As 2025 begins, organic stakeholders are preparing for changes in the political and funding landscape for organic agriculture. New leadership will be appointed at the USDA, though that appointment is forthcoming with no advertised timeline.

The Secretary of Agriculture under the previous Trump administration was nominated in mid-January 2017, the last cabinet position to be filled.  Secretary Sonny Perdue presided over the USDA as a trade war raged with a key buyer of US farm products: China.

Perdue infamously quipped that big farms get bigger, and the small are likely to fail. While this tracks with economic reality, agricultural programs are powerful tools that shape the agricultural economy in profound ways.

Hearing the top official presiding over these programs announce that there was little hope for small farms angered farmers and farm groups, eliciting calls for resignation and rebuke from within…