The Trump administration has stopped payments to entities involved in the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities initiative that was the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s climate change activities at the Agriculture Department, Agri-Pulse has reported.

“In a letter dated Monday to the Iowa congressional delegation obtained by Agri-Pulse, the Iowa Soybean Association says, ‘USDA has suspended all farmer and program reimbursements. This suspension puts the program and its participating farmers at risk.’ The letter warned that farmers participating in its project are ‘contractually owed $11 million’ for practices the growers implemented in 2024,” the article said.

USDA hasn’t provided any official guidance to groups about how long payments could be suspended, or even whether project work would be allowed to continue after some type of review period, leading to confusion among leaders of the projects, the article said. The Iowa Soybean Association said it “received a note from a USDA official last Thursday that said, ‘Reimbursements are currently on hold while we await guidance from the department,'” the article added.

Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary in the Biden administration, created the partnerships program with $3 billion from the Commodity Credit Corporation, USDA’s line of credit at the Treasury. Republicans have objected to the use of the CCC to create the program.

Robert Bonnie, the agriculture undersecretary for farm production and conservation in the Biden administration, told The Hagstrom Report before he left office that some of the $3 billion has been paid out to the lead groups in charge of the program and the remainder is in an account at the Natural Resources Conservation Service to be paid out to the groups on a quarterly basis. The partnerships program is supposed to last for several years and to include evaluations of the practices that farmers and ranchers adopt to see if they reach the goals of reducing carbon emissions and create products that farmers are able to sell for more money than through conventional production.