Biden's Agriculture Secretary stood at the UN in 2021 and volunteered America's dairy farmers for their climate agenda.
Farmers had no vote and no way out – just a mandatory bill for a scheme they never agreed to fund.
Brooke Rollins just shut it down – and what Biden buried inside the program is worse than anyone reported.
Biden Used the Dairy Checkoff Program to Fund ESG and Net Zero Mandates
Since 1983, American dairy farmers have paid mandatory fees into the Dairy Checkoff Program – a government-run fund Congress created for one specific purpose: selling more milk.
"Got Milk." That's what it was for.
Under Biden, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy quietly redirected those fees toward something farmers never voted for: greenhouse gas targets, net-zero commitments, and ESG frameworks cooked up at the United Nations.
Farmers just paid – roughly 15 cents for every 100 pounds of milk produced – while their own money bankrolled an agenda designed to regulate them out of business.
Biden's Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack launched the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero program during UN Climate Week in September 2021, calling it an opportunity to position American farmers as leaders in the fight against climate change.
What it actually built was a private enforcement machine that no voter approved and Congress never authorized.
USDA Ends Dairy Checkoff Funding for ESG Climate Initiatives
The Department of Agriculture ended it.
A memo sent to dairy industry executives, board chairs, and research boards made the new rule explicit: all checkoff spending must align with "agricultural production, producer profitability, and freedom from ideologically driven mandates."
The programs specifically named for scrutiny – Greener Cattle Initiative, U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative, Pathways to Dairy Net Zero, Sustainability Alliance – are the same ones Wisconsin dairy farmers sued over in June, arguing the fees violated both federal law and the First Amendment.
In an interview with The Daily Wire, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins explained what Biden had actually put into motion.
"Since President Trump first came into office, one of the top-of-mind issues as he campaigned around the country and then built his cabinet was our country and our leaders bowing to the radical climate agenda of the Left," Rollins said. "Those days are over."
She called it "the bigger war on cattle" – a coordinated effort, running through Vilsack's USDA and into every major processor contract in the country, to use food production as a lever for climate compliance.
"What we're doing is we are saying that no longer can these mandatory check off dollars be used for the ideological ESG agendas, the environmental social governance agendas, that obviously raise costs and constraint production," Rollins said.
"From here forward, we're going to align all of this on opening markets, on building demand, and on putting farmers first, which has always been the goal of these programs."
She pointed to a research grant that captured the scope of the drift: a USDA-funded study on "transgender food justice in San Francisco."
How Pathways to Dairy Net Zero Put Starbucks and Cargill in Control of Your Farm
This was never just about dairy.
The same blueprint – mandatory fees redirected to ideology – runs through checkoff programs for beef, pork, eggs, and corn.
Farmers across every commodity sector are forced to pay into funds that have repeatedly been used against them. The beef checkoff alone collects over $1 billion annually, and independent ranchers foot the bill while corporate lobbying organizations pocket the proceeds.
The Dairy Net Zero scheme had an even more dangerous structure. The Daily Signal reported two weeks ago that the 39-page "War on Dairy" report delivered to Rollins identified Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Land O'Lakes, and Cargill – not advocacy groups, but corporations – as full participants in the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero program.
Those corporations backed a UN-created scheme with a simple playbook: what starts as voluntary sustainability guidance gets written into processor contracts and lender requirements, and by the time it reaches the farmer, the decision has already been made for him.
Audit fees, compliance costs, emissions tracking – the burden lands on the operations least equipped to absorb it.
"We've got to root all this corruption and darkness out," Rollins told The Daily Wire. "And this is a big step in that direction."
Your granddad's dairy farm didn't survive three generations to fund a UN climate agenda pushed by Starbucks. Trump and Rollins just made sure it doesn't have to anymore.
Sources:
- Mary Margaret Olohan, "Exclusive: Trump Admin Frees Dairy Farmers From Funding Woke Climate Initiatives," The Daily Wire, September 17, 2026.
- Fred Lucas, "Exclusive: Trump USDA Faces Calls to Exit Climate Initiative Critics Call 'Private Regulation,'" The Daily Signal, September 3, 2026.
- H. Sterling Burnett, "Big Dairy Cabal's 'Dairy Net Zero' Efforts Must Be Stopped," Townhall, September 12, 2026.
- "Dairy Farmers File Lawsuit Challenging Dairy Checkoff Spending on Sustainability Initiatives," Cheese Reporter, June 12, 2026.