What is Palantir and why is USDA giving it $300 million?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on April 22 signed a $300 million “blanket purchase agreement” with Palantir Technologies Inc. to, as Palantir explained, “support the National Farm Security Plan” to “modernize how USDA delivers services to farmers.”

The National Farm Security Program was rolled out last July by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a splashy — and soon forgotten — ceremony. Its purpose, explained Rollins that day, was to be “the next pillar” of her “Make Agriculture Great Again” initiative.

Most American farmers don’t need any “pillars” to whatever is “next.” Many simply want farming to be profitable enough to not depend on Congress to make a living or for the United States to reclaim markets lost to pointless tariff wars and sweetheart import deals.

Three-dollar diesel and $800 anhydrous — on-farm prices before the Iran “excursion” began nearly three months ago — would be very welcome, too.

But that’s not what Rollins offers in her not-congressionally-approved plan. Here’s how she described it last July: “We feed the world. We lead the world. And we’ll never let foreign adversaries control our land, our labs and our livelihoods. This action plan puts America’s farmers, families and future first — exactly where they belong.”

While no ag leader worth their weight in $4 corn would ever put U.S. farmers any place other than first, most of Rollins’ statement is a hash of mythic half-truths and Grade-A baloney.

For starters, we don’t feed the world. According to USDA, 75% of all 2024 U.S. ag exports went to just 10 nations — nations that, unsurprisingly, were rich enough to pay for our food.

Moreover, nearly half of all U.S. ag exports that year went to just three countries — Canada, Mexico and China — and all paid cash.

And forget about U.S. food aid. In early 2025, DOGE eliminated the $2.2 billion in USAID food aid that did feed millions of poor, undernourished around the world.

It’s equally challenging to say the United States “leads the world” without knowing exactly what the secretary had in mind. It’s telling, however, that when the White House asked other nations to either help or contribute to the Iran war effort, no major ally stepped up.

Also, which “foreign adversaries control our land, our labs and our livelihoods”? Exactly none, none and none.

The same might not be said of your farm and ranch data with contractor Palantir now in charge of USDA’s “One Farmer, One File.”

That initiative, according to GovConWire, a news site that monitors government contracts, “aims to streamline access to services” like crop insurance, ad-hoc disaster payments and standing payment schemes like Agriculture Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage, Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Reserve Program.

Palantir describes it differently. The company “will provide operations software to enable USDA to improve service delivery for American farmers and government field staff — and in doing so, secure the nation’s breadbasket.”

Flag-waving aside, Palantir’s biggest operational role will be for it to get federal farm program payments to farmers and ranchers quickly and accurately.

It proved its capabilities, it notes, this past February when it helped USDA send “$4.4 billion directly to farmers in the (Farmer Bridge Assistance Program) in (its) first five days.”

So, what is Palantir other than a USDA contractor now at the data-collecting heart of federal farm programs like crop insurance and disaster payments?

Here’s how WIRED magazine described it last August: “Palantir is arguably one of the most notorious corporations in contemporary America. … Palantir has been so infamous for so long that, for some people, its name has become a cultural shorthand for dystopian surveillance.”

Whatever it is, it’s now USDA’s partner and that makes it your partner, too.