New EWG analysis shows funding and farm stakes in climate ‘guardrails’ fight

A new EWG investigation finds that farmers received almost $1 billion more for adopting climate-smart conservation practices through a major federal program in 2024 compared to 2023, due to the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, and farm bill spending for the program.

The Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, is one of the largest federal conservation programs, and the extra money is a major win for farmers, the climate and the environment. But the program still needs to be strengthened.

EQIP should be revised to ensure that practices that reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve farm resiliency are prioritized, and less money is sent to practices with questionable climate benefits. Congress designated money for practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the IRA, creating climate “guardrails” for how extra conservation funding through the law should be spent.

The fine details of the next farm bill – already delayed by two years – remain up in the air, but one of the most consequential looming fights is likely to be over the fate of these guardrails. And there’s plenty at stake affecting farms, funding and the environment.

‘Provisional’ practices

When Congress passed the IRA, enacted in 2022, it established the conservation funding guardrails so that the money goes to climate-smart farming methods. This money is essential to ensure farmers both increase their farm’s resilience to extreme weather and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These are critical needs in the era of ever-worsening climate change-related natural disasters.

In 2024, almost $1.3 billion went to farmers for climate-smart EQIP practices, compared to $315.4 million in 2023. But the USDA also added 15 EQIP practices labeled “provisional” to the 2024 climate-smart list. This label was intended to designate practices that did not have methodologies to measure greenhouse gas benefits that year. These practices may also have fewer proven climate benefits. 

EWG’s analysis finds that these provisional practices receive too much money – 48 percent of 2024 EQIP climate-smart funding – compared to others. Many are irrigation or livestock practices that are less likely to benefit the climate than traditional conservation practices such as cover crops, buffers and forestry practices. 

The USDA removed the provisional label from the list for fiscal year 2025, meaning that all formerly provisional practices are now considered fully climate-smart. The agency says studies show the practices have climate benefits and that there are ways to measure them. But the sources that USDA staff are citing to justify this change don’t support many of their claims, and any data captured by the agency about the climate benefits of the practices either are not publicly available or may not exist.

The IRA provides a historic $8.45 billion funding opportunity through EQIP for the agriculture industry to greatly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, with payments that started in 2023. The funding is budgeted through fiscal year 2026, and supplements EQIP money set aside in the farm bill, providing a significant boost to farms throughout the U.S.

Climate-smart funding soars

EWG’s analysis found that EQIP paid farmers $1.04 billion across all practices for fiscal year 2023. Of this pot of money, 30 percent, or $315.4 million, went to farmers for practices that were on the USDA’s 2023 climate-smart conservation practice list.

Due to the additional IRA funding, total EQIP obligations in fiscal year 2024 were $1.84 billion, much higher than 2023 payments. Of this, $1.3 billion, or 70 percent, went to practices on the 2024 climate-smart list. Funding for climate-smart practices increased over $980 million between 2023 and 2024. 

EWG received data for payments made in 2023 from the USDA through public records requests. The USDA is yet to make the 2024 data available, so EWG is using obligations instead of payments for 2024. When a producer signs an EQIP contract, the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, sets aside or “obligates” all the money needed for payments over the length of the contract. So the 2024 obligations are not the exact same as payments since not all of the obligated money has been paid out yet, but obligations are a useful proxy. 

The share of total EQIP funding going to climate-smart practices appeared to increase from 30 percent in 2023 to 70 percent in 2024. This would seem to be a major accomplishment, and much of the money went to farmers for practices that reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve farm resiliency. 

For example, cover crops and nutrient management received the largest increases between 2023 and 2024. Farmers adopting cover crops got almost $214.5 million more in 2024 than 2023, and funding for nutrient management went up $72.5 million. 

But this progress is not as great as it might seem, because the practices that were added to the climate-smart list in 2024 and were previously labeled as provisional also received considerable funding. They are also a major reason that the share of money that went to climate-smart practices seemed to increase so dramatically. 

Of the almost $1.3 billion in obligations going to farmers of climate-smart practices in 2024, 48 percent, or $623.4 million, was for provisional practices. And a majority of climate-smart practices that received the most funding in 2024 were provisional practices as well. Of the 15 climate-smart practices with the most funding, nine were provisional. (See Figure 1.) 

Only one of the top 15 practices received less funding in 2024 than in 2023. “Roofs and covers” for animal waste pits received less money for 2024, but was still the seventh highest-paid climate-smart practice. All the other top provisional practices received more funding for 2024 than 2023. 

Figure 1. Climate-smart EQIP practices that received the most obligations in 2024.

^{Source: EWG, from USDA, public records requests and NRCS Financial Assistance Program Data Download.}

Many of the practices receiving considerable funding were livestock or irrigation practices. Of the top 15 climate-smart practices in the figure above, seven were livestock or irrigation practices. EWG in a February 2024 report noted that most concentrated livestock facility practices, as well as some irrigation practices, are not manifestly climate-smart. 

Methane from livestock is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. EQIP funding to factory farms encourages farmers to keep relying on this model instead of raising animals on pasture, which in some cases could help lower emissions. 

And while some irrigation practices, like “Irrigation system, microirrigation,” have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there is no such evidence for many others. 

Making farms more resilient

Climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme weather events. Drought, increased precipitation, hurricanes and other devastating phenomena are pummeling farmers, leading to expensive ad hoc disaster assistance and increased crop insurance payouts.

According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, disaster assistance for farmers increased each year from 2019 through 2023. 

EWG found in another recent analysis that crop insurance payments increased by over 500 percent between 2001 and 2022, with the most payments ever being made in 2022 at over $19 billion. (See Figure 2.) Climate change has contributed to this increase in crop insurance and disaster payments because more extreme weather like drought and excess precipitation are driving up costs. 

Figure 2. Crop insurance payments surged between 2001 and 2022.

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^{Source: EWG, from the USDA’s Risk Management Agency, Summary of Business Report Generator.} 

Conservation programs, including EQIP, can help prevent higher costs of other farm policy programs when they pay farmers to adopt conservation practices that improve farm resilience to extreme weather. 

Many EQIP practices increase resiliency. Cover crops and no-till are two of the most-discussed tactics, because they make soil more stable given either drought or extreme precipitation. Silvopasture, windbreaks, riparian buffers and permanent cover can also help improve drought resilience, while grassed waterways and contour buffer strips help farmers adapt to extreme rain. 

But not all EQIP practices that are good at increasing farm resiliency receive a lot of funding. For example, farmers did not receive any money from EQIP for contour buffer strips in 2023 or 2024, and only $8,652 in 2023 and $42,346 in 2024 went to farmers for riparian covers. (See Figure 3.) 

Figure 3. Climate-smart practices with 2024 obligations under $500,000. 

^{Source: EWG, from the USDA, NRCS Financial Assistance Program Data Download.}

Instead of investing such a large amount of money in concentrated livestock and irrigation practices, more should be spent on practices like these that will better prepare farmers for the extreme weather that is ahead. 

Changes made to the climate-smart list for 2025

For an EQIP practice to have been added to the climate-smart list for 2024 without the provisional label, it had to meet two requirements: the scientific literature had to show reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and the USDA had to have a set methodology that could prove the practice reduces emissions. To be added to the list provisionally, a practice had to meet the first requirement but not the second.

EWG’s February report recommended the agency remove provisional concentrated livestock and irrigation practices from the list until their climate benefits could be clearly quantified. 

Instead, the USDA’s 2025 climate-smart list, released in October 2024, now considers all provisional practices fully climate-smart. The agency has said it will no longer use the provisional designation because “on average” all practices are expected to benefit the climate.

When EWG published the February report, the USDA had not yet released research about its climate-smart practices, data showing that the practices did indeed reduce emissions, or any information about approaches to estimate the practices’ greenhouse gas benefits. 

With the recently announced 2025 climate-smart list update, the USDA also created a website with a few references the agency says justify the inclusion of every EQIP practice on the climate-smart list. The USDA also released a short discussion of the approach it plans to use to estimate the greenhouse gas benefits of each practice. 

EWG applauds the USDA for releasing references about the emissions benefits of the EQIP practices on the climate-smart list. But the listed references do not all support the purported emissions reductions of every practice, especially those that were provisional in 2024. 

For instance, many of the references listed on the new website for the once-provisional practices are not peer-reviewed studies. Instead, they are extension documents, government agency technical reports and even sources on industry websites, like this article from the water well drilling industry, which is listed on the USDA reference page for the “irrigation system, microirrigation” practice. And many of these references are old, including some from the 1990s and even one from 1977, for “irrigation pipeline.” 

Finally, the methodologies the USDA plans on using to measure the emissions reductions of EQIP practices on its climate-smart list do not exist for nine of the 55 practices. So the agency doesn't know how it will calculate those practices’ emissions reductions. 

Documenting climate benefits

Federal conservation programs are vital to reducing agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, and to increasing agriculture’s resilience to extreme weather from climate change. 

The upcoming farm bill must maintain the climate guardrails on the IRA conservation funding. The stakes are too high. Not only would this reduce agriculture’s climate emissions, but it could also potentially reduce the costs of ad hoc disaster assistance and crop insurance payouts.  

But the USDA should change other aspects of the program, including its implementation, by: 

• Updating its references for each formerly provisional climate-smart practice with more extensive, recent and data-driven scientific literature.
• Making public the data it collects on the estimates of greenhouse gas emissions reductions for each practice, as well as any calculations on how much crop insurance or ad hoc disaster assistance payments are reduced due to increased resiliency.
• Prioritizing and increasing funding for practices that increase farm resilience to extreme weather.
• Removing concentrated livestock practices and less-proven irrigation practices from the climate-smart list, to ensure they get no more IRA funding.