PROGRAMS WOULD DO
The proposed Forest Conservation Easement Program (FCEP) and State Conservation Assistance Program have appeared in multiple farm bill negotiations, including the Senate Agriculture Committee's 2024 framework.
The proposals build on a broader shift toward partnership-based conservation that began with the Regional Conservation Partnership Program in the 2014 farm bill.
Committee staff said the state assistance program is designed to complement conservation efforts already underway. "State programs work really well. They're more flexible. They're nimble. And if states are putting forward funding, you know there is a desire for having Congress and USDA help supplement those [as well]," [JZ1] the aide said.
FCEP comes from a broad coalition of conservation groups concerned about the continued loss of working forests.
"Over the next decade, we're projected to lose roughly one million acres of forestland each year to fragmentation and conversion," Larry Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, said. "The Conservation Fund is dedicated to preserving working forests, which support local jobs and the rural tax base, by addressing the threat of forestland conversion to non-forest uses."
Other support comes from American Forests, The Conservation Fund, Land Trust Alliance, National Alliance of Forest Owners and the National Audubon Society.
Redirecting EQIP dollars reflects changing priorities rather than reduced conservation spending, the committee said.
But not everyone agrees the new priorities represent the best investment. Erik Lichtenberg, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, wrote in a recent American Enterprise Institute analysis that conservation easements can be difficult to target effectively.
"Conservation easements have a reputation for being vehicles for easy tax write-offs for the wealthy. It is not a simple matter to ensure that easements are purchased only for parcels at high risk of conversion to nonfarm uses or for wetlands or forests threatened by development -- that is, for tax write-offs that actually accomplish the results for which they are supposedly intended," he said.
Still, the Senate committee said lawmakers are hearing strong support for both the forest easement program and state-led conservation initiatives, and they expect little change during House-Senate negotiations.
"I think we are very much in lockstep with what the House is doing," they said.
Both chambers will need to determine the final EQIP bankrolling numbers in conference committee, between their two proposals.
A Senate farm bill markup is expected later next week.
Erik Lichtenberg and AEI's farm bill conservation analysis: Industry Statement of Support in Forest Conservation Easement Program (FCEP): https://www.aei.org/….
Industry Statement of Support in Forest Conservation Easement Program (FCEP): https://www.conservationfund.org/….
Jake Zajkowski can be reached at jake.zajkowski@dtn.com
Follow him on social platform X @jzajkow
[JZ1]Does adding this add value?
(c) Copyright 2026 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.
DTN Headline News
DTN Blogs & Forums
