Sidelined Farm Aid Programs Add to US Agricultural Struggles

Glenn Munal stops to study a grapefruit sprig while surveying his citrus orchard, scanning its leaves for a gnat-sized brown bug that threatens the family business.

Asian citrus psyllid insects found his 26-acre Texas farm last year, lured by the bright scents of orange and grapefruit in the Rio Grande Valley. Now the second-generation farmer’s in a fight for time: Bacteria from the sap-sucking invasive species risks causing citrus greening disease, leaving fruit bitter and misshapen, and eventually killing any tree it infects.

“There’s nothing to do other than watch it and make sure it doesn’t spread,” Munal said during a recent interview on his farm, just a few miles from the Mexican border. “If it starts spreading, then we cut out the tree and then burn it.”

There is no cure for citrus greening disease, one of the greatest threats to Munal’s orchard and to the nation’s citrus industry as a whole, worth nearly $3 billion last season.

But federal funding to control the Asian citrus psyllid and work toward a cure ceased flowing in December, when a stopgap spending bill that kept the US government open sacrificed—at least temporarily—advancing federal work to battle citrus greening, as well as 18 other niche but impactful farm assistance programs. Those projects include, for example, funds to eradicate crop-destroying feral swine, advance biofuels, and boost agriculture research.

Five months later, American farmers are being hit by additional headwinds from tariffs that threaten export markets, frozen Agriculture Department grant money, and immigration policies that could limit a seasonal workforce already in short supply.

“Farmers are facing the toughest economy in decades with where inflation was and low commodity prices, high input costs,” said House Agriculture Committee Chair GT Thompson (R-Pa.) in an interview. “The cure is getting all the provisions of this farm bill in law.”

This spring, Munal is leveraging protective strategies that researchers have unearthed against the Asian citrus psyllid, from netting baby trees in mesh to releasing ladybugs and other natural predators. But he and other citrus farmers are also looking to Washington, D.C., for assistance.

Citrus Cocktails in Hand

At a “Taste of Sun Shine” Capitol Hill reception in late March, members from the nation’s three biggest citrus states plied members of Congress and their staff with palomas, screwdrivers, and budget-heavy conversation.

“This funding is just crucial to hopefully find a cure” for citrus greening disease, said Julia Inestroza, an orange and lemon grower who attended the reception as an executive with California Citrus Mutual. The group paid lobbying firm Russell Group Inc. $50,000 in the first quarter of 2025 to meet with members of Congress and the Agriculture Department to advocate on issues including the citrus greening disease, according to lobbying disclosures.

In California, the nation’s top domestic citrus producer, the disease has spread across fruit trees in local neighborhoods, but hasn’t yet infected commercial operations. But all of Texas is under a federal quarantine as growers and plant health officials work to turn back the tide of potentially orchard-ending bugs. Florida has been hardest hit, losing more than 90% of its orange production since citrus greening disease arrived in 2005. The disease has cost citrus producers nationally billions of dollars.

Congress had dedicated $150 million since the 2018 farm bill for advancing new techniques to protect citrus farms from the disease and ultimately find a cure, including $25 million in fiscal 2024, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Research Service. There won’t be new funding this fiscal year.

Inestroza, who sits on an USDA citrus advisory board, said it hasn’t been able to mandate new research targets this year. The agency can’t solicit new citrus disease mitigation projects this year absent a cash injection, USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture spokesperson J. Faith Peppers confirmed, adding in a statement that work under previously funded projects continues.

Congress is two years overdue to renew a farm bill typically reauthorized every five years, which would provide another opportunity to reinstate the lapsed funding and bolster the financial safety net that holds up much of the domestic agricultural system.

Democrat Adam Schiff, the first California senator to be involved in developing a farm bill as a member of the agriculture panel in more than three decades, said in a May sit-down interview he recently spoke with citrus farmers about reinstating the program funding.

“What USDA is doing is really important, the research they do is really important,” Schiff said.

Feral Hogs Trampling Crops

Hundreds of miles from Munal’s citrus orchard, a different costly invasive species emerges under the blanket of Texas night: wild pigs.

A mix between domesticated hogs and Russian boars, feral hogs tear up farm land across the southeastern US in search of food, causing $2.5 billion in annual agricultural losses nationwide. A pilot program bolstering federal work to trap and kill the pigs—including by shooting them from helicopters—is another program that has gone dormant since Congress didn’t extend its funding in December.

The hogs dug up fields on Scott Frazier’s farm just days after he’d planted this year’s crops, leaving behind muddy hoof prints and inch-deep ruts in the dirt, where they’d eaten his seeds. Frazier expects thousands of dollars in further damage once his crops—fully grown in June or July—offer a heartier meal to the pigs.

“They like to go in there and then knock that plant down and chew on that nice soft grain,” Frazier said during an April interview on one of his sorghum fields in Odem, Texas, adding: “This field, a couple of years ago when we had grain here, I bet they got 25% to 30% of it.”

Feral hogs damage $500 million worth of crops annually in Texas alone, a 2022 Texas A&M University study found.

The population of feral hogs has already begun to tick back up since December as government intervention has waned, according to Mike Bodenchuck, president of the Texas Wildlife Damage Management Association.

“To get yourself to extinction through extermination, you got to keep after it,” he said in an interview.

Two USDA departments split the $90 million Congress gave them since the 2018 farm bill for the pilot program targeting areas with the highest feral hog populations. “All operational activities” conducted by USDA’s Wildlife Services under that project, such as government helicopter hunts, have ceased, said a USDA spokesperson who responded to an email sent to the agency’s press office and did not provide a full name. But some trapping efforts conducted by the National Resources Conservation Service with remaining money are expected to continue through September, the spokesperson said.

“Feral hogs aren’t going away, and so doing nothing is not an option,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in an interview. He’s re-introduced bipartisan legislation (S. 1207) to expand and make permanent the effort to beat back feral hogs in Texas and other affected southeastern states.

A Farm Bill’s Future

Farm groups are pushing for a full reauthorization of the farm bill before it begins to expire on Sept. 30. But the fate of the trillion-dollar legislative behemoth setting farm and food policy may well be tied to how much political capital gets sucked up by two other congressional debates consuming the 2025 legislative calendar.

GOP lawmakers have filled the first half of the year negotiating the contours of a budget bill addressing Trump administration policy priorities, including tax cuts and immigration enforcement, and they’re still far from a final deal. Appropriators are also set to start hashing out fiscal 2026 government-funding bills this month.

“This has exposed a pretty significant critique of budget policy,” said Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who served as chief counsel for the Senate agriculture panel when funding for some farm bill programs lapsed during a similar situation in 2013.

“This over-emphasis on budget—and particularly big baseline budget dollars—has really decimated policy making,” Coppess said in an interview.

Start-and-stop negotiations to reauthorize the farm bill fell apart after the 2024 presidential election. Republicans in charge of writing the new five-year farm bill have already indicated uncertainty about renewing the whole package by the end of the year. Now, they’re considering slipping funding for various programs into their partisan budget bill.

Citrus disease research and feral hog mitigation programs were among the most expensive initiatives to lose funding at the end of last year, but the 19 programs combined account for less than 1% of the farm bill’s mandatory spending.

“We don’t want to pit one orphan program against another, and you’re not talking a whole hell of a lot of money in the farm bill,” said Dale Murden, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, referring to the 19 programs. “It’s kind of frustrating.”

Back in the Rio Grande Valley, Munal hasn’t yet discovered a tree sick with citrus greening in his orchard. He’s focused on doing what he can to keep it that way, while waiting for a return of federal help.

“I think it’s great that we’re finding other ways to combat pests naturally—I hate chemicals,” Munal said. “We need to keep funding as much research into biological controls of diseases as possible.”