In rural New York, even some Republicans are frustrated as the administration halts $186 million in conservation payments to farmers
By Clara Hemphill
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.
“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.
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.”
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.’”
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