(The Epoch Times)—Deep in the heart of Texas, regenerative agriculture devotees showed up to hear Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak about the connection between healthy land and healthy food.
On May 2, Kennedy served as the keynote speaker at a regenerative farming summit held at Sovereignty Ranch, a 200-acre regenerative farm and ranch outfit founded by Mollie Engelhart.
Kennedy advocated expanding regenerative farming to produce nutrient-rich foods for American tables. The pilot program aims to make regenerative agriculture more accessible to farmers by reducing red tape.
“If you don’t have any nutrients, the food is not food,” Kennedy told a packed house.
Some 200 people attended the two-day event, sponsored by Sovereignty Ranch, AcresUSA, and American Regeneration, which featured speakers on topics including soil health, biodiversity, and technological advances in herbicide-free farming.
In December 2025, Kennedy joined Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to announce a $700 million regenerative agriculture initiative to improve Americans’ diet and health, starting with soil enrichment for crop production.
Kennedy, who sparked the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, noted that the program is one way the Trump administration is fulfilling the objectives of the MAHA Report, such as eliminating chronic disease through healthier food.
“This is the fulfillment of a promise,” Kennedy said at the time, referring to the report. One of the recommendations was to make it easier for farmers to have an “off-ramp” to move away from chemicals used in agriculture.
At the summit, Kennedy called for expanding the regenerative farming pilot program to $50 billion to transform the country’s agricultural system.
He added that the response to the pilot rollout was overwhelming: “They got 13,000 applications within a few days.”
Many practitioners see regenerative farming as the holy grail for healing American farmland by reducing chemical fertilizer use, and eliminating or controlling weeds and pests naturally.
“Our health is directly related to our food, and the quality of our food is directly related to and depending on the quality of our soils,” Kennedy said.
As a child, he recalled growing up with fields of flowers covered with butterflies, and puddles filled with frogs and tadpoles. Now, he worries that children will no longer be able to see biodiversity while growing up and will lose a connection to nature.
“It’s not only biologically impoverishing us, but it’s spiritually impoverishing us,” he said.
Kennedy said family farms, long considered the backbone of America, are struggling and vanishing at an alarming rate.
“When we destroy nature—when we destroy our relationship with the abundance, the diversity of nature—we destroy our capacity to sense the divine,” he added.
Kennedy noted that MAHA supporters successfully pushed back against provisions in the Farm Bill that shielded pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits.
“They’ve got pitchforks and torches; they’re coming for the power structure,” Kennedy said.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who led an amendment to strip the protections, received bipartisan support and the amendments passed 280–142. The House of Representatives passed the Farm Bill on April 30, sending it to the Senate for consideration.
“Pesticides are linked to a 30 percent increase in childhood cancer, and over 170 studies corroborate the evidence. This amendment ensures we stand on the side of the American people and the health of our nation, not corporate interests,” Luna said in a release.
Engelhart, a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement and contributor to The Epoch Times, went from working as a vegan chef in Los Angeles to running a Texas cattle ranch.
She told The Epoch Times she hopes Kennedy can work with Rollins to change the system from subsidizing crops to subsidizing soil health. Another idea would be to incentivize Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to buy whole foods rather than processed foods.
“I believe that the government should be subsidizing healthier things,” Engelhart said.
Models already exist in some states, she said. In California, SNAP recipients who shop at a farmers’ market receive twice as much food. For example, buying directly from farmers means getting two tomatoes instead of one.
In Oklahoma, the Food is Medicine Act was passed in 2025, directing the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to seek any federal approvals needed to provide coverage for nutrition supports under the state Medicaid program.
The goal of the bill is to improve the health of Medicaid members with nutrition-related chronic diseases through nutrition services.
