FARM REDUCTION

The Trump administration's assault on small farmers

- BY TERESA COTSIRILOS

LAURA BETH RESNICK was delivering snapdragons and anemones to clients near the White House when she got the news: In his first wave of executive orders, President Donald Trump had frozen all projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, one of his predecessor's signature achievements. Resnick was awaiting reimbursement for solar panels she'd purchased for her flower farm via the Rural Energy for America Program, which had received a $1 billion IRA injection to help farmers invest in renewable energy projects. Her frozen grant left her $36,000 in the hole. “This sudden knowledge that we are on the hook for this money we don't have—it's so overwhelming,” she told me in March.

Trump’s chaotic first months back in office—his flurry of orders, tariffs, and cuts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)— have sent America’s farmers into a tailspin. Few farms were spared, but smaller and newer ones have been disproportionately harmed—with potentially far-reaching consequences for their communities. “I don’t think [the administration] knows enough about how the economy works to back up what they're doing,” said Kevin Leavitt, an organic farmer in Maine whose own frozen funding threatened to tank his business. But, he added, “it would seem like they're trying to create fewer farms.”