$560,000 grant to the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) is among $186M in conservation payments being withheld
By Clara Hemphill, New York Focus
Keith Wagner, a dairy farmer in the rolling hills and open fields northeast of Albany, shelled out $1.4 million to build a device that promises to cut his electric bill and to reduce air pollution: a generator powered by manure and food waste. He was confident he would be reimbursed for a big chunk of that money, thanks to a $422,806 grant from the US Department of Agriculture.
Now, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in payments to rural farmers and small businesses for climate-friendly projects approved during the Biden administration. Wagner doesn’t know when, if ever, he’ll see the money.
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“It’s unfair,” said Wagner, whose 1,000-acre family farm with 400 milk cows, Wagner Farms, is just 13 miles from the state capital. “We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. We did that. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal. It’s kind of like, if I wasn’t going to pay my taxes, and I said, ‘Well, I’m just not going to pay them.’”
Wagner is one of 151 farmers, rural businesses, and municipalities in New York State who were promised $186 million under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy prepared for New York Focus. The grants are for projects designed to plant trees, protect farmland from the effects of climate change and to bring solar power and other forms of clean energy — like Wagner’s manure-powered generator — to rural areas.
Related reading: Key to farming in the Adirondacks? Resiliency
Almost all of that money is now frozen. On Trump’s first day in office, he ordered the USDA to stop payments to all IRA grants; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the department is reviewing projects to ensure money goes only goes to “farmers and ranchers” and not to “far-left climate programs.”
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That leaves grantees in rural parts of the state — where support for Trump is strong — in the dark, with no information about when a review might be forthcoming or what it might entail. “I asked my contact at USDA if they heard anything,” Wagner said. “They said, ‘Nothing yet. Radio silence.’”
His generator, called an anaerobic digester, is a success. It extracts methane gas from the cows’ manure and food waste and generates enough electricity for his entire farm, saving some $7,000 a month in utility bills. He even has enough electricity to sell some to the grid. The machine helps the environment, too, by keeping planet-heating methane from escaping into the atmosphere. But Wagner still doesn’t know how he is going to pay back the bank loan he took out to pay for it.
Even some who support Trump’s agenda are frustrated. Todd Drake, a Republican member of the Albany County legislature, was awarded an $87,000 grant under the Rural Energy for America Program to install solar panels at the Adirondack Diamond Point Lodge, his family-owned vacation property in Lake George. Now he doesn’t know when he’ll be reimbursed.
“I absolutely support what the Trump administration is doing, reviewing projects to get at the fraud and waste,” Drake said. “But if you’ve already committed to a project, there should be some clarity. We’d be really happy if we knew how long the review will take. There is a fear about what’s going to happen now.”
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The funding freeze may become an issue in this summer’s special election in the 21st congressional district to fill the seat vacated by US Representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik, whose district runs from the Adirondacks to the Canadian border, won reelection in 2024 by a whopping 24 percentage points. Democrats have nominated a dairy farmer, Blake Gendebien, in the hopes that his appeal to rural voters will overcome daunting odds; Republicans have yet to name a candidate.
White House: Stefanik to stay in NY-21
Trump’s policies will have a far-reaching effect on agriculture in New York, said Allison Morrill Chatrychiyn, a researcher in the Climate Stewards Program at Cornell University in Ithaca. Layoffs at USDA and cuts to Cornell’s long-standing agricultural research programs will make it difficult for farmers to get the information they need to adapt to climate change, she said.
Farming has always been a risky and unpredictable business, but changing weather patterns have made it worse. Hotter summers make cows vulnerable to “heat stress,” which means they produce less milk and, in extreme cases, die. Heavy rain alternating with periods of drought damages the soil and makes it less fertile.
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Warmer winters may seem like a boon to farmers, but unpredictable temperatures sometimes damage fruit, such as the grapes grown in the Finger Lakes’ vineyards. “If you have a warmer winter, and then you get a cold snap and a freeze after grapes have already started to bud, that’s deadly to the crop,” Chatrychiyn said. Research geared at mitigating these problems is in jeopardy. USDA laid off seven researchers at a Cornell lab in Geneva who studied how to make grapes more resistant to changing weather, for example. (An independent federal board later ordered the USDA to temporarily rehire laid-off workers.)
“We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal.”
Kieth Wagner
“USDA layoffs will definitely have an impact on farmers in New York State and on research at Cornell,” Chatrychiyn said. “It will have a long-term effect.”
During the Biden administration, the USDA awarded $60 million to New York State to help farmers mitigate the effects of climate change under a program called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. These funds, too, have been frozen.
As a result, eight small farmers in the Hudson Valley won’t get the first payments of grants they had been promised for projects to prevent erosion and improve the quality of their soil, says Megan Larmer, senior director of programs at the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring. For example, a vegetable farmer was planning to use his grant to buy wheat and rye seeds to be used as cover crops. Cover crops grow in the off-season and are allowed to die and decompose naturally, putting nutrients in the soil. Other farmers planned to plant trees.
“Promising farmers money, as the U.S. government did, and then freezing it creates financial havoc,” said Larmer, whose organization was managing the $4 million grant to be divided among the farms. “This is especially disruptive at a time of year when there is little cash, because the farm has nothing to sell, and there are lots of expenses like labor, seeds and equipment repairs.”
Also frozen is a $560,000 grant to the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), a nonprofit in Saranac Lake that fosters economic development, to help eight small dairy, beef, and vegetable farms become more resistant to heat, drought and heavy rains.
“If you have really intense rainstorms, like the ones we’ve been having, it can carry off soil nutrients and result in erosion,” said Jon Ignatowski, the ANCA staffer who manages the grant. “And that has implications down the road. Will these fields still be fertile in 10, 20, 30 years? How can we prevent runoff and erosion, or at least slow it down a little bit?
Trees, with their deep roots, can hold the soil in place. They also provide shade, making animals less prone to heat stress. But the money ANCA was expecting to buy trees has been halted.
“Our invoices were being paid regularly up until the new administration took over, and then our invoices stopped being paid,” Ignatowski said. “Suddenly, eight farms that thought they had this amazing opportunity to grow are being stuck in their tracks, and the implications of that will be felt over many years. We’re losing funds to do good rural economic development work in the region that really, really needs it.”
Photo at top: Methane gas from manure and food waste fills a dome to generate electricity for Wagner Farms in Poestenkill, N.Y. Photo by Keith Wagner
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I feel bad for those farmers who did not support Trump and are being hurt by his policies. As for those farmers who did support Trump — you’re getting exactly what you voted for. Don’t complain.
Farmers, when voting, should understand better than most people, “you reap what you sow.”
Yet they still support Trump. Oh well. To be expected. MAGA
Stop sucking at the teat of the American tax payer. If you cannot afford it, don’t do it.