PFAS in Agricultural Systems: Guidance for Conservation Programs at USDA (2026)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
1
Introduction
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a diverse family of synthetic compounds with valuable properties, such as high thermal and chemical stability; oil, water, and stain repellency; and lubricity (ITRC 2023). The acronym PFAS was coined in 2011 to specifically describe the subset of fluorinated chemicals in which fluorine atoms have replaced hydrogen atoms in the molecules (Buck et al. 2011). Though the acronym is a relatively recent term, PFAS have been in use since the 1940s and have been known by earlier monikers—for example, organic fluorocompounds, fluorinated organic compounds, fluorochemicals, and perfluorinated compounds or chemicals (PFCs). The exact number of PFAS is unknown in part because there is no single accepted definition of PFAS, but by some estimates there are more than 14,000.1 They are used in many products and applications, including electronics, construction materials, medical devices, pharmaceutical drugs, stain-repellant textiles and carpets, paper and paper products, food packaging, cosmetics and personal care products, nonstick cookware, cleaning products, paints, sealants, inks, refrigerants, and manufacturing of semiconductors. PFAS are also found in aqueous film-forming foams used by fire departments, airports, and the military to extinguish hydrocarbon fires. The widespread use of these substances facilitates a myriad of mechanisms via which they can enter and cycle in the environment.
PFAS have also been referred to colloquially as “forever chemicals” because the strength of their carbon–fluorine bond, which is the basis of their valuable properties, allows them to persist in some form in the environment without bond degradation (Allen 2018). These synthetic compounds can be either highly mobile or immobile, are prone to accumulation in living tissue, and, because of their persistence, are found everywhere in the world, even in locations not inhabited by humans. Many PFAS have
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1 See https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/chemical-lists/PFASSTRUCT and https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/chemical-lists/PFASDEV1.
been identified as toxic to humans and other life (Lee et al. 2020; NASEM 2022; NTP 2022). The compounds are dispersed via aqueous and atmospheric processes resulting in occurrence in soil, surface water, groundwater, sediment, and air. Even at low concentrations some PFAS may create potential hazards not only to human health but also to the nation’s natural resources and the economic enterprises and ecosystem services that these resources support, such as agriculture, forestry, and wildlife habitat.
Several U.S. federal agencies have roles in the stewardship of the nation’s natural resources, but with regard to natural resources on privately owned working lands, the primary responsible agency is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its mission is to “deliver conservation solutions so agricultural producers can protect natural resources and feed a growing world,”2—that is, protect the condition of soil, water, air, plant, and animal systems while maintaining agricultural productivity and other ecosystem services, such as wildlife habitat. The persistent and toxic nature of some PFAS may threaten the ability of the managers of privately owned working lands to achieve either of these objectives. Some farmers have halted the production of food or forage crops because of soil PFAS contamination resulting from historical applications of contaminated biosolids and papermill waste (Perkins 2022). There are examples of other U.S. farms that have suffered tremendous economic losses because PFAS have moved from groundwater and soil into drinking water, forage, and feed of livestock and caused levels of PFAS in animals to be so excessive that subsequent products were declared unsafe for human consumption (Clayton 2022). In some cases, when it is not economically or logistically feasible to switch feed or watering sources and wait for PFAS levels in animals to decline over time, livestock have been euthanized (State of New Mexico 2022). In some states, health advisories have been issued, warning people not to consume fish, waterfowl, turkey, or deer caught or hunted from locations with high levels of PFAS in the water or soil.3
After investigation, the above examples could all be traced to a known source or introduction of PFAS into the agricultural operation or habitat. However, proactively identifying other PFAS-impacted locations is challenging because the extent, types, toxicity, and concentrations of PFAS in the landscape are unknown. These uncertainties also exist for the water, feed, and other products that may be brought into agricultural systems, making the prevention of contamination difficult as well.
NRCS supports conservation programs on privately owned working lands through technical and financial assistance. The agency faces many constraints when it comes to achieving these aims. First, there is no systematic survey of PFAS in the environment. What kinds of PFAS can be found in a location and at what concentration are largely unknown across the United States. Second, there are knowledge gaps regarding the fate, transport, and especially toxicity of all but a subset of well-studied PFAS (Guelfo et al.
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2 See About NRCS, https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/about.
3 Maine has issued advisories for deer and turkey harvested from PFAS-impacted locations (Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife 2024). New Mexico has issued an advisory for waterfowl and other wildlife harvested from Holloman Lake (New Mexico Department of Health 2025). Maine and several other states have issued advisories for fish in impacted water bodies. See ECOS (2025) for more information.
2021; Evich et al. 2022). For many PFAS, analytical standards and standard methods are lacking for measuring concentrations in environmental media, including soil, water, plants, and animals (Shojaei et al. 2022; Rehman et al. 2023). Third, there are few viable options for remediating land or water contaminated by PFAS at diffuse concentrations (Verley et al. 2025). For example, there are no affordable means of easily degrading these compounds into benign products. Even extreme treatments, such as pyrolysis, may not fully eliminate all PFAS (Winchell et al. 2024). Capturing and sequestering PFAS is also difficult because the characteristics of these compounds and the media they are in vary tremendously and contamination is often diffuse, requiring treatment of large volumes of impacted media and use of multiple sorbents to remove PFAS by immobilizing agents (Gagliano et al. 2020; Dickman and Aga 2022; Bui et al. 2024; Verley et al. 2025). In this information-poor environment, USDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (hereafter referred to as the National Academies) to provide an initial framework to guide programs administered by NRCS, as well as a conservation program operated under the Farm Service Agency (FSA), to respond to the impacts of PFAS contamination on agricultural and other privately owned working lands.
THE COMMITTEE’S CHARGE AND PROCESS
The committee was charged with examining PFAS on agricultural lands within the context of specific programs and conservation practices administered under USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) mission area. The request included an assessment of the capability of existing conservation programs—namely, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program, and the Agricultural Conservation Easements Program administered by NRCS and the Conservation Reserve Program administered by FSA—as well as conservation practices and initiatives to address on-farm PFAS contamination and mitigation. It also asked the committee to consider what factors FPAC agencies might consider when evaluating the risk that on-farm actions supported by conservation programs could cause or exacerbate PFAS contamination on or off the farm. The committee was further tasked with identifying options within and outside the remit of the conservation programs to support PFAS mitigation or avoid PFAS contamination in agricultural systems and providing guidance on decision-making with regard to PFAS on agricultural land when so much remains to be learned about the fate and transport of these contaminants. Finally, USDA sought input on an agricultural working definition of these compounds as definitions of PFAS abound and none apply uniquely to agriculture. The committee’s complete statement of task can be found in Box 1-1.
The National Academies appointed a committee with the diverse experience and expertise necessary to tackle this statement of task. In addition to PFAS, the committee members had expertise in soil chemistry, environmental toxicology, agricultural engineering, conservation practices and programs, risk assessment, and agricultural economics. The committee members served as volunteers and as individuals on this study, not as representatives of any institutions at which they may have been employed
BOX 1-1
Statement of Task
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 as they relate to 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 PFAS for which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined Regional Screening Levels.
or organizations to which they may have belonged. The biography of each committee member can be found in Appendix A.
The committee met several times in 2025 to complete its task. All information-gathering meetings were open to the public, live streamed, recorded, and posted on the study’s website. Agendas for these meetings can be found in Appendix B. In addition to hearing from invited speakers, the committee reviewed the scientific literature and pertinent government publications and federal legislation. The committee’s draft report underwent peer review before the final report was publicly released.
STUDY SCOPE AND REPORT ORGANIZATION
PFAS are widespread in the environment and in daily life. Many health conditions—including kidney and testicular cancers and thyroid and cardiovascular diseases—are associated with PFAS exposure, and more are suspected (NASEM 2022). PFAS are found in wildlife around the world (Giesy and Kannan 2001) and are known to have effects on plants and soil microorganisms (NASEM 2024). Methods for detecting some PFAS and measuring their potential toxicity are still in development, and replacement and remediation efforts are nascent both in scale and practicality. Addressing the problem will require herculean efforts on multiple fronts, from chemical substitution to removal and destruction.
Even when narrowing the focus on PFAS to its intersection with food and agriculture, there are many issues to tackle. The health of those at high risk of exposure from working or living on contaminated land is of utmost concern, which will require appropriate action to reduce exposure and support related health care needs. PFAS contamination of food—whether through plant uptake, bioaccumulation in livestock, aquatic species (farmed or caught), and game, or transfer from food-packaging materials—also must be addressed. Determining when working lands must be removed from food or feed production, adequately compensating farmers for land retirement, and identifying options for returning PFAS-contaminated land to working status, whether that be wildlife habitat, livestock grazing, or crop production, are all problems that have yet to be solved. Similar challenges exist for assessing when products from contaminated animals must be removed from the market and herds depopulated.
This study concentrates on the segment of the broader PFAS contamination challenge that lies within the specific remit of USDA’s FPAC programs that directly deal with conservation on the land. The agencies that administer these programs, NRCS and FSA, are nonregulatory. NRCS is charged with delivering conservation solutions to customers who voluntarily engage the agency’s services. Neither NRCS nor FSA has jurisdiction over farmer or farmworker health. The committee was aware that there are individuals experiencing adverse health effects related to on-farm PFAS exposure4 (NASEM 2022) and that Maine in particular is taking steps to provide support to affected individuals (Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry 2025).
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4 Personal communication, A. Nordell, Campaign Manager, Defend Our Health. “Statement to the committee,” February 20, 2025. https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DELS-BANR-24-03/event/44521.
However, the committee was not charged with the task nor was it composed with the necessary expertise to evaluate ways by which farmer or farmworker exposure to PFAS may be mitigated.
Similarly, while the report does explore available conservation practices on working lands—such as irrigation water management, crop residue use, and conservation crop rotation—that could be implemented in a way that minimizes PFAS accumulation in crops or food products or that reduces wildlife exposure to PFAS, the FPAC mission area does not have authority regarding food safety. The safety of the U.S. food supply is mostly overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). In 2025, FSIS conducted exploratory sampling of meat, poultry, and catfish and found that less than 0.3 percent of samples contained detectable PFAS. The agency had plans to expand the number of PFAS in its tests and lower its minimum level of applicability (Weyrauch et al. 2025). At the time of the committee’s work, FDA had not set a threshold for PFAS contamination in food but on at least one occasion had tested milk at a dairy with known PFAS contamination and deemed PFAS levels in the milk as unsafe for human consumption (State of New Mexico 2022). FDA was also developing models for predicting PFAS in meat (Edhlund et al. 2025). The committee members recognized that continued testing and development of analytical methods to test PFAS in food are needed, but protecting the safety of the food supply was not part of their charge.
USDA cannot make potential customers seek out the advice or use the recommendations provided by its conservation specialists. Even if readily available and affordable remediation methods existed for PFAS contamination, the agencies under the FPAC mission area would have no authority to make a landowner or land manager implement such methods. The customer remains the decision-maker for solutions to address conservation needs within eligibility criteria. In its role as a provider of financial and technical assistance that supports conservation on the land, NRCS can recommend and financially support practices that customers then choose to implement to protect, or at least minimize harm to, natural resources and agricultural productivity from a group of contaminants that are mobile, recalcitrant, bioaccumulative, and not fully characterized. USDA sought the committee’s guidance on how its conservation programs and practices could be used to this end.
The primary customer base for FPAC agencies is farmers, ranchers, and owners of forested land, but the services of these agencies are available to all landowners or land managers who seek to implement conservation practices on privately owned working lands. For-profit businesses, nonprofit organizations, foundations, owners of urban, suburban, and developing lands, land users, communities that pursue conservation objectives, and units of government at all levels with responsibilities for natural resource use and management are part of the customer base. Furthermore, the FPAC agencies sought guidance for all the kinds of land uses within their remit. The land may be planted to crops, grazed by livestock, established as forests, protected as habitat for wildlife, or conserved as wetlands. The agencies were also concerned about the quality of water for uses such as irrigation, livestock watering, and aquaculture.
Thus, while recognizing that there are many other areas of concern with PFAS
when it comes to food and agriculture, this report seeks to provide guidance on PFAS issues that are within the remit of FPAC programs that directly deal with conservation on land that is privately owned. To accomplish this task, Chapter 2 reviews the structure, classification, persistence, and environmental behavior of PFAS, as well as pathways by which PFAS enter and cycle in agricultural systems. Chapter 3 explains the conservation programs administered by NRCS and FSA that are specifically identified in the statement of task, the conservation practices supported by NRCS, and the ways in which both the programs and the practices intersect with PFAS contamination in agricultural systems. Chapter 4 outlines a framework by which decisions can be made about programs and practices to minimize PFAS contamination in these systems when so much uncertainty exists about the extent, types, toxicity, and concentrations of PFAS in the landscape. Chapter 5 reviews four areas of research that could advance the ability of conservation practices to address PFAS contamination on agricultural land.
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