Farmer funding freeze litigation now in federal court

Nearly 20 nonprofit agricultural organizations and cities have joined in a lawsuit to restore federal funding for farmers.

Pasa Sustainable Agriculture’s Hannah Smith-Brubaker tells Brownfield funding approved by Congress and allocated through federal contracts should be binding.

“It’s not right, it’s unfair,” she says. “It has a really negative impact on farmers and their local communities and community organizations like ours.”

She says it’s likely many organizations and farmers won’t recover and could go bankrupt because of the grant freezes.

“I just can’t imagine how we’re going to bounce back from this,” she shares. “I hear and understand that some people think there needs to be some form of, you know big shake-up, but there are ways to do it that there aren’t so many victims.”

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition estimates more than 30,000 farmers have been denied reimbursement funds. USDA’s release of assets in February represented less than one percent of IRA-granted dollars.

The plaintiffs say the President’s executive orders unlawfully defy congressional mandates by freezing funds that had been appropriated to specific grants which total over $1 trillion.

The suit also says administrators including at EPA and USDA have enforced unconstitutional orders and interfered with disbursing congressionally mandated and awarded federal grants.

Pasa joins the Sustainability Institute; Agrarian Trust; Bronx River Alliance; CleanAIRE NC; Conservation Innovation Fund; Marbleseed; and the cities of Baltimore, Maryland; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; New Haven, Connecticut; and San Diego, California in the case.