Jefferson’s Fields, Adams’s Markets: The Farm Bill Debate at America 250 (Parts 1, 2 and 3 of “Action by the US Government”)

June 30, 2026

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... (Former US president Thomas) Jefferson believed that the nation’s strength would arise from its land, its farmers, its capacity for self-sufficiency, and the vast possibilities of continental expansion. (Former US president John) Adams believed that strength emerged from commerce, industry, institutions, finance, and the ability to engage confidently with the wider world. They disagreed about almost everything except one thing: America would succeed only if it found a way to convert its extraordinary natural abundance into lasting national strength.

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The legislative landscape shaping the future of American agriculture, energy production, and conservation is currently defined by two major proposals: the House’s Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 and the Senate’s Agricultural Act of 2026. Both seek to guide American agriculture through fiscal year 2031. Yet beneath their thousands of pages of legislative language lies a remarkably familiar debate: should America strengthen itself primarily by protecting the productive capacity of its land, or by building the markets, institutions, and industries that transform that productivity into economic power? The answer emerging from Capitol Hill appears to be that, as with Jefferson and Adams themselves, the nation requires both. The contrast is most apparent in Title IX, governing energy and the emerging bioeconomy.

The Senate’s approach is unmistakably Adamsian in spirit. It seeks to build markets, establish standards, and create the institutional architecture necessary for the next generation of American industry. The Senate bill explicitly incorporates sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) into the federal definition of advanced biofuels, cementing its role in long-term national energy strategy. It prioritizes assistance not only for biorefineries but also for renewable chemicals, biobased manufacturing, and SAF production itself, reflecting a vision of agriculture not merely as food production, but as the foundation of an integrated industrial ecosystem.

Perhaps most revealingly, the Senate proposes creating national labeling standards for biobased products, including bio-attributed plastics and plant-based materials. Such standards may appear mundane, but Adams would have recognized them immediately. Markets require institutions, institutions require standards, and standards create the trust necessary for commerce to flourish.

The House, by contrast, takes an approach that Jefferson might find deeply familiar. While equally supportive of advanced biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel, the House places extraordinary emphasis on protecting the productive capacity of American farmland itself.

Its proposed limitations on federally supported ground-mounted solar projects on prime agricultural land represent an explicit statement of priorities: farmland exists first to produce food, feed, fiber, and increasingly fuel.

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Both embrace precision agriculture technologies, including satellite imagery, geospatial mapping, sensors, telemetry, and variable-rate applications. Both substantially increase support for technologies that allow farmers to produce more while using fewer inputs. Both recognize that the future competitiveness of American agriculture will depend not merely on acreage, but on information.

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Jefferson understood that a nation unable to feed itself could never truly be independent. Adams understood that a nation unable to organize, finance, and market its abundance could never truly become powerful. READ MORE

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Excerpt from Biofuels Digest Part 2: For most of American history, these two ideas existed in uneasy tension. How do you persuade free people to act collectively without diminishing their freedom? How do you preserve independence while creating prosperity? And perhaps most importantly for agriculture, how do you encourage stewardship without replacing the judgment of farmers with the judgment of bureaucrats? As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the United States Department of Agriculture appears to have arrived at a distinctly American answer.

The USDA’s recent evolution from the Regenerative Pilot Program of 2025 to the finalized Regenerative Feedstock Rule of 2026 represents more than a change in agricultural policy. It represents a profound shift in how the federal government understands its role in building agricultural resilience, environmental stewardship, and economic competitiveness. The old model relied primarily on subsidies and regulation. The emerging model relies on markets.

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By deploying $400 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and another $300 million through the Conservation Stewardship Program, the USDA attempted something remarkably practical: reducing the cost and risk of experimentation. Farmers were allowed to bundle multiple regenerative practices into streamlined applications, making it easier to adopt whole-farm approaches to soil management.

The results were substantial. By mid-2026, the program had generated more than 67,000 whole-farm conservation plans covering approximately 49 million acres and established more than 1,500 direct conservation contracts worth over $200 million. Yet the most important lesson of the pilot program may have been philosophical rather than agricultural. Subsidies can help farmers adopt new practices. But subsidies alone rarely create permanent systems.

On June 25, 2026, acting pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order on American Energy Dominance, Secretary Rollins announced the final Regenerative Feedstock Rule. If the pilot program had focused on helping farmers transition toward regenerative practices, the final rule focused on ensuring those practices could support themselves economically. The shift was subtle but profound.

Rather than paying farmers to adopt specific practices, the USDA created a framework allowing farmers to prove the value of what they had already accomplished. The final rule established standards for measuring and verifying reductions in carbon intensity for major American crops, including corn, soybeans, sorghum, and spring canola. Through mass-balance accounting systems, auditing protocols, and standardized measurement methodologies, producers could now document the environmental attributes of their crops and market those attributes directly to private buyers. Jefferson would have recognized the farmer. Adams would have recognized the market.

To support this transition, the USDA introduced its updated Feedstock Carbon Intensity Calculator, allowing producers to quantify the impacts of practices such as reduced tillage, cover cropping, nutrient optimization, and no-till farming. Armed with verified data, farmers could participate directly in emerging markets for sustainable aviation fuel, renewable diesel, and other low-carbon products. The significance of this transition extends well beyond carbon accounting. The traditional conservation model asked taxpayers to reward stewardship through public expenditure. The new model asks markets to reward stewardship through private demand.

The timing of this transition is particularly noteworthy. USDA estimates suggest that approximately 68 percent of corn producers and 70 percent of soybean producers already employ at least some regenerative practices. Rather than attempting to compel additional adoption through regulation, the USDA has chosen to create mechanisms allowing producers to capture the economic value of practices they have already embraced. READ MORE

Excerpt from Biofuels Digest Part 3: Jefferson believed that freedom depended on self-sufficiency, local resilience, and the productive power of ordinary citizens. Adams believed that freedom depended on institutions, commerce, manufacturing, and the capacity of nations to project strength in an uncertain world.

Yet beneath their disagreements lay a shared conviction. A republic, if it wished to remain free, could never allow itself to become dependent.

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Because no matter how productive a nation becomes, and no matter how effectively it organizes its markets, prosperity ultimately depends on one fundamental question: Who will buy what you produce?

For much of the past half century, American agriculture has relied heavily on export markets to answer that question. This strategy generated enormous prosperity. But it also exposed American producers to geopolitical forces beyond their control. Over the past several years, retaliatory tariffs, strategic competition, and shifting global alliances have demonstrated the risks of relying excessively on foreign markets to absorb domestic abundance. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard proposals for 2026 and 2027 represent an extraordinarily ambitious answer to this challenge. Rather than seeking to guarantee prosperity through subsidies or trade negotiations alone, the federal government has chosen to expand domestic demand itself. The scale of this shift is remarkable.

Biomass-based diesel requirements are set to rise from 1.1 billion gallons in 2025 to 1.78 billion gallons in both 2026 and 2027. Renewable diesel volumes are projected to increase from 2.6 billion gallons in 2025 to nearly 4.7 billion gallons by 2027. Demand for soybean oil, canola oil, distillers corn oil, and other agricultural feedstocks is expected to rise dramatically. Domestic soybean crush is projected to reach record levels, while investments in oilseed processing, fuel production, and rural infrastructure continue to accelerate.

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The Renewable Fuel Standard is often described as an environmental policy. It is also an industrial policy. It is a rural development policy. Increasingly, it is becoming a resilience policy.

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The EPA’s recent actions suggest that the United States government has arrived at a conclusion that both men might appreciate: the strongest form of international engagement is not dependence, but capability.

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Nations that can feed themselves, fuel themselves, and finance themselves possess strategic options unavailable to those that cannot.

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Congress is attempting to preserve and expand the productive capacity of American land. The USDA is attempting to align environmental stewardship with economic incentives. The EPA is attempting to ensure that the resulting abundance finds reliable domestic markets. Together, these efforts represent something larger than agricultural policy. They represent an effort to renew one of the oldest promises of the American experiment: that a free people, governing themselves, can build sufficient prosperity, resilience, and confidence to determine their own future. READ MORE