Funding and Legislative Support for Regenerative Agriculture Rises in New York

A customer purchases free-range eggs from the Abundance Acres Farm stall at Morningside Park Farmers Market. (Credit: Christiana Alexakis)

The rain didn’t stop the customers. On a drizzly Saturday in September, at the Morningside Park Farmers Market, one stall had a line seven people long. Behind a table stacked with cartons of eggs, two hands still tanned from a summer of working the land opened one carton to check for cracks. “I won’t charge you extra for the feather,” said Chris Novak, his warm voice booming out beyond the tent.

Novak’s morning started at 1 a.m. when he packed a truck with produce from his farm in Stone Arabia, by the foothills of the Adirondacks. The coyotes were still howling when he journeyed south to feed city dwellers, carting free-range eggs, pasture-raised chicken legs, pork jowls and porterhouse steaks. The downpours were nothing new. Novak had experienced heavy rains throughout the summer.

From June to August, the total amount of rain across New York was not unusually high, but the level falling in single precipitation events was. Take Tropical Storm Debby for example. As the storm swept through the state on August 9, the University at Albany recorded 10 new all-time one-hour rainfall records across New York.

However, these intense rains did not impact all of the state’s farms equally, even ones that share a fence. When Tropical Storm Debby’s rains rushed across his fields, Novak’s topsoil at Abundance Acres Farm held firm. But that same day, Novak said he watched his neighbor’s fields wash away.

This is due in part to the regenerative farming practices to which Novak adheres. In recent years, regenerative farming has become a legislative priority in the New York State Assembly. And now, unprecedented levels of state funding are going toward programs that drive its adoption.

There’s no agreed upon definition of regenerative farming, but the term generally refers to approaches that rehabilitate land by focusing on soil health, such as reduced tillage and cover cropping. The phrase “regenerative agriculture” and its techniques were popularized by Robert Rodale, an American publisher and proponent of organic farming, in the late ‘80s to encompass a type of farming that was more holistic than organic.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) certifies organic products through the National Organic Program, but there is no USDA label for regeneratively farmed food. However, the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a nonprofit that includes organizations like Rodale Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to growing the regenerative movement, and Dr. Bronner’s, an organic soap and personal care company, created its own certification in 2017, “Regenerative Organic Certified.” The alliance uses the USDA Certified Organic standard as a baseline, but adds criteria based on three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness.

Farmers continue to battle on the frontlines of the climate crisis, fighting extreme weather events firsthand. Their livelihoods are directly affected by floods, drought, fires, changes in temperature and unpredictable precipitation. As the fight against the climate crisis endures, regenerative practices could achieve two goals at once: protect land against changing weather and mitigate the impacts of global warming.

However, implementing regenerative farming practices can be costly. For example, a 90 inch Yetter Cover Crop roller costs $3,750, and an additional $800 for mounting brackets. The roller flattens and kills cover crops to make space for cash crops. But for anywhere between $3-5 per acre, a farmer could achieve the same thing with low cost broad-spectrum chemical herbicides like glyphosate that can harm soil health.

Amy Abbati, the legislative director for Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, said that the combined cost of equipment like tractors, no-till drills and rollers can reach the “hundreds of thousands,” deterring farmers. Initiatives like the state’s Climate Resilient Farming Program (CRFP) aim to bridge this gap.

Since its inception in 2015, the program has awarded grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts that work with farms to implement projects that reduce green greenhouse gas emissions and increase land resiliency.

In the past decade, there has been increasing government support to drive adoption of regenerative techniques. An analysis of Climate Resilient Farming Program funding shows that, since the program’s launch, the government has allocated more money towards climate resilient farming each round, except for one dip during its third run. Since Round 5, there has been a surge in funding: Round 6 doubled its predecessor with $8 million, Round 7 nearly doubled Round 6 with $15 million, and Round 8 exceeded its forerunner over two times with $33 million.

On Sept. 27, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the record $33 million in funding for the eighth round, helping New York farmers prepare for extreme weather events by adopting some of the same techniques that Novak practices. For example, the program will provide no-till drills to at least five farms, a sheep farm in the Oswego Soil and Water Conservation District will introduce rotational grazing, and cover crops will be implemented in over 79 farms. One participant in the Onondaga district will plant 5,000 acres of cover crops alone. More than half of the enrolled farms are new participants, signaling the program’s growing reach.

As Abbati and Assemblywoman Lupardo look ahead to the start of the next legislative session in January, Climate Resilience Grants are a priority. This year, the program was oversubscribed, said Abbati.

“We will continue to fight for increases” in funding, she said.

In his 10 years of farming, Novak has had “no grants or subsidies at all.” The “reluctant farmer” met his partner, Pamela MacKenzie, who always dreamed of homesteading. While the couple are neither Amish, nor dairy farmers, they purchased an Amish Dairy farm in Stone Arabia.

Novak’s philosophy toward farming is underpinned by the idea that “we have to be good stewards of the land.” Heavy summer rains have reminded him why he farms sustainably. Novak lets his land rest, rotates pastures, and plants cover crops to slow erosion. He said his neighbor uses nitrogen fertilizer and cultivates constantly. By the end of this summer’s intense rains, Novak said their farms looked very different.

“I mean, we can have disputes about the best way to farm, but my job is to keep my topsoil firm. And if I can do that, the effects of any kind of climate discrepancies will be minimal,” he said.

Firming up topsoil is just one adaptation strategy when farming on a warming planet. New York farmers have also been, for example, adding fans to dairy barns to reduce heat stress on cows.

Without adaptations like increasing crop diversity, farmers across America could face rising economic losses. A 2o24 Policy Brief from Cornell, the Environmental Defense Fund,and Kansas State University, based on 39 years of data from 7,000 Kansas farms, reported that for every 1 degrees Celsius of warming, yields of crops like corn and soybeans fall by 16% to 20%. Gross farm income falls by 7% and net farm income drops by 66%.

While Novak said he doesn’t believe in climate change, some scientists think the very techniques he farms with can slow global warming.

“If you’re keeping soil covered year round or rotationally grazing pastures, that soil can sequester greater amounts of carbon from the atmosphere,” said Deborah Aller a program coordinator with Cornell’s New York Soil Health Program.

For some scientists, the potential for soil on regenerative farms to be a carbon sink presents a promising strategy in the effort to reduce greenhouse gasses.

A 2024 study from Frontiers, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, detailed the effectiveness of seven regenerative practices at increasing carbon sequestration: agroforestry, cover cropping, legume cover cropping, animal integration, non-chemical fertilizer, non-chemical pest management, and no tillage. All seven practices increased the carbon sequestration rate, measured by tons of carbon per hectare per year. A 2022 study published in PLOS Climate, a peer-reviewed journal, explored the potential of regenerative techniques to capture carbon in Vermont farmland. The results suggested that rotational grazing could increase soil sequestration by 5.3% after 10 years.

Next summer, intense storms are likely to return to New York: this year, Aller co-authored the Agriculture Chapter of the State’s Climate Impact Assessment, which found heavy rains are increasing in intensity and frequency, along with hotter summers and mild winters.

As unprecedented funding and legislative support work to increase regenerative agriculture in the region, there are still disagreements on the best ways to farm.

“My neighbor thinks I’m stupid because I’ll let fields fallow,” Novak said. “But if you’re not good stewards of the land, you’ll be in trouble sooner or later.”