Advocacy Action Alert – Organic Certification Cost Share Program at Risk!

November 13, 2023
The 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2023. Rather than passing a new Farm Bill, Congress has indicated that they plan to extend the current Farm Bill. Unlike larger Farm Bill programs which are automatically included in a Farm Bill extension, the Organic Certification Cost Share Program is too small to have ‘permanent baseline’ funding status. The Organic Certification Cost Share Program is at risk for 2024!
Without Congressional action, the Cost Share Program will expire, leaving thousands of organic farmers with a huge net increase in their annual certification costs. The Organic Certification Cost Share Program will disappear unless Congress specifically allocates stopgap funding for it!
You can take action on this issue by contacting your Members of Congress. In addition, we are asking that you use the action alert below as a template to get everyone in your network – farmers, citizens, organic community members – to reach out to their Members of Congress with the request that they fund the cost share program in the Farm Bill extension. If you like, use this link to help folks automatically send a message to their Members of Congress. We’ve created this toolkit to help you spread the word about this important action alert.
Contact your Senators and Representative today and ask them to fund the Organic Certification Cost Share Program in 2024.
Click here to automatically send a message to your Members of Congress.
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Advocacy News: May 2026
The Good News: CT Senator Chris Murphy has introduced a bill (bipartisan and bicameral) to increase funding for Agricultural Management Assistance to $30 million and to expand the eligible uses for these funds to include “soil health improvements, composting, implementing organic farming, and food safety certification in addition to existing authorized uses such as water management structure and soil erosion control.” Let’s thank Senator Murphy for introducing this bill!
The Bad News: The Farm Bill passed the House of Representatives on April 30, despite 320 food, farm, and conservation organizations, including CT NOFA, voicing our opposition to a bill that does not fix SNAP, does not support new and beginning farmers, and does not adequately support conservation programs or organic agriculture. Now it goes to the Senate and we need to urge both of Connecticut’s Senators to reject this Farm Bill.
Our Vision for a Future of Resilient, Plentiful, Healthy and Locally-Grounded Farming and Food
In concluding its annual retreat, the Northeast Organic Farming Association Interstate Council (NOFA IC) reaffirms the values that have grounded our work for 55 years.
Our vision is that every person is able to live their life with healthy food, clean water and air, community, livelihood, dignity, and purpose within the means of our life-giving planet. We seek that vision on every level, from our households and farms to our communities, states, bioregions, nation, and world. For that vision to be fulfilled, every person, no matter their origin or circumstances, must have all their basic human needs met without degrading the air, water, soil, ecosystems, and climate which we have been given and on which we depend for our lives.


