American dairy farmers are required to pay into a federal checkoff program. The Trump administration has now put ESG off-limits for that money.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the change Thursday. No dairy checkoff dollars for ESG commitments, net-zero targets, or climate-neutrality projects. USDA put the other commodity checkoffs under the same restriction.
The details are in Under Secretary Dudley Hoskins’ Sept. 17 memo. ESG pledges are finally out. So are scorecards, reporting requirements, and emissions targets tied to market access. Boards also have to go back through contracts already on the books and change or terminate the ones that conflict with the order.
The dairy checkoff is not going anywhere.
USDA has numbers for why. Texas A&M economists found $5.93 in producer returns for every dollar spent through the program. Butter was $24.85. Exports, $12.82. Fluid milk, $4.16. Cheese, $2.67.
The policy being unwound dates back to 2021. At the COP26 climate conference, Biden Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced USDA support for Pathways to Dairy Net Zero, or P2DNZ. USDA described the newly launched initiative as an effort bringing dairy farms and companies throughout the supply chain together to reach net-zero emissions over the following 30 years.
P2DNZ has not exactly been a small club. Its website says roughly 200 organizations representing nearly 40 percent of global milk production have declared support. Its current supporter list includes Cargill, Coca-Cola, Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes, Starbucks, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Milk Producers Federation. As of Friday, it also still lists the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The organization describes its mission this way: “The global dairy community is accelerating climate action and working to reduce its impact on the planet.”
Consumers Defense and Heartland Impact had already put the USDA connection in front of Rollins. Their Sept. 3 letter asked her to pull the department out of P2DNZ and check whether ESG or net-zero requirements were reaching farmers through federal programs, lenders, processors, or access to buyers.
Their report gets into what that can cost on an actual farm. Monitoring systems. Data collection. Audits. Outside verification. Consultants. Capital upgrades. Those bills do not shrink because the farm does. Bigger operators have more production to spread them across.
Two weeks after the letter landed, USDA issued the new order.
Cameron Sholty, Executive Director of Heartland Impact, praised the government’s quick action in an email to RedState:
“USDA got this exactly right. ESG agendas and fantastical net-zero policies put real strain on farmers by raising costs, constraining production, and making an already difficult job harder. We’re grateful to farmers across the country who spoke out and to Secretary Rollins and USDA for listening and acting. Mandatory checkoff dollars should promote dairy, not finance policies and global environmentalist cabals that work against the farmers who pay them."
P2DNZ is still operating. USDA was still listed as a supporter Friday. The checkoff money farmers are required to pay in, however, can no longer go toward ESG commitments, net-zero programs, or climate-neutrality requirements. That's a start.
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