JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
Lincoln University confirmed Friday that a hemp research project funded by the Climate Smart Commodities program in the United States Department of Agriculture will lose its benefactor.
The $5 million grant was awarded in April 2023 and would have been good through April 2026. It wasn’t clear on Friday how much of that money had been spent when the cut came.
This comes after an announcement last month, when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the USDA would cancel the program that paid for the Lincoln project and other Biden-era partnerships following a review. Rollins stated most of the projects had high administration fees and a lack of funds given to local farmers, according to the release. She further claimed the initiative was made to “advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers.”
Lincoln’s Hemp Institute works to make hemp crops more climate-resilient, along with other research related to helping hemp-based agricultural producers. The grant funded the Climate Smart Hemp Project, which studied the ways hemp could help with issues such as taking excess carbon from the air to reduce warming.
Existing programs, like the one at Lincoln, would be allowed to reapply under the program’s new name, the Advancing Market for Producers initiative, which the government says aligns with the Trump administration’s priorities. In order to have funding restored, they would have to meet three “Farmer First” policies. These include allocating a minimum of 65% of federal funds to producers, enrolling at least one producer by the end of last year and making a payment to a producer by the end of last year.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ) Lincoln University confirmed Friday that a hemp research project funded by the Climate Smart Commodities program in the United States Department of Agriculture will lose its benefactor. The $5 million grant was awarded in April 2023 and would have been good through April 2026. It wasn’t clear on Friday how much Read More
