Spring Storms in Policymaking: How Organic Research is Affected by Reconciliation

 By Gordon Merrick and Vinnie Trometter

If you have been following the twists and turns of the recent policy developments in Washington, D.C., you may have heard about something called “reconciliation.” It’s a powerful tool used by Congress to “reconcile” current revenue & spending priorities with past revenue & spending allocations. Reconciliation is a process that is largely out of the public’s eye, primarily due to the rushed nature in which this tool is usually employed. For advocates of organic farming and publicly-funded agricultural research, reconciliation can have profound implications on the future of important programs.

What is Reconciliation? What’s going on right now?

Reconciliation is a fast-track budget process that allows Congress to adjust spending, revenue, and debt limits with a simple majority vote, bypassing the usual 60-vote threshold for policy changes in the Senate. While reconciliation bills are limited to budget matters (generating revenue, adjusting spending, or amending the debt limit), they can have sweeping policy implications by changing the structure or availability of funding that critical programs and agencies rely on.

Right now, House and Senate leaders are exploring reconciliation as a vehicle for securing spending cuts and tax reforms before the end of the fiscal year. Speaker Johnson and conservative members of the House have pushed for a total cut of $1.5 trillion across federal spending, with the House Agriculture Committee tasked with up to $230 billion of that total. That places major Farm Bill programs, especially those tied to nutrition, commodities, conservation, and research, squarely at issue in this process.

To make this all more urgent, the goal of this process is to get legislation on the President’s desk by Memorial Day, May 26. That is an astoundingly fast timeline with long-lasting implications.

What’s at Stake for Organic Research?

Like most of American agriculture, the Farm Bill authorizes most of the research, extension, and data work that supports organic agriculture. This includes funding for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), the Organic Markets and Data Initiative (ODI), and broader programs that also fund organic agriculture projects like the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI).

All of these programs ensure that organic and transitioning to organic producers have access to regionally-relevant science, economic tools, and opportunities for system-level innovation. They fund partnerships between farmers, researchers, Land-Grant Universities, and nongovernment organizations to answer practical questions and improve long-term viability of the U.S. organic sector. But, if the longstanding Farm Bill coalition is fractured by including some controversial funding changes without bipartisan buy-in, then any incentive to pass a robust, bipartisan Farm Bill in the 119th Congress could evaporate. That would leave these essential research programs running on authorities from 2018 legislation written for a radically different moment in time.

An Already Strained System

The Research, Education, and Economics (REE) agencies are already strained: over 15,000 USDA employees are accepting the USDA’s second Deferred Resignation Program. This includes over 1,600 in the REE agencies, representing a massive loss of institutional knowledge and capacity, particularly in agencies already short-staffed like Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

At the same time, organic research funding is already disproportionately low. Organic products account for over 6% of U.S. food sales and more than 15% of produce sales, yet less than 2% of USDA’s research budget and less than 1% of ARS’ funding goes to organic topics. That gap has helped fuel a surge in organic imports, while U.S. acreage and exports stagnate. New data from the USDA’s 2025 Organic Situation Report reinforces that, without major investments, the U.S. will fall further behind in meeting growing domestic and export demand with homegrown production.

Organic farmers and the researchers and extension professionals they rely on deserve better than a legislative game of chicken. Reconciliation wasn’t designed to replace the Farm Bill, and without a new Farm Bill that responds to today’s challenges, we risk the opportunity to meet the needs of today’s farmers to overcome tomorrow’s challenges.

Call to Action

We don’t need to shoehorn Farm Bill legislating into reconciliation cost-saving. We need a Farm Bill built on bipartisan cooperation, one that reinvests in rural communities, public research, and organic agriculture systems.