An estimated 2,800 American dairy farms closed in 2025 – the same year Biden's UN-linked climate scheme was quietly embedding itself in milk processor contracts.
Now Trump's USDA still appears on that program's participant list, and two conservative groups just delivered Secretary Brooke Rollins a 39-page demand to cut ties.
What those groups found buried in that report is the reason Starbucks and Coca-Cola want this program to survive.
How Biden's Net Zero Mandate Targeted Dairy Farmers
Biden Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack launched Pathways to Dairy Net Zero during UN Climate Week in September 2021.
He called it a chance to "position U.S. farmers, ranchers and forest landowners as leaders in addressing climate change."
What it actually created was a private enforcement machine that no voter approved and no Congress authorized.
The program calls itself voluntary.
But a dairy farmer who refuses its compliance requirements can lose access to credit, lose his processor contract, or lose his purchaser – and none of that requires a single government regulator to sign a single order.
Consumers Defense Executive Director Sal Nuzzo described exactly how the trap springs: what starts as guidance becomes obligation, and "American small farmers are left decimated."
A 39-page report titled "The War on Dairy: Foreign Influence Subverting America's Dairy Sector" – delivered Thursday to Secretary Rollins – lays out the mechanism in detail.
The ESG Climate Mandate Squeezing Small Dairy Farms Out
The report's authors aren't describing a new idea.
They're describing the same model used by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, where multinational banks coordinated to enforce ESG standards across entire industries without legislation, without elections, and without accountability.
P2DNZ runs the same play on milk.
Climate modeling becomes accounting targets. Accounting targets become ESG frameworks buried in lender requirements and processor contracts. By the time those frameworks reach the farmer, the choice has already been made for him.
The burden lands hardest on small and mid-sized operations.
Monitoring systems, data collection, third-party audits, and consultant fees carry fixed costs that a mega-dairy can absorb across massive volume.
A family farm cannot.
In 2025 alone, the USDA reported 15,000 small farms closed or consolidated – and an estimated 2,800 dairy farms were projected to close that same year.
Processors, meanwhile, invested $11 billion in facilities built for mega-dairies that can handle the compliance load smaller farms never could.
The ESG machine doesn't need to put a single family farm out of business directly.
It just needs margins tight enough that consolidation does the rest.
Why USDA Must Drop Pathways to Dairy Net Zero Now
The groups' letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins identifies every organization P2DNZ lists as a participant or supporter in North America.
The list includes Cargill, Coca-Cola, Dairy Farmers of America, the Environmental Defense Fund, Land O'Lakes, the National Milk Producers Federation, Starbucks, and the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
And the USDA.
Rollins has already shown she understands the threat.
Biden's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities – gone.
Taxpayer subsidies for solar projects eating up productive farmland – gone.
Rollins went on X and flagged P2DNZ by name, calling the mandates "radical ESG mandates disguised as sustainability."
A USDA spokesman told reporters this week that Trump "will not stand idly by" while large processors and foreign bodies force their standards onto American farmers.
"Proponents of these burdens should be on notice," the spokesman said. "Your ESG standards will no longer be applied to American farmers."
Strong words.
But the USDA's name is still on the P2DNZ participant list.
The groups are asking Rollins to disclose exactly what that affiliation involves – funding, staff participation, data sharing, contracts – and to cut ties completely.
Heartland Impact's Samantha Fillmore put the scale in plain terms: even if every U.S. dairy farm eliminated every emission entirely, the effect on global climate would be undetectable – while the compliance costs landing on farm families remain very real.
Brooke Rollins has the authority to end this.
The question is whether she does it before the next family farm signs its last contract.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Exclusive: Trump USDA Faces Calls to Exit Climate Initiative Critics Call 'Private Regulation,'" The Daily Signal, September 3, 2026.
- Tate Rosentreter, "USDA Called on to End Connections to Net Zero Program P2DNZ," The Center Square, September 4, 2026.
- Samantha Fillmore, "By Targeting Dairy Farmers, ESG Wants to Decide Your Milk," RealClearWire, May 15, 2026.
- "No Data, No Milk: Wisconsin Dairy Farmers Sue USDA Over Checkoff Program," Heartland Post, June 11, 2026.
- "Woke Corporations Are Using ESG to Target Dairy Farmers and Control Your Milk," Unmuzzled News, May 21, 2026.