There is no reliable current dollar total for USDA funding that remains frozen. USDA paused obligations and disbursements while reviewing Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) awards in January 2025, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) could not establish the status of all reviewed awards. The numbers do show the scale of USDA’s funding—and why a pie chart must separate money rescinded by law from money committed or paid.
What do the largest USDA funding figures actually measure?
GAO’s September 2026 report gives two broad figures for USDA’s IIJA and IRA funding: $37 billion was not later rescinded by Public Law 119-21, and USDA obligated $32.2 billion during fiscal years 2022–2025. These figures cover multiple programs and funding mechanisms. They are not a count of grants to individual farmers or cash paid to them.
The distinction matters. An obligation is a definite commitment that creates a legal liability; it does not necessarily mean the recipient has already received payment. A disbursement is a payment that liquidates an obligation and may reimburse costs the recipient has already incurred. Budget authority is the authority to spend, subject to its availability and any later rescission. A rescission removes budget authority by law. An award can also be described as frozen, canceled, or terminated, but those terms do not mean the same thing.
What does a pie chart of USDA’s IRA funding show?
GAO’s IRA-only snapshot is more suitable for explaining the accounting, provided the chart uses one denominator and does not mix stages. As of September 30, 2025, GAO reported the following national totals:
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| Measure | Amount | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| Budget authority | $35.36 billion | USDA’s reported IRA funding authority |
| Rescissions | $5.77 billion | IRA authority rescinded by Public Law 119-21 |
| Obligations | $26.46 billion | Funding committed by USDA |
| Disbursements | $7.65 billion | Payments made against obligations |
These figures are from GAO’s September 2026 report, with a financial snapshot as of September 30, 2025. Amounts may not sum exactly because of rounding; the report excludes funds unavailable for obligation by the cutoff.
A defensible pie: rescinded versus not rescinded
A pie chart can use the reported $35.36 billion in IRA budget authority as its denominator and divide it into $5.77 billion rescinded and $29.59 billion remaining after rescissions. The latter is the arithmetic difference between GAO’s reported authority and rescissions, not a measure of funds already paid to farmers. On that basis, about 16.3% of the reported authority was rescinded and about 83.7% was not. Label the chart “USDA IRA budget authority and rescissions” and date it September 30, 2025; do not call the remaining share “money farmers received.”
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Why obligations and disbursements should not be extra pie slices
Obligations and disbursements describe later accounting stages, not separate pieces alongside budget authority and rescissions. Disbursements are payments against obligations, and obligations are commitments drawn from available authority. Putting all four reported figures into one pie would imply mutually exclusive parts of a whole when they are not. To show progress, use separate bars or a clearly labeled flow that distinguishes authority, rescissions, obligations, and payments.
How much of the money was frozen or canceled?
The reported review does not support a current portfolio-wide dollar total for funding still frozen. USDA paused obligations and disbursements for IRA- and IIJA-funded awards in January 2025 while it reviewed them. GAO said USDA completed its review by June 30, 2025, but USDA could not specify which reviewed awards it approved to continue or modified, or whether it canceled additional awards. As of May 2026, USDA had not updated GAO on the status of 34 awards identified as frozen in May 2025.
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GAO’s definition of cancellation can include different events: termination of an obligated award, rescission of unobligated funding, retraction of an announced award that was not obligated, or a recipient’s decision to discontinue. A statutory rescission is not proof that a particular farmer’s award was frozen; a paused payment does not by itself establish that an award was canceled.
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Does the IRA conservation allocation equal grants to farmers?
No. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) says the IRA provided an additional $19.5 billion over five years for USDA conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), technical assistance, and greenhouse-gas measurement. That is a program allocation, not a total of current farmer grants or a measure of frozen awards.
NRCS also reports more than 23,000 climate-focused conservation contracts covering over 11 million acres in fiscal year 2024. Those are reported contract and acreage outcomes, not frozen-funding figures. NRCS describes conservation applications as competitive and processed under program rules and state ranking dates; allocation totals alone do not show which awards are pending, paid, or affected by a pause.
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What happened to specific USDA programs and awards?
Regional Food Business Centers
On July 15, 2025, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service announced that it was terminating the Regional Food Business Centers program while saying it would honor existing commitments for more than 450 grants to farmers and food businesses. The announcement allowed some centers with existing subawards to manage those commitments through May 2026. The program’s termination and the commitments USDA said it would honor illustrate why a single “frozen grants” figure cannot be inferred from an announcement about one program.
REAP solar grant example
The Associated Press reported in 2026 that Maryland farmer Elisa Lane’s $30,576 Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) solar grant was initially frozen in February 2025 and reimbursed in September after she had paid project costs. AP also reported that REAP grant awards were suspended pending a regulatory update. This is one recipient’s experience as reported by AP, not evidence that every REAP recipient had the same delay or outcome.
How to read or make a chart about the funding
- For the scale of the two laws together: cite GAO’s $37 billion not later rescinded and $32.2 billion obligated in FY2022–FY2025, and state that the totals span programs and mechanisms rather than direct grants to farmers.
- For a pie chart: use one denominator, such as IRA budget authority, and show agency shares only when using the agency-level values in GAO’s table. Its reported total and rows may differ slightly because of rounding.
- For the effect of rescissions: a pie can compare the $5.77 billion rescinded with the remainder of the reported $35.36 billion IRA authority, while labeling the remainder as authority not rescinded—not obligations, payments, or funds guaranteed to farmers.
- For spending progress: use separate bars or a non-overlapping flow. Label the statute, national scope, units in U.S. dollars, and September 30, 2025 cutoff.
The figures above come from GAO’s September 2026 report, USDA NRCS’s Inflation Reduction Act program information, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service’s July 15, 2025 Regional Food Business Centers announcement, and the Associated Press’s 2026 reporting on REAP. Each source measures a different part of the funding picture; none establishes a comprehensive current dollar total for USDA grants that remain frozen.
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