Funding for a Better Farm Bill Has Been Sparse and Inconsistent. Is That Changing?

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Not unlike philanthropy surrounding American elections, funding for grassroots agriculture policy and organizing all too often tends to fixate on the reauthorization, every five years, of the United States’ mammoth farm bill.

But the work of passing good ag policy is far tougher and more drawn out than the twice-a-decade timing of the bill would suggest, in part due to the painful slog that has come to define American policymaking — and not least the farm bill. The last time it was enacted on time was in 2002, and last year, Congress sent ag funding into limbo once again by extending 2018’s bill for another year. At the same time, much of the critical decision-making surrounding national agriculture policy will unfold as the rules are enacted, years after the bill has been written.

As a result, advocates have long urged philanthropy to fund the topic more consistently and to pay attention to this cause every year, not just when it comes around for reauthorization. Timing aside, the field has struggled with a perennial shortage of dollars, something advocates also hope will shift as a changing climate draws greater attention to the world’s increasingly volatile food production. 

The funding landscape has been a long-running challenge for farm bill advocates, said Mark Muller, executive director of the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, an intermediary funder. “It’s continually been a cobblestoning [of] different funders together,” he said in an interview last year. “There's lots of smaller funders that give $20,000 to $50,000 grants, but there aren't that many that’ll give you hundreds of thousands or million-dollar grants.”

There is reason to believe that may be changing. A number of climate funders have grown serious in recent years about agriculture and food systems, which got the spotlight at last year’s COP28 amid a flurry of philanthropic announcements. Two major emerging climate funding operations were mentioned again and again in my conversations last year about the farm bill: Laurene Powell Jobs’ still-young climate outfit, the Waverley Street Foundation, which has funded a wide range of grassroots advocates, and the new, multifunder Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation, or PACT, which has drawn together a range of billionaire donors and legacy grantmakers. 

Most notable of all, perhaps, the new Farm Bill Grassroots Capacity Fund, launched by Waverley, Muller’s group and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and joined by several of the space’s major players. Perhaps that long-awaited ongoing funding is finally at hand.

There’s typically been a relatively small set of farm bill funders, based on my conversations. Two of the most notable are Walton Family Foundation, which founded PACT, and McKnight Foundation. The 11th Hour Project also plays an important role. Philanthropy’s top two legacy climate funders, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (which is also in PACT), also do some related grantmaking, as does the health giant Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

A few regional funders also make aligned grants, such as Midwest-focused Crown Family Philanthropies and the William Penn Foundation’s watershed work. Several smaller family funders also work in this space, such as Lumpkin Family Foundation. Those were the most often-mentioned funders among the small group focused on the agriculture portions of the farm bill, but there are still others who back work on the legislation’s food assistance portions, and many more regenerative and sustainable agriculture funders. Not a huge lineup of backers to start with.

Meanwhile, public and funder attention tends to peak when Congress is hammering out a new farm bill, but much of the important work on this legislation comes later. Experts note that ongoing funding allows grantees to get involved writing the rules that determine how programs will be enacted, as well as taking action during Congress’ annual appropriations process, when discretionary programs seek renewal and mandatory programs can see their funding raided for other priorities.

Flexible grantmaking is key to being able to act on those opportunities, said Sarah Hackney, coalition director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, in an interview last year. She’s noted growing awareness among funders of how much is beyond the control of advocates, from when legislation comes to a vote to who’s holding office when it does. 

“We are seeing more flexibility from our funders with regard to advancing policy change, and a greater recognition of the fact that we're living and working in really complicated times,” she said. “That increased flexibility really helps us be responsive to opportunities when they arise, like the IRA.”

When things line up, success can leverage large sums of money. The National Young Farmers Coalition recently won $300 million in federal funding for land access programs, then helped 19 other organizations apply for those funds, with 13 of them succeeding, according to a spokesperson from Waverley, one of several major funders who back the group.

Like any legislative issue, some of this work can be partisan, and thus limited by the rules governing private foundation support for lobbying. But funders can engage in other ways, said Maggie Mascarenhas, public policy associate at the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders network, in November. 

Supporting community groups is well within the bounds of what is allowed, as is building direct relationships between funders and policymakers to share community needs. “That’s very possible to do without crossing any lobbying lines,” she said.

“The most important thing to understand is what advocates are up against”

Congress set a new deadline for renewing the farm bill back in November, but the key sticking point remains the same: The fate of roughly $18 billion in funding authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act for climate-smart agriculture and forestry. 

There’s a political element to this debate: Republicans want to repurpose those funds for existing programs, while Democrats say they should be used for the intended purpose. But Traci Bruckner, an agricultural policy expert formerly with SAFSF, said philanthropy should see the farm bill debate not as ideological, but in terms of corporate power and its influence on farming systems. 

“The most important thing funders can understand is what the advocates are up against on the other side of the aisle,” she said. “Not partisan-wise, but if we want a sustainable and just food and ag system, the amount of money that's pouring in on the other side of that equation is so significant.”

Food assistance programs, such as SNAP and WIC, are another perennial topic of farm bill debates, as is crop insurance. Yet policy shifts seem to be unlikely this cycle. “In some ways, you know, the table has been set now,” Muller said. “It's not quite as open as it was a year ago.” 

Who gets a seat at that table is a top concern for funders, and more so than ever this cycle. Muller was one of several who emphasized the importance of expanding land access and Black, Indigenous and people of color representation in these discussions. Such efforts not only respond to past wrongs, but also serve as a climate solution. Diversity of farmers lead to greater diversity of crops and farming systems, which leads to both greater resiliency under floods and droughts, as well as greater sequestration of greenhouse gasses, he said.

“Funders that have not done it yet really need to use that lens,” he said. “We can do a good job of addressing the climate issues on the agricultural landscape by having a greater diversity of farmers on the landscape.”

Muller highlighted the Rural Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based alliance of dozens of farmer groups, for being “really ahead of the curve” in initiating conversations about race and equity in agricultural communities. Another example is work by The Union of Concerned Scientists and HEAL Food Alliance to ensure the farm bill gives workers a voice on issues like extreme heat pesticide use. He said other key groups have been the Native Farm Bill Coalition, a national initiative that advocates for Indian Country priorities in the farm bill, and the National Young Farmers Coalition, which highlighted these concerns in a recent update, among others. Rural Coalition and HEAL both receive small grants from RAF, as do many of their members.

“If we ignore it then you're never going to have real, meaningful systems change”

In its 2021 public unveiling by Axios, Waverley named “food security” and “underserved communities'' as priorities. The Palo Alto-based climate funder has kept its focus on those themes, becoming one of the major backers of groups doing farm bill advocacy, often with an emphasis on climate and equity. 

Waverley’s grantees include the two coalitions mentioned above, the latter via support to the Intertribal Agriculture Council, as well as Muller’s foundation and Hackney’s organization. Other recipients include the HEAL Food Alliance and Transformational Farm Bill Coalition. In all, Waverley has granted $23 million for farm bill advocacy, largely toward grassroots work.

Amanda Eller, senior program officer, said one factor that attracted Waverley to this cause in particular is the relative lack of support for sustainable agriculture, particularly for policy, compared to other climate areas. The goal is a farm bill that addresses both climate risks and broader inequities.

“While the farm bill is really hard to change because agriculture is so heavily regulated and subsidized, if we ignore it, then you're never going to have real, meaningful systems change,” she said in an interview last year. “Given that it is so hard to change, we need to be building movement infrastructure and power.”

Waverley is not the only new billionaire-backed outfit in this space. Since its launch in late 2022 by the Walton Family Foundation, PACT has lined up several ultra-wealthy donors to contribute to its grantmaking and other work. 

Aside from WFF, its core partners include third-generation heir Lukas Walton’s Builders Initiative, publishing billionaires Dirk and Natasha Ziff’s Vere Initiatives, and Boulder, Colorado-based climate fund Conscience Bay Research. Other backers include Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham’s trust and the Heising-Simons Foundation, as well as Hewlett, as mentioned above. Bezos Earth Fund more recently started working with the group.

Led by Joe Schultz, who formerly served as majority staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, PACT names four focus areas: developing climate-smart solutions, creating public-private partnerships to speed the adoption of new practices, building a diverse coalition of supporters, and creating economic value for farmers and ranchers. It has not yet published a grantee list.

Finally, there’s the new Farm Bill Grassroots Capacity Fund.  Launched by Waverley, RAF and NSAC in 2022, it is a joint participatory grantmaking initiative whose partners include some of the space’s core players, including PACT, Walton, McKnight and Crown. Others include No Regrets Initiative, Tortuga and Conscience Bay Foundation, all active in the still-young affinity group Funders for Regenerative Agriculture.  One aim is to provide the ongoing support in favor of sustainable agriculture that grassroots advocates have long desired. 

“We know that there's a lot of need in between farm bills,” Eller said. “The hope and aspiration is that this will be something that will help to provide continuity.”

Correction (April 12, 2024): An earlier version of this article used an outdated title for Amanda Eller. She is a senior program officer at Waverley Street Foundation.