WASHINGTON, D.C. — Agriculture took center stage at the MAHA Summit Tuesday as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced plans to increase USDA investment in regenerative agriculture to $1 billion next year while outlining broader efforts aimed at farm profitability, school nutrition, SNAP reform and strengthening the domestic food supply.
Rollins joined Ohalo Genetics CEO David Friedberg for a fireside chat titled “Securing America’s Food Supply & Environmental Innovation” at the MAHA Summit in Washington, D.C. The September 29 event brought together government officials, health leaders, technology companies and others involved in the Make America Healthy Again movement.
The conversation repeatedly returned to one central question for agriculture: how can the United States improve health and environmental outcomes without sacrificing farmer productivity and profitability?
For both speakers, technology and agricultural innovation were presented as a major part of the answer.
Rollins Announces $1 Billion for Regenerative Agriculture
One of the biggest announcements of the session came when Rollins said USDA will increase its investment in regenerative agriculture from $700 million to $1 billion for the coming year.
USDA launched its $700 million Regenerative Pilot Program in December 2025 through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, including $400 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and $300 million through the Conservation Stewardship Program. The voluntary program is designed to support whole-farm conservation plans focused on soil health, water management and agricultural productivity.
Rollins told the MAHA Summit audience that approximately 15,000 farmers have been approved for grants under the initiative and used the event to announce the planned increase.
“We’re going to take that $700 million investment and bump it to a billion dollars in investment for regenerative agriculture for the next year,” Rollins said. The announcement drew an enthusiastic response from agriculture technology leaders attending the summit.
Carbon Robotics was also highlighted earlier in the session by Ohalo Genetics CEO David Friedberg as an example of agricultural technology that can help farmers reduce chemical inputs. The company’s LaserWeeder uses artificial intelligence, computer vision and lasers to identify and eliminate weeds without herbicides.
“This is what real leadership looks like, this will help our farmers immensely!” said Paul Mikesell, CEO and founder of Carbon Robotics, who attended the event.
Rollins emphasized that USDA’s approach is intended to provide farmers with options rather than mandate specific production practices.
Agricultural Technology Takes the Stage
Before Rollins joined the discussion, Friedberg highlighted several emerging agricultural technologies that he argued can reduce inputs while increasing farm productivity and profitability.
Among them were new plant-breeding techniques being developed by Ohalo. Friedberg described the technology as non-GMO, saying it can alter or turn off genes without introducing foreign DNA.
He highlighted several applications under development, including self-pollinating almonds that Ohalo says could reduce water use per almond by 50%, reduce reliance on bees by 50% to 100% and increase farmer profit by 30%.
Friedberg also discussed disease-resistant strawberries developed through a partnership with the University of Florida. He said the technology could reduce fungicide use by 75% while improving yields and potentially doubling farmer profitability.
Another example was true potato seed. Instead of planting roughly 2,000 pounds of cut seed potatoes per acre, Friedberg said growers could plant approximately 10 grams of seed, potentially reducing transportation, storage, labor and crop-protection costs.
He also highlighted high-resolution soil mapping and microbial seed treatments as technologies that could help farmers apply fertilizer and nutrients more precisely.
“The key point I wanted to make is that there is billions of dollars of technology investment happening in agriculture right now,” Friedberg said, arguing that many of those technologies could simultaneously benefit farmers, the environment and food production.
USDA Pushes Changes to SNAP
Rollins also discussed changes underway in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
She said more than 25 states have partnered with USDA on efforts to restrict SNAP purchases of products such as soda and candy. USDA currently lists more than 20 states with approved food-restriction waivers, although several state waivers have faced court action or differing implementation dates.
Another major change involves what retailers must stock to participate in SNAP. Beginning November 4, 2026, most SNAP-authorized retailers will be required to continuously stock at least seven varieties in each of four staple-food categories: dairy, grains, protein, and fruits or vegetables. That amounts to at least 28 staple-food varieties, along with additional stocking requirements.
Rollins described the changes as part of an effort to ensure SNAP recipients have greater access to healthier food choices.
Connecting Farmers With School Cafeterias
School meals were another major focus of Rollins’ remarks. USDA’s recently announced Harvest to Hallways initiative is designed to connect schools with locally produced food while investing in the equipment and infrastructure schools need to prepare fresh meals.
The initiative includes up to $70 million for school cafeteria infrastructure and up to $25 million in additional Farm to School Grants for fiscal year 2026. USDA and HHS have also announced $30 million for research into practical ways of improving the nutritional quality of school meals.
Rollins said USDA provides approximately 30 million school lunches and 15 million breakfasts each day during the school year. She argued that those programs represent an opportunity not only to change what children eat, but also to create new markets for local farmers.
She pointed to a small lettuce operation she visited near Albuquerque, New Mexico, that sells directly to schools and a hospital as an example of what USDA hopes can be replicated more broadly.
“We have to figure out how to do that 100 times, 1,000 times over,” Rollins said, describing local institutional purchasing as a potential way to support both healthier school meals and new generations of farmers.
Farm Profitability Remains a Central Concern
Despite much of the discussion focusing on nutrition and technology, Rollins repeatedly brought the conversation back to the economics of farming.
She told the audience that the United States has lost approximately 660,000 farms and ranches over roughly the past decade and said that, on average, many farmers are profitable only two years out of ten.
“This is not a sustainable business model,” Rollins said. Her comments touched on many of the pressures farmers continue to face, including fertilizer, seed, fuel and financing costs as well as access to export markets.
Rollins also argued that federal agricultural policy should ultimately help producers become less dependent on government assistance and more capable of generating income through the marketplace.
“My goal,” she said, is to address “profitability for our farmers, so that they’re not dependent. They’re not farming for a government check.”
Trade was a significant part of that discussion. Rollins credited the administration’s trade policies with opening additional markets and reducing the agricultural trade deficit, while also stressing the importance of reducing dependence on any single foreign market, particularly China. Those trade figures and conclusions were presented by Rollins during the summit.
Food Security Means Input Security
The discussion also broadened the definition of food security beyond simply producing enough food. Rollins pointed to U.S. reliance on foreign countries for fertilizer, seed and other agricultural inputs as a vulnerability for American agriculture.
“There is no freedom unless you can feed yourself,” Rollins said, arguing that strengthening domestic production of critical farm inputs needs to be part of a longer-term strategy for U.S. agriculture.
That concern intersected with Friedberg’s argument that agricultural technology could help farmers accomplish more with fewer inputs through precision application, improved genetics, automation and biological products.
Can Agricultural Policy Survive the Election Cycle?
One of the more significant questions raised during the session was not about a particular technology or USDA program, but about whether agricultural and food-policy changes can last beyond the political cycle.
Friedberg noted the difficulty of maintaining long-term policy direction when congressional elections occur every two years and presidential elections every four.
Rollins said she is looking beyond her own tenure at USDA and considering how current changes to procurement, SNAP, nutrition programs and agricultural policy could have longer-lasting effects. “What can I do right now to completely recalibrate the entire system around farmers, around ranchers, around real food,” Rollins asked, while discussing changes ranging from dietary guidelines to federal procurement and SNAP.
For agriculture, that may ultimately be the larger question emerging from the MAHA Summit. The conversation in Washington connected agricultural technology, nutrition policy, school food, conservation, trade and farm economics in ways that could create both opportunities and new policy debates for producers.
For farmers and ranchers, however, the measurement will be much more practical: whether those changes lower production costs, expand markets, improve profitability and keep more working farms in business.
For more information about the MAHA Summit visit https://www.mahasummit.com/