March 3, 2026 – Federal agencies announced on Friday they are working on a plan to “accelerate farm modernization and long-term food supply security.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement it is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the plan, following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing increased production of the weedkiller glyphosate.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has defended Trump’s controversial order, and has said the administration will work to reduce pesticide use on other fronts.

However, since Trump took office, the vast majority of agricultural funding has gone to commodity farms that operate within pesticide-dependent systems, while pesticide approvals have increased and numerous regulations that reduced exposure to dangerous pollutants have been rolled back.

The new plan includes research on the health risks of farm chemicals, investments in regenerative agriculture, and deregulation.

At HHS, the National Institutes of Health will put $100 million into finding ways to evaluate cumulative chemical exposures, a notoriously difficult problem. The agency will spend another $100 million to research technologies to reduce reliance on chemical pesticides.

The EPA will put $30 million into a “grand prize challenge” to find a cost-effective alternative to a practice known as “pre-harvest desiccation use of pesticides,” where farmers spray glyphosate or other chemicals to dry out grain crops. The practice is not a necessary step in farming grains, but it allows farmers to harvest their crops earlier.

An EPA spokesperson told Civil Eats in an email that the agency is currently developing guidance on how the challenge will be implemented, which will be shared with the public in the “weeks ahead.”

Friday’s announcement included $1 billion in investments, though at least 85 percent of the funding was allocated by the USDA in December and January to programs that are not directly related to reducing pesticide use and could, in some cases, increase the use of herbicides like glyphosate. (Link to this post.)

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