A committee appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) will provide an initial framework to guide the efforts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) programs that directly deal with conservation on the land, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program, the Conservation Reserve Program, and the Agricultural Conservation Easements Program, to respond to the impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination of agricultural land. In a consensus report, the committee will:

• Characterize the scope of PFAS challenges in agriculture and the capability of the conservation programs, practices, and initiatives to address on-farm PFAS contamination and mitigation.

• Identify what factors FPAC agencies may consider when evaluating the risk that on-farm actions supported by FPAC conservation programs could cause or exacerbate PFAS soil or water contamination on or off the farm.

• Identify cost-effective and implementable options within the FPAC remit to support PFAS mitigation on farms (e.g., crop changes, land retirement, changes to on-farm water infrastructure), the research needed to inform the efficacy of these options, and considerations of actions to mitigate risk and the impacts of contamination in agricultural systems.

• Identify other actions, including conservation practices, that could mitigate or avoid PFAS contamination in agricultural systems but are outside the FPAC remit or may not yet be economically or technically feasible to implement at a large scale.

• Identify applied research gaps for land management of PFAS contamination in the context of conservation practices on the ground.

• Provide guidance for decision making based on what is currently known as well as emerging information about the fate and transport of different PFAS in agricultural systems.

• Provide considerations for the development of an agricultural working definition of PFAS in the context of the PFAS for which the US EPA has determined regional screening levels.