A sorghum field in eastern Colorado might be the last place you'd expect to find an array of lasers and highly sensitive scientific instruments. But that's the setup Jerry Hatfield was presenting to the crowd in Haxtun, Colo. at the Research Field Day earlier this summer on Pfaltzgraff Farms.
A lot of research, Hatfield's included, was funded by a Biden-era federal grant for climate smart agriculture. The Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program brought more than $900 million dollars to Colorado to support conservation farming and ranching.
Under President Donald Trump, national agricultural priorities have shifted. The Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities grant program was terminated in April, leaving much of the research on Pfaltzgraff’s farm - and a lot of other ag science – in limbo.
Hatfield, though white-haired, has the vigorous, coiled energy of a sports coach. He motioned towards a compact metal tower hung with a collection of boxes and devices, and a skirt of tangled cables in the field to his left.
“These instruments - they're so sensitive that I would've picked you all up on the measurement, because you're all breathing out there,” he told his audience. “We've got this array of soil chambers, these cute little things that look like robots standing over here. They measure CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor every four hours.”
Hatfield is a retired USDA research service lab director. But, as he says, he’s not retired from science. He’s one of several scientists on this farm doing research that will help farmers plan for the changing climate. His work focuses on an alternative crop called camelina, a seed used to make sustainable jet fuel. He’s looking at how it uses water, carbon and other nutrients. And – importantly for commercial-scale farming – how camelina works into complex cropping rotations.
“It's a new crop and rarely do scientists ever get to work on a new crop,” he said. “One of the things that we've begun to see as we analyze the data is that camelina is an extremely water efficient crop.”
Hatfield’s research has a two-fold purpose – to produce data that shows farmers how camelina – a new and valuable cash crop - can grow in drought conditions while improving the soil and to see how the plant affects other plants that grow in the same field at different times. The idea is to help farmers diversify their income streams and build supply for the eager camelina market.
The termination of the grant program came at an awkward time – at the very start of the 2025 growing season, and at such an early phase for the research projects that they haven’t had time to produce much useful data yet, despite millions spent to get them off the ground.
“We were still in relatively early stages for many of the projects,” said Risha Patel, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “(The Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities) was supposed to be a five year project when it was first created. It was terminated about two years into it.
Farmer Roy Pfaltzgraff, who organized this field day on his land, is the rare type of farmer who likes to experiment. He invited other farmers and the curious public to his family’s farm to learn first-hand about the research happening here directly from the scientists doing it.
“I work with a lot of researchers,” Pfaltzgraff said. “Partially because what we do is so unique that one researcher finds out about us and then they mention it to their friends. And then the next one, and then the next one. And it just attracts more of them.”
According to Patel, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities to help farmers and ranchers be more environmentally sustainable. The program included many projects that incorporated paying agricultural producers cash to adopt certain conservation practices – like no-till farming and cover cropping. But the program also had an important research arm.
“Part of this was to measure better how the climate smart practices that are being implemented actually affect the climate,” Patel said. “How much carbon is sequestered - how much greenhouse gas reduction - a lot of science that we just are still working on.”
The USDA did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story. But in a press release last April, officials called the program a "slush fund" - part of the "green new scam," to the “benefit of NGOs, not American farmers.”
USDA officials rebranded the program from “Climate Smart Commodities” to “Advancing Markets for Producers” (AMP) grants. They restructured the funding, retroactively requiring at least 65% of the grant money to be used for direct cash payments to producers, effectively ending the research component of the entire project.
But for producers like Roy Pfaltzgraff, that calculation doesn't add up.
“It's the old adage of ‘you give a man a fish. He can eat for a day, you teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime,’” Pfaltzgraff said.
All the research on his farm and elsewhere is more valuable to him than any cash because the science informs how he manages his land to stay ahead of intensifying drought as the climate warms.
“That knowledge and that data is going to farmers and it's supporting us in a way that no one else currently is,” Pfaltzgraff said. “How do you assign a dollar value to that? The value of knowing changes everything from now on.”
Scientists supported by the climate smart grants are now scrambling to find alternative funding to keep their projects going. Jerry Hatfield reapplied under the restructured USDA AMP program. But the growing season - data season for these scientists - is well under way, so Hatfield has been donating his time this summer.
“If I'd stopped in the middle of April and we don't pick up until September, we've lost a growing season,” Hatfield said. “It's now a labor of love in terms of what I've been doing.”
He says he'll probably continue doing that at least through the fall. But before long, he will reach his limit.
“We can't afford to go on with all this intensive equipment and everything,” he said.
He says his research could be a huge economic and environmental benefit for farmers in arid regions. He just needs to find the means to finish it.
“We've got to repair equipment. We've got to buy replacement equipment. We've got to do the soil sampling, which isn't being done right now. We’ve got satellite data that we need to be gathering. We just can't pay for it,” he said. “I mean, if they terminate and say, we're not going on, what do we do?"
