Agriculture Department kicks off $300M Palantir deal on IT, national security work

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has tapped Palantir for IT modernization and other digital work as part of a $300 million Blanket Purchase Agreement that continues the data analytics and software giant’s bonanza of business under the Trump administration. 

The first task order under the BPA, set to be announced Wednesday morning, formalizes USDA’s work with Palantir — specifically the agency’s National Farm Security Action Plan and its “One Farmer, One File” initiative. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins previewed the launch of a “single, streamlined record that follows the farmer” during a February event in San Antonio, but the new task order makes it official.

In interviews with FedScoop on Monday, a pair of Palantir executives said “One Farmer, One File” is essentially a “continuation” of the company’s work with USDA, including on its Landmark platform and the February rollout of the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program. 

The focus of “One Farmer, One File” will be the consolidation of USDA legacy systems into a one-stop shop for farmers and producers to access benefits and other services covered through the agency’s Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) mission.

“I think the macro takeaway is really that farmers should be engaging in what they do, which is farming out on the field, not [waiting] in line, not driving to get somewhere to fill out a paper form,” said Lauren Penneys, senior vice president of federal at Palantir.

The information stored in current Agriculture IT systems is quite siloed, which in some cases leads to duplication of data across platforms. Ali Monfre, senior architect for Palantir’s federal work and the company’s USDA lead, said the lack of information-sharing means one producer might have to schedule three different appointments to meet with three different FPAC representatives. And working across multiple IT systems means that when data is shared, some of the more “granular security permissions” are lost.  

“Bringing these things together into a unified data asset enables them to have better … visibility across these different systems, and then also enables them to have better control over that data and making sure that that is secured and not kind of exported in flat files,” Monfre said.

The “One Farmer, One File” work will also make data available to the producers themselves, Monfre noted, meaning they will be able to access information from their phone. “It’s really like unlocking the data and giving that … back to the farmer,” she added.  

Data sharing and data silos

Breaking down data silos across the federal government has been a top priority for the Trump administration. The president in March 2025 signed an executive order to modify or rescind regulations that interfere with intra- or inter-agency sharing of unclassified data.

But data-sharing agreements between some agencies — most notably the IRS and Immigration and Customs and Enforcement — have been the subject of litigation, with plaintiffs claiming those pacts violate the Privacy Act and administrative rule-making procedures. 

Meanwhile, American Oversight on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the IRS, ICE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration over the “use of Palantir systems for surveillance and personal data analysis.”

Penneys said other agencies would not have access to data housed in “One Farmer, One File,” calling it a “USDA-specific effort” that’s focused solely on FPAC and “is not about cross-department sharing.” She also said there is no surveillance component to Palantir’s work with the Agriculture Department under the BPA. USDA did not respond to requests for comment on either matter. 

Other elements of the new deal include mobile digital tools for USDA’s field staff and operational software that, per a Palantir press release shared first with FedScoop, will “improve service delivery for American farmers and government.” 

On the national security front, Palantir said its “core capabilities” will help the agency “secure American farmland, enhance supply chain resilience, and shield agricultural programs from fraud, abuse, and foreign adversary influence.”

Penneys said the national security piece of Palantir’s technology work with USDA is all about fostering a “more modern way of bringing that data in and securing it,” citing information on everything from migratory birds and crop cover to foreign ownership of agricultural lands. 

Staffing questions, protecting data

The topic of “One Farmer, One File” came up last week during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the USDA’s fiscal 2027 budget request. Rollins said a team of DOGE representatives came to the agency last year to work on the project.

“Some of the smartest, most amazing tech people I’ve ever met in my life,” Rollins said of DOGE. “Clearly not typical government tech people. Not that there’s anything wrong with our government tech people.” 

Paired with DOGE, the agency’s IT team “has completely, fundamentally rewritten, transformed and reworked the entire system, which is how we got ‘One Farmer, One File’ after years and years and years of trying,” Rollins added. The secretary mentioned that 1,000 contractors were working on FPAC, after previously telling the press that “One Farmer, One File” would allow USDA to “retire 1,000 contractors.”

USDA did not respond to FedScoop questions about DOGE’s involvement with the project or what she meant by retiring contractors. 

While Penneys didn’t address the Elon Musk-created tech collective’s work with the Agriculture Department, she acknowledged that “the pace of doing things differently is 100% picked up.” She emphasized that the work unveiled in the new BPA is being led by the agency’s chief information officer and also “by the folks who have been at FPAC for decades — and who have, frankly, wanted to see some of this stuff rolled out for a very long time.”

DOGE’s access to federal data has also been the subject of litigation, and congressional Democrats have pressed the USDA for answers about the group’s reported accessing of an agency-run database that controls government loans and payments to ranchers and farmers. 

Monfre said with Palantir’s technology, USDA staffers are “the ones who are actually configuring and making all the decisions,” noting that the agency has a governance board process that determines who has access to certain data. 

“The producers only have access to the information that is their information, or information that they get through some sort of representative capacity,” she said. “The product will default to make sure that if there are any errors in the system, you have access to nothing, as opposed to having access to something that you shouldn’t.” 

Though the Agriculture Department press office did not respond to requests for comment on the Palantir deal, USDA CIO Sam Berry said in the press release that the agreement will provide the agency with “the visibility and speed needed to safeguard our food supply.”

“Our farmers sustain this nation, and modern tools help us support them with greater precision,” Berry said. “I look forward to working with Palantir as we continue serving the American farming community, which serves all of us every single day.”