Guest opinion: New Farm Bill is cutting programs that gave me a start as a farmer

I’m 23 years old, and I raise soybeans, spring wheat, oats and a small herd of beef cattle near Trail, in northwest Minnesota. I love being a farmer. But keeping a farm going is another thing entirely when you’re just starting out. One reason I can is that this country decided, generations ago, to invest in farmers who take care of their land.

Through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, I’ve planted pasture and hay meadows and seeded cover crops. Through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), I’ve added soil and tissue sampling, GPS guidance and spray nozzles that cut drift. None of it is charity: I put in my own money and labor, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) shoulders part of the risk. My yields are up. My weed pressure is down. In the fall my cattle graze cover crops instead of eating through bought feed.

That’s why I want to say something farmers don’t say very much to politicians: thank you. When the Senate’s Farm Bill draft proposed cutting nearly $2 billion from EQIP — one of the most popular and oversubscribed programs USDA runs — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar sought to restore the funding. As the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, she has kept working-lands conservation a priority. When the markup stalled this month, she committed to keep working across the aisle to get a bill done. Farmers like me are counting on it.

Here’s what’s at stake if Washington gets this wrong. In Minnesota alone, the Senate draft’s cut would mean $43 million less in EQIP funding over the next four years, and 1,356 Minnesota farms that applied and qualified for assistance would get nothing. These dollars are already stretched thin: most qualified farmers are turned away. It happened to me. My first CSP application, as a beginning farmer, was denied. The demand is there. The money isn’t.

Funding is only half the story. The people who deliver these programs are disappearing. Since early 2025, the Natural Resources Conservation Service — the agency that writes our conservation plans and processes our contracts — has lost more than a fifth of its national workforce. Minnesota was hit harder than most: We lost 83 NRCS employees in one year — a quarter of the state’s staff — and 39 counties saw NRCS staffing cut, four of them losing every position. Here in Polk County, our service center is down to a skeleton crew, with a single conservationist covering nearly 2,000 square miles.

I’ve felt what that means. You used to get a same-day call back from your local office; my last message took two weeks. I’ve made 100-mile round trips to my nearest NRCS office only to find the doors locked. The employees who remain are doing their best, but they’re overwhelmed. For a farmer working against the calendar, a stalled contract can be the difference between a practice getting on the ground this season or not at all.

The current Farm Bill extension runs out Sept. 30. When negotiations pick back up this fall, I hope Sen. Klobuchar will keep doing what she’s been doing: protecting EQIP and conservation funding, and insisting that USDA has the people to deliver these programs to the farmers they were written for.

This can’t rest on one senator’s shoulders. Conservation isn’t partisan in farm country, and it shouldn’t be in Washington. My own congresswoman, Rep. Michelle Fischbach, represents the Seventh District, some of the best farm country in America. When she voted for the House Farm Bill this spring, she said she was proud to support a bill that delivers for farmers and rural communities. She also understands the value of local USDA staff. I’m asking her to make sure it does: stand up for EQIP funding and for the NRCS staff who serve western Minnesota. Farmers need champions in both parties and no one is better positioned to be one.

Young farmers are constantly told we’re the future of agriculture. Programs like EQIP and CSP are how that future gets built: acre by acre, contract by contract, with a conservationist standing in the field next to us. On behalf of the next generation of Minnesota farmers, I’m asking these leaders: Don’t let up.

Gabe Arveson raises crops and cattle near Trail, Minnesota.

This story was originally published by MinnPost.