Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) enacted sweeping reform that will help heal America’s wounded dairy industry by ensuring that the fees farmers pay to advance farming interests no longer go to advancing ESG-related activities and subsidies often directed by interests outside the United States.
In a memorandum released on September 17, 2026, Secretary Rollins terminated mandatory ESG-related checkoff funding, terminating checkoff support for ESG commitment solicitation of food processors, and aligning research and promotion activities with the Trump administration’s priorities.
The memorandum directs all Research and Promotion Boards to align with the administration’s policy priorities favoring, “[A]gricultural production, prouder profitability, and freedom from ideologically driven mandates.” The memo goes further: that mandatory producer, handler, and importer assessments must support nutrition education, not underwrite ESG frameworks that impose tangible downward costs or onerous restrictions on domestic producers or processors.
Secretary Rollins sent a pointed and significant letter to Lolly Lesher, the chair of the National Dairy Board, informing the National Dairy Board of the pivot away from Environmental, Social, and Governance frameworks, net-zero, or climate neutrality initiatives. The letter continues by requesting a detailed list of all current and planned projects that support ESG activities, along with a proposed termination plan, to be sent to the USDA by September 30, 2026. The letter also states that “All work and creation of materials associated with these activities – including research, media, social media, websites, and any meeting where work supporting ESG activities would be a topic – will be required to cease.”
The letter highlights that USDA is focused on advancing economic and environmental goals and that the policy priorities of USDA are to promote American agriculture. This goal will be achieved by creating more space between American agriculturists and international nongovernmental entities, thus allowing farmers to focus on domestic production and the wellbeing of their farms and families.
Included in the letter, Secretary Rollins specifically called out Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ), a disastrous nongovernmental ESG initiative that specifically targets the dairy industry.
This comes after Heartland Impact and Consumers Defense raised the alarm on Pathways to Dairy Net Zero with the release of their recent co-authored report: The War on Dairy: Foreign Influence Subverting America’s Dairy Sector.
The report analyzes the effects of multinational nongovernmental ESG organizations like Pathways to Dairy Net Zero. From the large-scale analysis of how ESG mandates function, to the actual impact American Dairy emissions have on global emission standards, to food security and disruptions in the U.S. food supply, and foreign adversaries and competitors.
The USDA joined P2DNZ at COP26 in 2021 during the Biden administration under then-Secretary Tom Vilsack. Since then, participation in the cancerous ESG agenda has been grandfathered in.
On September 3, 2026, the report was sent to the USDA, along with a letter from Heartland Impact and Consumers Defense urging a deeper look into these harmful legacy-ESG programs hiding in plain sight. Both organizations are grateful to Secretary Rollins and the USDA for taking such quick action, for listening to the American Dairy Farmers that inspired the report, and for protecting American agriculture.
Without overstating it, this is a wonderful development for American agriculture by Secretary Rollins and the USDA.
For far too long, nongovernmental entities have sought to undermine and dictate policy to American farmers and ranchers by imposing ideologically driven mandates on their farming activity. These mandates rely on inconclusive, unconvincing science.
Meanwhile, their real cost puts hard-working American farmers at risk of bankruptcy, increases costs for consumers, and creates serious vulnerabilities in our food supply. Just last year, the United States lost 1,036 dairy farms. It is high time that our government advocates for those who break their backs to feed the nation rather than turning on them for a negligible at best change in global GHG emissions.
That’s right: eliminating all U.S. dairy emissions would reduce global emissions by only a few tenths of 1 percent, far below any detectability. According to integrated assessment models, it is consistently shown that aggressive national decarbonization attempts only bring about temperature changes measured in a mere hundredths of 1 degree Celsius by the year 2100.
So nongovernmental entities and elites in boardrooms have been slowly suffocating American farmers across the heartland for a small percentage point in an accounting book. This is madness, and it needed to end.
This critical decision by Secretary Rollins fulfills a promise made to Americans who voted for this administration. This is a huge win for all Americans. A much-needed pivot away from ESG frameworks and net zero toward measurable advancement for American farmers.
Samantha Fillmore (Sfillmore@heartlandimpact.org)is the Senior State Government Relations Manager for Heartland Impact, the advocacy arm of The Heartland Institute, a 40-year-old public policy think tank based in Schaumburg, Ilinois.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
