The United States Department of Agriculture is putting more money behind regenerative agriculture.

On Tuesday, USDA announced that its Regenerative Pilot Program will grow from $700 million to $1 billion for fiscal year 2027.

The program helps farmers adopt practices designed to improve soil health, water quality, and long-term farm productivity.

That is good news.

But America should be thinking much bigger.

One billion dollars spread across American agriculture is not a national rural-development strategy.

Michael Chiaradio, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Mississippi’s Third District and a regenerative farmer himself, has proposed making small farms and rural businesses a much larger part of America’s economic strategy.

The idea is simple.

There is farmland across rural America that is either underused or could produce considerably more economic activity.

There are also people who would farm, build businesses, or expand existing operations if they could overcome the enormous cost of expanding or getting started.

Many small farmers simply cannot get enough affordable capital to make the numbers work.

But government can help change that.

Instead of viewing agricultural programs primarily as a way to subsidize what already exists, America could use them to put farmland back into production and create new productive capacity.

That would expand economic activity in rural communities that have spent decades losing people and opportunity.

USDA’s new investment moves in that direction.

But $1 billion should be the beginning of the conversation.

America has thousands of rural communities.

We should treat them as an economic asset to the nation.

And Washington, D.C., should invest accordingly.