Letter to Secretary Rollins

Published: Mar 2025
By: Lori Stern

Dear Secretary Rollins,
Congratulations on your new position! I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to our organization and how we might be able to assist you with your vision and priorities for USDA. I have been in my role as Executive Director of Marbleseed for almost five years. Marbleseed has existed as an organization dedicated to educating and empowering farmers to succeed in managing their farms organically for over thirty-six years. We have a long-standing farmer-to-farmer mentoring program and host the largest organic farming conference in the country every year. Although we are based in Wisconsin, our work spans several states across the north central region.

I understand that you are committed to advancing rural communities and increasing market access, particularly for small and mid-sized farmers. At Marbleseed, we believe that organic farming, supported by conservation programs and robust market development, is a powerful driver for rural revitalization and sustainable agriculture.

Conservation funding supports farm viability bringing in beneficial insects and wildlife habitats along with soil health that provides protection from drought and heavy rain, leading to less need for inputs and indemnity payouts under insurance programs. For communities, working land conservation leads to less flooding and road washouts, and prevents contaminated water systems needing costly upgrades. I would appreciate the opportunity to meet with your staff and discuss the impact of these programs and discover together how they might be re-implemented in ways that align with your agency’s priorities while still safeguarding rural communities and small farms.

As a former rural small business owner that sourced from local, organic farms, I know first-hand what it is like to eke out a living with small profit margins. Consumer demand for organic, non-chemical food is at an all-time high. Yet the percentage of federal programs and funding supporting farmers in the Marbleseed community does not demonstrate the same level of priority. We need USDA to support these farms and the regulations that create confidence in the organic label to enable them to provide ‘grown in the USA’, certified, healthy food.

The Marbleseed Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities agreement is focused on conservation practices on organic farms that lengthen crop rotations and find emerging markets for alternative grains that build healthy soils. Farmers we work with are smaller scale and include veterans. They are eager to engage in these practices and markets, making their farms and soils sustainable long term. We need to unfreeze the funding for this program, so that the promises made to those farmers can be kept. 

In the past several administrations, USDA as an institution has favored large, monocrop and corporate farming; providing public support through crop insurance, subsidies, and even conservation cost share programs in larger proportion to these operations. Smaller farms, producing food and non-commodity crops have been historically underserved by USDA.

Many U.S. farmers are aging. The farmers that created Marbleseed with the passage of the national organic standard via the Organic Food Production Act are now in their 70’s. Many of them are working with us to help the next generation of farmers find their way to land and resources. These beginning farmers are facing escalating land prices, consolidation in our food system that is curtailing access to wholesale markets, and they often do not come from farming families. The role of Marbleseed and other farmer-facing organizations is critical in providing technical assistance, mentorship, and business development to next-generation farmers. USDA, as part of its mandate, has been a valuable partner in launching and maintaining programming for beginning farmers of any age through a variety of grant programs, and we look forward to continuing that partnership.

Marbleseed appreciates the connections this administration is making between food and health. With nutrition programs housed at USDA, you have the opportunity to create market channels for organic and local farms in federal and school nutrition procurement. Our youth and seniors deserve healthy, nutritious food for their individual benefit as well as saved health care costs for U.S. citizens more broadly. Cancelling some of these healthy meal programs seems at odds with the stated goals of the administration and eliminates markets that small farms depend on.

Marbleseed and the farmers in the upper Midwest that make up our community look forward to working with you and the USDA to center small to mid-sized, organically managed farms that produce the food we eat.

Sincerely,
Lori Stern, MA Ed
Executive Director