Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins covered a lot of ground Tuesday, moving from the America.gov announcement at the White House to a question and answer session at the Make America Healthy Again summit. At both events, Rollins addressed the current farm economy. “I’m not sure there is anything more important than solving this challenge of profitability for our farmers so that they’re not farming for a government check,” said Rollins. “They don’t want to farm for a government check; they want to be able to sell their goods in the marketplace and yet, they haven’t really been able to do that for a really, really long time.” Rollins and said the second Trump administration inherited a $50 billion agricultural trade deficit. In the past 18 months, 22 trade deals have been negotiated, and China is making additional ag purchases. We’ve now cut that trade deficit in half. In just over a year, we’re selling we’re going to have record exports of dairy, tree nuts, corn, etcetra, this year.” At the MAHA event, Rollins announced USDA increased the investment in regenerative pilot programs from $700 million to $1 billion for the 2027 fiscal year. Enhancements will be made to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program to support regenerative agriculture.
