The national Farm Bill, which is subject to congressional negotiation and runs on a five-year cycle, expired in the fall of 2023. While Congress has previously funded the national Organic Certification Cost Share Program rebate (OCCSP) through stopgap funding bills since the Farm Bill’s expiration, they failed to include any funding for OCCSP in the continuing resolution spending bills in December 2024 or in March 2025. Funding for the organic cost share was recently included in the congressional “reconciliation bill” H.R. 1, and signed by the president on July 4. While the bill has a lot of controversial items, the continued funding of the organic cost share is a positive one. That said, H.R. 1 continues the organic cost share at the past level of $8 million per year through 2031, which is not enough funding to satisfy all of the rebate requests across the country. A section-by-section summary of the legislation, which extends the current $8 million per year allocation through 2031, is available online.
MOFGA, along with our coalition partners at the Organic Farmers Association (OFA) and the National Organic Coalition (NOC), has been pushing for a funding increase to this important program, and continues to advocate for higher funding amounts and increases to the current 75% cost share of up to $750 per scope rate. MOFGA, OFA, and NOC have been pushing for the organic cost share rebate to be permanently funded, not tied to the five-year Farm Bill, and for the reimbursement amount to increase to $1,500 per scope (the rebate has been 75% per production scope up to $750 since the program began 20 years ago).
Generally, the annual funding for this rebate program is extremely small in the overall United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget, with allocations of roughly $8-10 million dollars each year. In MOFGA Certification Services’ service territory, primarily Maine and New Hampshire, the participation in this rebate program is one of the highest in the country: a little over 90%. With hundreds of very small producers relying on this rebate to assist with the cost of organic certification, it’s a hugely important program that has been in place since the inception of the USDA National Organic Program in 2002.
Farm-based producers in the MCS service territory are eligible to receive Agricultural Marketing Assistance (AMA) Cost Share Program funding, which in Maine is sent to the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry by the USDA. It is a separate funding appropriation that has permanent funding through the Commodity Credit Corporation and is not subject to negotiation like the OCCSP is through the Farm Bill. AMA is available in 16 states where participation in the Federal Crop Insurance Program is historically low — Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming — and is only for farm-based operations. In 2024, Maine’s organic cost share payments were roughly a 50/50 split between OCCSP and AMA funds.
– Chris Grigsby, MOFGA Certification Services Director
This article was originally published in the fall 2025 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.