During a press conference at Sawyer Farms, a local news reporter told the duo that Texas ranchers are worried about “forever chemical” contamination caused by biosolids used for fertilizer and asked what the Trump administration was doing about it. Because they do not break down, the chemicals accumulate in the environment and can cause serious health harms.

Both Rollins and Kennedy said they were concerned about farm soils being contaminated with the chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS—commonly referred to as forever chemicals. “We want to end the production of PFAS,” Kennedy said. “Ultimately, I think that’s what we have to do. There’s a lot of pressure on the industry now to stop using it.”

It wasn’t clear which industry Kennedy was referring to, but the pesticide industry, in fact, is moving in the opposite direction—with the help of the Trump administration that Kennedy serves in. Between April and June of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the approval of four new pesticides that qualify as PFAS based on a definition that is commonly used around the world and supported by experts.

“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” said Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, who published a paper last year showing pesticides are increasingly fluorinated. Fluorination is the process that creates PFAS. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”

Because the EPA uses a different, narrower definition of PFAS, the agency does not categorize the new pesticides as falling into that category. And based on their chemical structure, they are likely not as persistent or harmful as the widely used PFOS and PFOA that have wreaked havoc on farms to date. But they still are likely to persist for decades or even centuries, and Americans are already being widely exposed to them. And experts say the approvals come at a time when the administration is also rolling back other policies that were beginning to address all forever chemical contamination in the food supply.

On August 13, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a federal environmental policy watchdog organization, sent Kennedy a petition asking the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission to take several concrete actions on forever chemicals.

PEER recommends that the EPA adopt the broader, widely recognized definition of PFAS, and then ban the use of pesticides that contain them. The organization also wants the Trump administration to stop the application of fertilizers that are often contaminated with PFAS. While Biden’s EPA released an initial assessment of PFAS in fertilizer made from biosolids in January, Republicans in Congress recently tried to stop that assessment from being finalized or used to create future regulations.

PEER also wants the agency to reinstate the limits on PFAS in drinking water that it rolled back in May. While many of the actions don’t fall under Kennedy’s purview, Rollins and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin are also members of the MAHA commission, and they could make headway on these changes.

“This administration is incredibly hypocritical, and we wanted to point that out to them,” said Kyla Bennett, the science policy director at PEER. “The MAHA Commission is claiming that PFAS is dangerous, and we’re just pointing out to them three very simple things that they could do to get PFAS out of our food.”

An EPA spokesperson ignored a detailed list of questions from Civil Eats related to the proposed pesticide approvals and instead sent a broad statement that included a link to a list of actions Zeldin announced in April to “combat PFAS contamination.” The spokesperson said that the administration’s decision to overturn the drinking water standards for four PFAS was based on a “regulatory error” during the Biden administration and that the current EPA is starting a new review to reconsider the limits.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Four New Forever Pesticides

Under the Trump administration, the OCSPP is being run by three industry insiders. Nancy Beck, formerly an executive at the American Chemistry Council, who previously pushed the EPA to weaken rules on PFAS in consumer products; Lynn Ann Dekleva, a former DuPont executive; and Kyle Kunkler, who has lobbied against pesticide regulations for the American Soybean Association.

Over the past several months, decisions on new chemicals have picked up speed, including on those with potential PFAS characteristics.

Back in April, the agency proposed approving a Syngenta chemical that targets pests called nematodes for crops including Romaine lettuce and soybeans.

Then, in June, it proposed three more approvals in rapid succession: an herbicide made by Bayer for corn and soybeans; a Syngenta field-crop insecticide that can be applied as a seed treatment; and an herbicide from BASF for oranges, apples, peanuts, and other crops.

At the Center for Biological Diversity, Donley and his team analyzed all four and determined that, based on their chemical structure, all are PFAS, according to the definition created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

That worries Donley because, he said, the definition was based on “the chemical components that make something incredibly persistent.” While the new pesticides are shorter-chain molecules compared to the other longer-chain molecules, they could still stick around in the environment for decades or even centuries due to their durable carbon-fluorine bonds and can break down into other chemicals like trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) that also persist.

“All PFAS are persistent. That is one of the things that they all have in common,” PEER’s Bennett said.

Syngenta and BASF did not respond to questions about the new chemicals qualifying as PFAS and whether that should prompt concerns around persistence or potential human health impacts. A Bayer spokesperson sent an emailed statement that pointed to the fact that its new herbicide, called diflufenican, is “not a PFAS substance” according to the EPA.

“We stand behind the safety of our products, which have been tested extensively and thoroughly reviewed by regulators,” the statement read. “Diflufenican will be an important weed-control tool for farmers and has been thoroughly reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure the product can be used safely for people and the environment when they are used according to label instructions.”

In January, industry trade associations CropLife America and Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (which operate under the same federally registered nonprofit) also submitted comments that provide insight into the industry’s broader perspective on the issue.

In a letter regarding new rules Maine is implementing that will ban products containing PFAS, executives argued against the use of the broader OECD definition of PFAS currently adopted by the state. That definition “disregards the remarkably different physical, chemical, and biological properties that shape the potential human and ecological risk profiles of chemistries that meet that definition.”

They also emphasized that when the EPA approves a new product, it must determine the pesticide will not cause “unreasonable adverse effects” to the environment or human health when used according to the label. Finally, the executives wrote, “the use of PFAS in certain pesticides is essential to their function.”

Demands for More Research and a Common Definition

But new chemicals do not have as much scientific data on them, Donley said. “We have a little bit here and there that says maybe they’re safe,” he said. “But eventually, more science is going to come out.” Studies have shown the shorter-chain PFAS are already prevalent inside homes and bodies in the U.S. And because of their potential to persist in the environment, by the time we learn about their dangers, it may be too late.

“If you’ve got something that sticks around for generations, then any new science that comes out in the next two years or five years or 10 years saying this stuff is more dangerous than we thought, it’s irreversible,” he said. “We estimate we’re releasing about 30 million pounds of short- and ultra-short-chain pesticide PFAS right now each year in the U.S., and we still have very little idea of what is happening to them in the environment and what their true toxicities are.”

To make a similar point, Bennett gave the example of GenX, a PFAS that DuPont introduced in 2009 as a safer replacement for PFOA in commercial products.

DuPont dumped the chemical into North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, leading to devastating contamination that affected millions of people. It is now clear that GenX requires long periods of time to break down, and the chemical is associated with serious health effects, including liver problems and cancer. In May, the EPA eliminated its first limits on GenX in drinking water, set during the Biden administration, and is currently re-reviewing them.

“One thing that EPA keeps forgetting is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” Bennett said. “In other words, just because we don’t have the studies and the data doesn’t mean it’s safe. It means we just don’t know yet.”

Given there is evidence pointing to potential health risks and environmental persistence, she said, the EPA should err on the side of caution.

But this “precautionary principle,” much touted by MAHA supporters, doesn’t square with the Trump administration’s broader deregulatory push.

Truly addressing PFAS in the food system, Bennett said, would involve the EPA first adopting the broader definition set by the OECD and regulating those chemicals as a class. That kind of policy would end the registration of persistent, harmful pesticides and even lead to safer drinking-water standards.

Hearing Kennedy, a member of the administration, acknowledging the chemicals’ harms made her angry, she said. “You know it’s dangerous to people, especially children,” she said. “If they’re spraying it on our food, it’s in our water. What are you doing to stop it? The answer is nothing. They’re doing nothing to stop it.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/09/08/epa-approves-four-new-pesticides-that-qualify-as-pfas/feed/ 6 https://civileats.com/2025/09/05/democrats-introduce-legislation-to-boost-snap-benefits/ https://civileats.com/2025/09/05/democrats-introduce-legislation-to-boost-snap-benefits/#respond Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:48:14 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68524 September 5, 2025 – Democrats in both the House and Senate on Thursday introduced legislation that would change the way benefits are calculated by the country’s largest hunger program, increasing the amount of aid families receive to buy groceries. The Closing the Meal Gap Act of 2025 would direct the USDA to use a different […]

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]]> September 5, 2025 – Democrats in both the House and Senate on Thursday introduced legislation that would change the way benefits are calculated by the country’s largest hunger program, increasing the amount of aid families receive to buy groceries.

The Closing the Meal Gap Act of 2025 would direct the USDA to use a different method than it currently uses to set benefit amounts. Based on the USDA’s July 2025 numbers, the change would allocate about $20 more per week to a family of four with two elementary-school-age children. The bill would also increase benefits for some SNAP recipients dealing with high medical or housing costs.

“As inflation and cost of living continue to rise, we should focus on strengthening SNAP, not making deep, reckless cuts that only worsen hunger in the United States,” Representative Alma Adams (D-North Carolina), a House Agriculture Committee member and lead sponsor of the bill, said in a press release. “The Closing the Meal Gap Act will help tens of millions of people—including seniors, people with disabilities, single mothers, veterans, and children—become more food secure and support their households.”

The proposed legislation is one of several bills Democrats are introducing in the wake of historic cuts to SNAP that Republicans spearheaded in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill. (Though Republican lawmakers have pushed back on the framing of the changes as “cuts” since they did not specifically reduce current benefit levels, the changes will result in an estimated 2.7 million people losing benefits.)

A similar bill was introduced at the start of 2023 Farm Bill negotiations, but hunger groups say this one is needed even more now to undo the damage they anticipate will be caused by those cuts.

“The bill recognizes that current SNAP benefits, averaging just $6 per person per day, are not enough for the tens of millions of people who struggle to put food on the table,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), said in a statement to Civil Eats. “Congress must pass this bill without delay to strengthen SNAP and help mitigate the harm of the historic and devastating SNAP cuts included in the recently passed budget reconciliation law.”

FRAC is also currently mobilizing support for another bill that has not yet been introduced. With the Restoring Food Security for American Families and Farmers Act of 2025, lawmakers will more explicitly attempt to repeal the cuts Republicans made to SNAP during budget reconciliation.

Bills like these would typically get attached to a farm bill, but such legislation is unlikely to move before the current session of Congress ends in January.

While House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) is still pushing for a pared-down farm bill as soon as possible, divisions among agriculture leaders in Congress were exacerbated by Republicans’ decision to make SNAP cuts and boost commodity farm programs in the One Big Beautiful Bill. As a result, insiders say it’s hard to see how any farm bill could get enough votes to pass. Even if there is a path, it’s unlikely Republicans will vote to undo their own changes to food aid programs. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/09/05/democrats-introduce-legislation-to-boost-snap-benefits/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/09/02/epa-scraps-rules-to-curb-pollution-from-meat-and-poultry-plants/ https://civileats.com/2025/09/02/epa-scraps-rules-to-curb-pollution-from-meat-and-poultry-plants/#respond Tue, 02 Sep 2025 21:14:36 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68477 September 2, 2025 – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is abandoning a plan to regulate water pollution from the country’s slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the decision over the weekend during a visit to Christensen Farms in Minnesota, scrapping rules that had been in development for years. “The Powering the […]

The post EPA Scraps Rules to Curb Pollution from Meat and Poultry Plants appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> September 2, 2025 – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is abandoning a plan to regulate water pollution from the country’s slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the decision over the weekend during a visit to Christensen Farms in Minnesota, scrapping rules that had been in development for years.

“The Powering the Great American Comeback initiative is about supporting Americans by reducing the cost of living and advancing economic growth while protecting our nation’s air, land, and water,” he said in a press release. The release included praise from the trade groups that represent the country’s biggest meat companies, including the Meat Institute, the National Pork Producers Council, and the National Chicken Council.

Those groups have been fighting the rules since the Biden administration proposed them in January of 2024.

“In abandoning this rulemaking, the Trump Administration has once again sided with powerful, multinational corporations over ordinary Americans,” Alexis Andiman, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement.

Earthjustice played a key role in the creation of the proposed rules. Along with the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), it represented a coalition of community and environmental groups that sued the EPA over the agency’s failure to regulate meat and poultry company pollution under the Clean Water Act. While the 1972 law led to a massive reduction in pollution from other industries, the EPA has failed to regulate nitrogen and phosphorus from farms and meat processing facilities in the same way.

A 2022 EIP report found that about half of the country’s rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds were classified as “impaired,” primarily due to pollution from food production. An assessment of water pollution in central Iowa published in July painted a devastating picture of animal agriculture’s impacts on public drinking water and waterways there.

In 2023, the EPA started the process of implementing rules for meat processors as part of a consent decree to end the lawsuit. It proposed three options and solicited public feedback through written comments and hearings. At those hearings, environmental groups backed the most restrictive option, while industry representatives pushed for the weakest option. The EPA indicated it was leaning toward the latter, which would have exempted smaller plants but still prevented an estimated 9 million pounds of nitrogen and 8 million pounds of phosphorous pollution.

In the press release, Zeldin said he was scrapping the plan altogether to prevent meat prices from rising.

Last year, in comments submitted to the EPA, a representative for the meat companies argued that EPA drastically underestimated the costs companies would take on to comply. As a result, they said that the rules would lead to plant closures and job losses, depending on which option the agency chose.

But Earthjustice’s team argues the agency showed only a tiny proportion of plants would have to take on serious costs. “We shouldn’t have to choose between clean water and affordable groceries—and, the truth is, we don’t,” Andiman said. “EPA itself has admitted that widely available technology can reduce this pollution without putting businesses at risk.”

The consent decree required the rules be published by August 2025. In response to a question as to whether that means another lawsuit is imminent, Andiman told Civil Eats that Earthjustice and EIP are talking to their clients and “considering next steps.” (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/09/02/epa-scraps-rules-to-curb-pollution-from-meat-and-poultry-plants/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/28/cdc-exodus-includes-lead-official-tracking-food-safety-and-animal-agriculture-disease/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/28/cdc-exodus-includes-lead-official-tracking-food-safety-and-animal-agriculture-disease/#respond Thu, 28 Aug 2025 16:42:13 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68392 August 28, 2025 – The White House unleashed chaos at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump attempted to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez. As a result, four key CDC leaders resigned, including Daniel Jernigan, who led the National […]

The post CDC Exodus Includes Lead Official Tracking Food Safety and Animal Agriculture Disease appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> August 28, 2025 – The White House unleashed chaos at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump attempted to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez. As a result, four key CDC leaders resigned, including Daniel Jernigan, who led the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID).

The center is responsible for tracking foodborne illness outbreaks, zoonotic diseases like bird flu, and antibiotic resistant bacteria, which often develops on farms. Jernigan was at the helm for just under three years, but he worked on public health surveillance and infectious diseases at the CDC for 25 years, under three Democrat and two Republican administrations.

Gail Hansen, a prominent public health veterinarian and zoonotic disease expert, said she was “gobsmacked and nearly overwhelmed” by the news.

“The loss of intellect and institutional memory is staggering,” she said.

NCEZID often works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address disease outbreaks, including foodborne diseases. Earlier this week, for example, HHS, the CDC, and the USDA confirmed the first human case of New World Screwworm, a parasitic infestation that primarily affects livestock. The individual was infected during travel, and the CDC reported that the public health risk for Americans is currently low. The now-leaderless NCEZID will be responsible for “conducting an epidemiological assessment in coordination with local health authorities” and is also still monitoring the ongoing bird flu outbreak.

Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of the advocacy organization Farm Forward, said he believes the CDC’s response to the bird flu outbreak was already too slow and inconsistent and involved too much meat industry influence. Now it will be worse.

“At a moment when the country urgently needs transparency and decisive action on spiraling crises like bird flu and foodborne illness, these firings all but guarantee an even weaker public health response,” he said.

The exodus adds to other operational woes at the NCEZID. NBC News recently reported that in July, the office scaled back its tracking of common foodborne pathogens, including campylobacter and listeria, due to funding cuts.

Hansen said she’s particularly concerned about that. “It is especially pathetic to know that listeria is one of the pathogens that will not be tracked through FoodNet, since CDC is in the midst of working with other state and federal agencies to contain a multistate outbreak of listeria that has sickened 17 and killed 3 people,” she said.

Monarez, who had clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policies, is challenging her dismissal. In addition to Jernigan, three other top officials resigned: Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Jennifer Layden, who led the Office of Public Health Data; and Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Daskalakis posted a lengthy resignation letter online that said the administration is treating “CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

The CDC has lost about 3,000 employees—nearly a quarter of its staff—since Trump took office. HHS, which includes the CDC, did not respond to a request for comment.

“The combination of loss of morale and loss of top leaders is strangling public health,” Hansen said. “This should be the alarm to provoke the public and Congress to act to restore CDC before the next catastrophe strikes.” (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/28/cdc-exodus-includes-lead-official-tracking-food-safety-and-animal-agriculture-disease/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/26/trump-revokes-biden-order-targeting-food-system-consolidation/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/26/trump-revokes-biden-order-targeting-food-system-consolidation/#respond Tue, 26 Aug 2025 17:33:18 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68315 August 26, 2025 – President Donald Trump has revoked a Biden-era executive order that tasked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with curbing consolidation across the food system to improve fairness and competition for farmers and consumers. A wide range of farm groups supported then-President Joe Biden’s 2021 order and […]

The post Trump Revokes Biden Order Targeting Food System Consolidation appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> August 26, 2025 – President Donald Trump has revoked a Biden-era executive order that tasked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with curbing consolidation across the food system to improve fairness and competition for farmers and consumers.

A wide range of farm groups supported then-President Joe Biden’s 2021 order and the subsequent actions it jumpstarted, although some industry groups panned the plan. At the USDA, then-Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack invested more than $325 million in small and mid-size meatpacking plants, finalized the “Product of USA” rule, ensuring imported meat could no longer bear the label, and set up Regional Food Business Centers that created economic opportunities for small farms and food producers. He also finalized three rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act offering new protections for livestock producers.

Trump’s USDA canceled the Regional Food Business Centers program in July. In June, House Republicans included a provision in a proposed agricultural funding bill that would prevent the USDA from implementing or enforcing the new Packers and Stockyards rules. That bill is still pending.

The canceled executive order also underpinned efforts at Biden’s FTC to more aggressively enforce antitrust laws. Then-FTC Chair Lina Kahn issued new merger guidelines and blocked Kroger’s takeover of Albertson’s. She also sued John Deere in an attempt to give farmers the right to repair their own equipment. In a press release, current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson characterized Trump’s decision to revoke the order as a win for free markets, signaling that the administration would take a very different approach to antitrust enforcement. “The now-withdrawn Executive Order encouraged top-down competition regulations, and established a flawed philosophical underpinning for the Biden-Harris Administration’s undue hostility toward mergers and acquisitions,” he said.

In a statement issued this week, the National Family Farm Coalition characterized the executive order differently, saying the Biden administration “had made headway” to create better conditions for fair market competition. “Without new federal policy to address consolidation, the revocation of this Executive Order will worsen existing conditions that allow abuses and the consolidation of power by the largest companies to go unchecked at the expense of small businesses, including independent farmers, and their customers,” they said. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/26/trump-revokes-biden-order-targeting-food-system-consolidation/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/25/senate-ag-leaders-call-for-more-review-time-and-transparency-with-usda-reorganization-plan/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/25/senate-ag-leaders-call-for-more-review-time-and-transparency-with-usda-reorganization-plan/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2025 17:31:26 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68279 September 2, 2025 Update: The USDA has extended the deadline for public comments on its reorganization plan to September 30, 2025. August 25, 2025 – Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden Monday asking him to give agricultural groups and […]

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]]> September 2, 2025 Update: The USDA has extended the deadline for public comments on its reorganization plan to September 30, 2025.

August 25, 2025 – Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden Monday asking him to give agricultural groups and employees more time to comment on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) plan to dramatically reorganize the agency. She also asked him to share those comments with the public.

The letter was signed by several other Democrats on the committee and by Chuck Schumer (D-New York), the Senate minority leader.

Earlier this month, representatives on two different House committees demanded more details on the reorganization from the USDA. But the senators’ requests are unique in that they zero in on the short period of time offered for engagement and the lack of transparency around what farmers, conservation groups, and federal employees have said about the plan so far.

“We request that USDA provide at least 60 days for feedback on the proposal after the major initial elements of the proposal have been set,” the senators wrote, “and that USDA publish any full, updated proposal on its website along with a more detailed comment and feedback system that allows USDA customers, employees, and agricultural groups to provide meaningful feedback.”

While federal agencies typically post public comments alongside their proposals in the federal register, in this case the USDA provided an email address for feedback and has not shared the comments they have received. That means the public knows little of the plan’s potential impacts.

For example, last Thursday, a group of unions that represent employees working across several USDA departments emailed their comments. They asked for the agency to share details on the rationale it used to choose five new regional “hubs” and how it plans to retain workers amid the relocations. A USDA employee and union member who asked to remain anonymous shared the document with Civil Eats.

“The employees who carry out USDA’s mission deserve respect, transparency, and a voice in where and how they work. So do the communities and stakeholders who will bear the consequences of this sweeping change,” the union members wrote in their comments. “We strongly urge the Department to slow down, engage with Congress and the labor unions in good faith, and fully assess the true impacts of this reorganization before proceeding further.”

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has also been asking farmers to weigh in on the plan via the public comment process. The organization provided them with a form, but the public has no way of seeing how many farmers are filling it out in support or how they might have personalized their comments.

In response to specific questions about whether the agency would consider extending the deadline, whether it planned to share comments with the public, and why the process had not been set up in the typical fashion, a USDA spokesperson emailed Civil Eats a statement.

“The recent USDA announcement was a first step,” the statement said. “Some aspects of the reorganization will be implemented over the coming months while other aspects will take more time to implement. As the reorganization progresses, employees and other relevant parties will be updated accordingly.” The statement recommended comments be made to reorganization@usda.gov, with a deadline at the end of August. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/25/senate-ag-leaders-call-for-more-review-time-and-transparency-with-usda-reorganization-plan/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/08/19/should-regenerative-farmers-pin-hopes-on-rfk-jr-s-maha/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/19/should-regenerative-farmers-pin-hopes-on-rfk-jr-s-maha/#respond Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:01:18 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68145 This is the second in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement. Read the first story here. In the process, his operation became a model for treating animals and the land well while building financial, community, and environmental resilience across America’s rural landscape. Along the way, he hasn’t shied […]

The post Should Regenerative Farmers Pin Hopes on RFK Jr.’s MAHA? appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]>

This is the second in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement. Read the first story here.

In the process, his operation became a model for treating animals and the land well while building financial, community, and environmental resilience across America’s rural landscape. Along the way, he hasn’t shied away from positioning his approach as a means to take back power from global meatpackers and end harms caused by industrial food production.

It’s the kind of farming—and thinking—that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long celebrated as a health and environmental advocate.

So while Harris, who wears a tan cowboy hat and speaks with a soothing Southern drawl, says he’s generally “apolitical,” lately, he’s been engaging in D.C. discourse. That’s because he is “shocked and pleased at how much attention my kind of farming is getting.”

While Kennedy was still running his own campaign for president last year, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, visited White Oak Pastures. A year later, with Kennedy a member of President Trump’s cabinet, Harris received an invitation to the White House for the release of the administration’s first Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report.

“I’m not saying I was the only farmer there, but I was the only one there that looked like a farmer,” he said. On Instagram, White Oak Pastures posted a photo of Harris in his cowboy hat with his two daughters at the event, plus a photo of Trump and Kennedy. Comments on the photos were heated.

As everyone awaits the official release of the second MAHA Commission report, expected in early September, those remarks point to a divide that exists among farmers who typically agree on things like increasing organic matter, reducing pesticide use, and diversifying crops.

Like Harris, some farmers are thrilled to hear Kennedy using the word “regenerative” in the halls of power and calling out corporate influence on the food system, and are optimistic that real change is coming. Others question whether Kennedy will walk the walk, given his place in the Trump administration, which has been rolling back environmental protections, supporting increased taxpayer funding for chemical-dependent, commodity agriculture, and cutting support for the small, regenerative farms that the MAHA movement claims to support.

They also say the administration’s aggressive pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is hurting the young farmers who disproportionately run regenerative farms. The now-delayed (and recently leaked) second report from RFK’s MAHA Commission seems to confirm those concerns.

“We have had a major setback,” said Kate Mendenhall, an Iowa farmer who is also the director of the Organic Farmers Association, describing what organic and regenerative farmers have experienced since the Trump administration took over.

Mendenhall said many farmers fell behind this season because of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) funding freezes and are now reluctant to expand or invest in new practices. Many have also lost technical support due to program cancellations and staff reductions.

“I don’t think we can see the full impact now, but maybe next season we’ll see what comes forward or what we’re lacking this fall and winter,” she said. “I’m really delighted to see more conversation around helping people get access to more healthy food. We need that. And we also need to help farmers with the infrastructure steps they need to make it happen.”

A Resounding Message from MAHA

“Now all this MAHA talk makes me think that maybe, again, I might be an early innovator,” he said. “And I like that better.”

In other words, Kennedy’s attention feels like overdue recognition for some farmers who have been on the agricultural fringe for a long time.

While the Biden administration made some of the largest investments in history in paying farmers to implement conservation practices, rebuilding regional meat processing infrastructure, and shoring up the local supply chains that small, regenerative farms sell into, it also maintained the overall status quo and didn’t talk about transformation as loudly or as often as Kennedy does.

Harris said he heard talk of those investments but never saw impacts on the ground. What he remembers about the Climate-Smart Commodities Program, a signature initiative of Biden’s USDA, is not that it sent millions of dollars to small, regenerative farms through organizations like Pasa and Working Landscapes North Carolina, but that it directed huge sums of money to Tyson and other commodity ag giants.

Now, the thing that stands out to him about the current USDA is not that its actions seem to place the administration firmly on the side of Big Ag, but that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has repeatedly showcased her working relationship with Kennedy.

“I haven’t seen many programs implemented so far, but it’s still very early on,” Harris said. “I might get disappointed again, but the promise is better than it’s ever been in my lifetime.”

Steve Groff is similarly optimistic.

“The MAHA movement is a dream come true for me, because before I even heard the term, I was doing it,” said Groff, a third-generation farmer in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he farms 200 acres with his son. “We need to eat less junk food and more healthy food, and I think every American agrees that there’s just too much chronic disease. Something’s going on here. We have an opportunity here that is just unbelievable.”

Groff plants hemp on most of his land; he used to process the crop into CBD oil but is now getting into fiber production for textiles and building materials. He also grows heirloom tomatoes, squash, and pumpkins that he sells to Whole Foods. His farm is certified regenerative by Regenified, which requires farmers to implement certain soil health practices but is not organic, since it does allow the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

To that end, his fields have been 100 percent no-till since 1996, and he regularly plants cover crops. Because of his attention to soil health and ecosystems, he said, he’s been able to reduce the amount of chemical herbicides and fertilizers he uses over time.

“It’s mimicking nature as much as we can to grow food,” he said. (No-till farming and using cover crops also often rely heavily on pesticides, especially glyphosate, which many in the MAHA movement are opposed to and Kennedy has been critical of in the past.)

Groff said he’s always been a conservative but that he didn’t always fully trust Trump. When Trump joined forces with Kennedy, however, that started to change.

As an example of how farmers might begin to shift to more regenerative practices, he offers the example of how farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1980s were initially resistant to no-till farming and planting cover crops, but increasingly adopted both as awareness grew about how the practices could reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

“In my area right here, 70 percent of the land is no-till and cover crops. Now, they don’t do it for the Chesapeake Bay, they do it because it’s a better way to farm,” he said. “And the same practices that we started to do for the sake of the Bay now are the same practices to grow healthier food.”

USDA Cuts to Funding

At TendWell Farm in western North Carolina, farmer Steven Beltram grows leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables across several hundred acres to sell to grocery stores and other commercial distributors.  Not only is the farm certified organic, it’s Real Organic Project certified, adding an extra layer of regenerative cred.

“We really focus on trying to build and restore and make the soil better year over year,” Beltram said.

Hit hard by Hurricane Helene last year, TendWell was grateful to be participating in a USDA initiative called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Program that offered funding to move fresh produce from small farms directly into food banks.

The contract was for about $5,000 a week, a significant amount for a business of their size. It was especially beneficial, he said, because unlike with grocers who demand a certain amount of kale or lettuce regardless of how the crops turn out, TendWell could send the food banks surplus produce, thereby reducing waste.

“That was a good thing for us, and that was a good thing for our neighbors,” he said. “Giving out local produce to the community—I can’t see how anyone could be opposed to that.”

But in March, the USDA canceled $1 billion that had been allocated to the program and another similar program that connected small farms to schools, ending that source of income for TendWell. At the time, Rollins said repeatedly that she was ending it because it was a COVID-era program and states still had plenty of money left to spend.

At the same time, Rollins’ USDA has also cancelled 2025 funding for the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program, ended the Regional Food Business Centers program, and revised the Climate-Smart Commodities Program in a way that meant many small, regenerative farms and the organizations that support them have borne the brunt of the impacts.

“It’s interesting to see that the USDA is cutting funding for programs like [Local Food Purchase Assistance] while they’re increasing payments for commodity crop production, and of course all that commodity crop production is based on the use of glyphosate,” Beltram said, referencing the $67 billion bump that commodity growers got in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill. “It really feels like a divided administration. The USDA is for the most part implementing practices that are the exact opposite of the goals of the MAHA movement.”

At the Organic Farmers Association, Mendenhall said she also sees staffing cuts at the Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) as potentially undermining MAHA agricultural goals, since NRCS employees in local offices can act as guides for farmers looking to improve their grazing practices to produce grass-fed beef or to get the help they need to reduce chemical use.

“They’ve lost a lot of local technical expertise at NRCS in particular,” she said.

At the same time, cuts to other programs mean agriculture support organizations that provide similar help have also let staff go. “That type of technical assistance that farmers rely on when they’re scaling up or expanding markets has also been lost,” she said.

What Mendenhall would like to see in the MAHA policy recommendations is a reinvestment in helping farmers scale up organic production and enter new markets like school food, hospitals, and the institutional markets that open new doors to wholesale.

“That is the avenue forward, and that’s a great way to increase consumption of organic food, but farmers can’t just do it,” she said. “They need support in order to scale up, and then they’ll be able to continue to do it, but we have to invest in the supply chain issues that are creating a barrier for them to doing that on their own.”

USDA Ends Support for Young Regenerative Farmers

Customers at the farmers’ market have already reported they were losing benefits that allow them to buy more healthy food from local farms using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Nelson said. She’s also seen a lot of her farmer friends lose jobs with support organizations, including at Pasa and at the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), where she is an associate field director.

“It’s so powerful to know that you can grow food and preserve a future, so that keeps me going all the time, but I do have worries,” she said. “I really want to have hope that the administration will show how they can support smaller farms. It has been interesting to watch freezes happen and unfreezes happen and nothing feels totally certain or set in stone. Every day is wildly different.”

Things have been particularly fraught for young farmers who don’t fit the stereotype of the brawny white male American farmer. In its latest survey, in 2022, NYFC received responses from more than 10,000 young farmers across the country.

“Through that data, we learned that there are way more farmers of color who are young and way more queer farmers that the USDA data doesn’t reflect,” Nelson said. Eighty-six percent of the young farmers surveyed classified their approach as regenerative farming.

Biden’s USDA encouraged organizations and farmers applying for grants to emphasize whether they were a part of or serving underserved groups, such as BIPOC, women, or LGBTQ farmers. Now, as the USDA goes through grant contracts rooting out DEI initiatives, those farmers and organizations are the ones seeing their grant contracts cancelled.

To push back on that issue, NYFC launched a social media campaign last month dubbed #WeAreAmericanFarmers, calling on USDA to honor its contracts, given Rollins’ repeated statements around supporting American farmers.

“This campaign is to underscore farmers who are immigrants, farmers who are not white, farmers who are queer are all American farmers as well,” Nelson said. “It’s a call for representation and to call out that kind of dangerous language around who gets access to USDA resources or not and who feels like they belong.”

Pesticides, Climate Change, and Ecosystems: MAHA vs. EPA and USDA

“We’re definitely experiencing a change in climate here, and it’s making it more challenging to farm, even aside from just a massive disaster that takes out all the infrastructure,” said TendWell Farm’s Beltram, who still hasn’t received disaster assistance after Hurricane Helene destroyed roads, tractors, box trucks, and more at multiple farm locations and left his team to spend the entire winter cleaning debris out of fields.

On the environmental side, the MAHA movement behind Kennedy has been more vocal about its desire to see more regulation of pesticides linked to health and environmental harm, especially glyphosate, atrazine, and neonicotinoids. Prior to his appointment, Kennedy railed against agricultural chemicals.

However, at a press conference during the recent Great American Farmers’ Market, in response to a question about whether the second MAHA report would include recommendations to restrict the use of some chemicals, he deferred to Rollins.

“There is no question that the use of crop protection tools remains one of the most important tools, if not the most important, to our farmers to thrive and to remain prosperous,” Rollins said, adding that Kennedy has met with 130 farmer and rancher groups. “I’ve also heard him say, ‘We can’t compromise our farmers and their ability to feed and fuel and clothe the world.’ I feel very confident that his and our commitment to make sure farmers are at the table remains paramount, and that the report will reflect that.” Asked to weigh in, Kennedy said he had nothing to add.

Recently, a legislative rider has also gained steam among Republicans in Congress that would help shield Bayer and other pesticide companies from lawsuits claiming their products cause health harms.

White Oak Pasture’s Harris has spoken out about this kind of “pesticide immunity” bill, a version of which passed this year in his state of Georgia. While he acknowledges some worry about the impacts of climate change, he’s especially concerned about the ecosystem collapse caused by pesticide use and other factors.

“I think one of the things we got wrong is this thing of killing the pest,” he said. “I believe that every creature—plant, animal, or microbe—that lives in and is indigenous to an ecosystem has a role in that ecosystem,” he said. “I think we’re not smart enough to know what it is [for every creature]. And the fact that we have driven and are driving so many species of plants and animals and microbes into extinction or near extinction is worrying to me.”

Does he think, then, that a successful MAHA policy plan for regenerative agriculture needs to address that fact? “Absolutely,” he said. Like many others, he’s waiting to see what happens next.

Politico just published a draft version of the MAHA Commission’s policy recommendations, which are currently being reviewed by the White House and could change significantly before being finalized.

The last section of the report is titled “Soil Health and Stewardship of the Land.”  But not one of the four bullet points in the section includes concrete policy steps or positions.

For now, it seems as though not even the MAHA Commission will provide clarity any time soon about the administration’s plans for regenerative farming.

“We don’t know what the program is yet,” Harris said. “Powerful people have been instructed to come up with a program, so that’s promising.”

The post Should Regenerative Farmers Pin Hopes on RFK Jr.’s MAHA? appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/19/should-regenerative-farmers-pin-hopes-on-rfk-jr-s-maha/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/15/democrats-in-congress-demand-details-on-usda-reorganization/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/15/democrats-in-congress-demand-details-on-usda-reorganization/#respond Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:27:48 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68105 August 15, 2025 – Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee sent Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins an eight-page letter on Wednesday, asking for more information about her plan to significantly reorganize the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We are deeply concerned that the Department’s proposal will make it less effective and significantly hinder its ability to […]

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]]> August 15, 2025 – Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee sent Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins an eight-page letter on Wednesday, asking for more information about her plan to significantly reorganize the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We are deeply concerned that the Department’s proposal will make it less effective and significantly hinder its ability to provide the customer service and support our farmers and rural communities deserve,” they wrote.

The letter includes four pages of detailed questions about how the plan to move more than 2,000 D.C. employees to five new “hubs” across the country will impact specific departments and programs. Lawmakers cited the first Trump administration’s relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City, Missouri. Three quarters of employees quit in the transition, and productivity declined.

“If similar results occur as the result of this reorganization plan, the Department will be paralyzed, and it will be the millions of American farmers and families that depend on USDA services who pay the price,” they wrote.

The letter follows another, sent last week, by a different group of House Democrats, on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Those Representatives also referenced the negative impacts of the ERS and NIFA relocations and asked for more details, including any analyses preceding the reorganization plan, along with a timeline and costs for its implementation.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have expressed frustration at their exclusion from the reorganization plans. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden answered questions in front of the Senate Agriculture Committee at the end of July, but his testimony provided few new details.

“Without rigorous analysis, stakeholder consultation, and planning, any large-scale relocation of USDA could leave the agency without the personnel, expertise, and resources needed to effectively serve agricultural and rural communities,” the lawmakers on the Oversight Committee wrote.

Since January, the USDA has shed more than 20,000 employees, about a fifth of its workforce. Multiple USDA employees, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, told Civil Eats last week that they are doing extra work to fill in for missing people on their teams and have been waiting anxiously to hear if they’ll be expected to move.

“We don’t know any more details than were in the press release and the memo the Secretary released,” one employee said. “We haven’t gotten any communication from our agency leadership on what this will mean for us. We’ve just been trying to get the work done and make sure the programs operate for the American people.” Both groups of lawmakers requested a response from the USDA by next week. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/15/democrats-in-congress-demand-details-on-usda-reorganization/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/congressional-budget-office-reports-more-than-2-7-million-americans-will-lose-snap-benefits/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/congressional-budget-office-reports-more-than-2-7-million-americans-will-lose-snap-benefits/#respond Tue, 12 Aug 2025 19:48:24 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=67325 August 12, 2025 – According to new estimates, changes to national food aid in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill will likely cause close to 3 million fewer Americans to receive benefits within the next several years. Participating families will also receive less money for food than they would have previously. The reports were released by […]

The post Congressional Budget Office Reports More Than 2.7 Million Americans Will Lose SNAP Benefits appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> August 12, 2025 – According to new estimates, changes to national food aid in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill will likely cause close to 3 million fewer Americans to receive benefits within the next several years. Participating families will also receive less money for food than they would have previously.

The reports were released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan government agency that provides economic analysis to Congress. They are the first to analyze the final version of the bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in July.

Analysts at the CBO looked at how various provisions in the bill will affect household resources in terms of both cash income and federal benefits over the next 10 years. Some changes go into effect right away, while others won’t be phased in until 2028.

Analysts at the CBO estimated that changes to work requirements within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will reduce participation among the more than 40 million Americans who currently rely on the program, leading to 2.4 million fewer people participating per month, on average. Groups that are most likely to lose benefits include veterans, individuals experiencing homelessness, and young people aging out of foster care.

Another 300,000 people in an average month will likely lose benefits starting in 2028, as lawmakers shift SNAP benefit costs onto some states, but the CBO indicated those numbers depend on a lot of variables. “CBO expects that there will be a variety of state responses to the new requirement,” analysts wrote. “Some states will maintain current benefits and eligibility; others will modify benefits or eligibility or leave the program altogether.”

Because SNAP eligibility is tied to other student benefits, including school and summer meals, the CBO estimates subsidies for child nutrition programs will also decrease for about 96,000 children in an average month.

Finally, the new law mandates that updates to the package that underlies SNAP benefits cannot raise costs, which will lead to lower average monthly benefits. By 2034, average benefits will be $213 per month, instead of the previously predicted $227 per month.

The combination of SNAP and Medicaid cuts in the bill means that the poorest American families will see a decrease of about $1,200 per year, even as most American households will see an increase in income due to tax cuts, the agency also reported. Households in the top income bracket will see an increase of about $13,600 per year. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/congressional-budget-office-reports-more-than-2-7-million-americans-will-lose-snap-benefits/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/#respond Tue, 12 Aug 2025 08:01:10 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66534 This is the first in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement. “The health and the vibrancy of American farms is critical to the success of the MAHA movement,” Kennedy said during his opening remarks. “We have the best farmers in the world in our country. We have people […]

The post The MAHA Movement’s Climate Conundrum appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> This is the first in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement.

“The health and the vibrancy of American farms is critical to the success of the MAHA movement,” Kennedy said during his opening remarks. “We have the best farmers in the world in our country. We have people who are developing innovative techniques for restoring the soil, for restoring the microbiome, for producing the healthiest food in the world, and one of the purposes of this meeting is to get that message out to the rest of America: that there’s hope.”

Elisa Lane is one of those innovators. Lane owns Two Boots Farm in Northern Maryland, where she tends to a 200-tree pawpaw orchard, grows vegetable seedlings for home gardeners in the spring, and harvests endless varieties of flowers that get arranged into farmers’ market and bridal bouquets. She does it all without pesticides or tilling, while building soil fertility with a variety of cover crops and compost.

But on a sweltering day a week before the roundtable, with a heat advisory in effect, one thing she was thinking about—for the first time—was crop insurance.

Over the last decade, she explained while hanging freshly harvested garlic in her barn, it’s been getting hotter. Her crew starts at 5 a.m. some days to get field work done before the unbearable heat sets in. Summers are drier. The weather varies more wildly. When storms hit, they seem more intense than in the past.

“They come on so fast and so quick. I just remember that happening in the last three years or so,” she said. “That causes power outages, which is something I’m so nervous about. If we have a cooler worth of stuff, it could all spoil.” The thing that scares her the most, though, is the prospect of losing entire crops, which is what happened recently on two nearby farms during hailstorms.

It’s not just hail. In recent years, Hurricane Helene damaged or destroyed crops on close to 5 million acres of North Carolina farmland. Farmers in Vermont lost vegetable crops worth millions of dollars to unprecedented flooding. In the West, some farms couldn’t plant crops due to historic drought conditions; others lost crops and livestock herds to wildfires.

While it’s difficult to attribute any single weather event to climate change, the evidence is clear that more frequent and intense extreme-weather events are making it increasingly challenging for farmers to grow healthy food regardless of their ability to innovate, complicating the MAHA movement’s goals.

The last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offered two big takeaways, said Rachel Bezner Kerr, the lead author of a chapter about climate impacts on food, fiber, and ecosystems. Overall agricultural productivity has been reduced from what it would have been with less or no global warming, and more robust evidence now shows extreme weather events are diminishing food security and nutrition.

“Going forward, unless we’re able to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, those impacts are going to be quite severe,” Kerr said.

However, in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration’s actions are likely to increase U.S. emissions. During the first week of his presidency, Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolling back electric vehicle subsidies, and directing his agencies to increase the production of fossil fuels.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has since proposed removing all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and overturning the finding that allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has canceled programs and contracts that pay farmers to use climate-friendly practices and has stripped the word “climate” from its vocabulary. Trump’s sweeping tax legislation, which Republicans in Congress named the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” also dismantles Biden-era climate actions and boosts the fossil-fuel industry.

Trump has promised that the administration is fully invested in Kennedy’s MAHA movement goals to reduce chronic disease by, among other actions, getting Americans to eat more fresh, healthy, whole foods.

But in response to questions from Civil Eats, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the administration is not concerned by the fact that climate change is compromising the country’s ability to produce that food.

“When nearly 70 percent of American children’s caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods—contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions—the Make America Healthy Again movement has more pressing short term priorities to address than vague climate change concerns about agricultural yields and nutrient density,” he said in an email.

As a result, it’s unlikely that the second MAHA report—which will be submitted to the White House this week and is aimed at helping Americans eat healthier—will include climate policy directives, even if experts say they should undoubtedly be included.

“If you’re thinking about the importance of things like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds . . . very important foods that prevent diseases in our diet, then you need to think about, ‘How do we address climate change so that food production, both quality and quantity, remains stable?’” said Samuel Myers, the director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health. “That also will help with prices for Americans and protecting pollinator populations in the U.S. and abroad.”

Quantity and Quality of Food Impacted

At this point, the data from around the world is clear. “We can say decisively that productivity is lower than what it would be if there was no climate change,” said Kerr.

New research published in June identified yet another consequence of those reduced yields. As yields decline, farmers clear more land to grow food. As a result, more than 200 million acres of cropland in use today can be attributed to climate-change-driven yield loss. And as more land is cleared for farming, emissions increase, since forested land sequesters much more carbon.

“With a warming climate, we’re seeing a decrease in the productivity of our croplands around the world, and then as a result of that, in order to have the same amount of production, we are having to clear a lot more land, which then has an impact on the climate,” said Paul West, a senior scientist at Project Drawdown, who was an author on the paper. “So it ends up creating a vicious cycle.”

Myers’ research has also shown that the food that is being grown is not as healthy as it once was: Rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere affect plant growth in a way that reduces the nutrient content of many important crops.

“We’ve found that crops grown at CO2 concentrations we expect to see by the middle of the century have reduced levels of things like iron and zinc and protein, which are super important from a health standpoint,” he said. “And then we find that potentially hundreds of millions of people get pushed into micronutrient deficiencies because of just the CO2 effect alone.”

In the U.S., that’s unlikely to happen, because our diets are more diverse compared to those of low-income countries that rely heavily on staple food crops. But Myers said climate change also threatens a wide range of foods that provide Americans with important nutrients. For example, the size and distribution of fisheries are changing, and it’s getting harder to raise livestock in certain places as heat and drought conditions increase.

Myers also worked on another study that found many scientific and policy reports underestimate how much food security is likely to be threatened in coming years because they often leave out other factors that intersect with climate change.

Over the last 10,000 years, he said, agriculture was optimized to conditions that were almost entirely stable. Now, everything about growing a crop—from temperature and water supply to pollination and pest pressure—is up in the air.

“We’re changing those biophysical conditions at the fastest rate in the history of our species,” he said. “It’s the climate that we’re changing, but it’s also biodiversity loss and pollution and changes in access to water. It’s not just climate change, it’s everything change.”

In addition to backtracking on a transition away from fossil fuels, President Trump’s EPA is rolling back numerous regulations intended to prevent pollution and safeguard biodiversity.

Forced by Climate to Cut Back on Healthy Crops

Ela is a fourth-generation farmer, and his produce, grown in soil that has more than double the organic matter compared to the local average, is sold at seven Colorado farmers’ markets.

However, his farm’s viability is entirely dependent on the annual snowpack, which melts into reservoirs that feed his irrigation systems. Several studies have documented declining snowpack in Colorado over the past several decades, caused by rising temperatures and declining precipitation.

There have always been drought cycles, Ela said, but in the past several years, there have been more of them. Last year, after not enough snowpack accumulated, the runoff season was short. When rain didn’t come, he had to start using the reservoir water about three months earlier than normal.

“That reservoir only holds so much water, and if you have to use it for a longer period of time, it’s just like a bank account,” he said. “You can stretch it out, but there’s only X amount there.”

This year, after another dry winter, they’ll run out of water for some of his apple trees in mid-August, with the harvest not happening until October. “If you stretch them, you beat them, you malnourish them, they just don’t come back the same,” he said. “There’s a lasting scar. It’s something that causes damage for multiple years.” After a historic fall freeze a few years ago, for example, his apple and pear trees looked okay, he said, but then he didn’t get a good crop on them for three years.

As a result of his water challenges, he’s started taking acres of trees out of production. It’s the only obvious solution he can see at the moment, he said: If there’s going to be less water available, he’s going to grow less fruit.

“The interaction between MAHA and climate change, it’s an awkward dance,” Ela said. As a dedicated environmentalist, he’s worried about the changing climate. But he also sees the value in the MAHA movement’s message, because “I think we could eat a lot healthier,” he said.

Can the Soil Save Us?

In fact, a 2022 survey by the Organic Farming Research Foundation found that 80 percent of farmers transitioning to organic practices cited “greater resilience to climate change” as a motivating factor.

Kennedy is a longtime critic of pesticide use and promoter of organic practices, and his MAHA movement includes many farmers and consumers who are pushing for more support for organic and regenerative agriculture. These two approaches to agriculture, which intersect and overlap in different ways depending on how they’re practiced, can build healthy soil and biodiversity on farms, creating systems that are both better for the climate and improve the nutrition of the food produced.

But so far, the administration’s actions have done more to hurt organic and regenerative farmers than help them. The USDA retooled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program in a way that led to thousands of farms around the country losing funding allocated to implement regenerative practices. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has also canceled more than a billion dollars in funding for local food programs that primarily benefit regenerative and organic farms.

Instead, Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill will send more dollars to conventional, commodity farms that rely on large-scale, chemical-intensive farming practices.

Some farmers are optimistic that the upcoming MAHA report will include policy recommendations related to soil health and regenerative agriculture. However, powerful agricultural lobby groups have been pushing back on that front, especially on any provisions regulating pesticide use, and ultimately Kennedy is not in charge of farm policy. Still, he hinted at his desire to push things in that direction.

“We need to give off-ramps to farmers so that they can transition to biodynamic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and do it in a way that is going to maintain the vibrancy of their farms,” he said at the July roundtable. “We have a president now who is not only absolutely committed to the survival and prosperity of American farmers but is also looking around the corners, who is looking to the future.”

The trouble is, even if farm policy bucks the Big Ag headwinds and takes up the IPPC recommendations to shift to more regenerative, diversified systems, it won’t be enough to guarantee a future filled with healthy food if the administration continues to roll the clock back on overall emissions, Kerr said.

“I think it’s very hard to adapt if we are going over 1.5 [degrees Celsius of warming], and if we are ramping up our greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. “The adaptation strategies that we’ve identified are not adequate in the face of that kind of global warming.”

At Two Boots Farm, Lane is doing her part on all fronts. In addition to building healthy soil and keeping a biodiverse forest intact on most of her acreage, she recently installed a solar array to shift the farm to renewable energy. The project was delayed significantly when the grant funding she had received from the USDA through a program that helps farmers install solar was frozen. It has since been unfrozen, and she’s now close to getting it up and running.

The system will save her around $500 per month in energy costs, she estimates, but she’s not sure if tax credits she was hoping for were eliminated in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Next on her list is crop insurance, which is difficult for small, diversified farms like hers to qualify and apply for.

In 2022, crop insurance subsidies cost taxpayers a record $19.3 billion, up from an average that stayed under $4 billion in the early aughts.

“The government will hopefully help in one way or another,” Lane said. “They have the ability to help on the front end with resiliency, or they’re going to be helping us on the back end, when everybody’s screwed financially because we’re losing crops.”

The post The MAHA Movement’s Climate Conundrum appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/usda-farmers-market-drew-farmers-from-across-the-us-corporate-sponsors-and-employee-protests/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/usda-farmers-market-drew-farmers-from-across-the-us-corporate-sponsors-and-employee-protests/#respond Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:00:52 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66580 August 11, 2025 – A six-day event hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week featured farm and food vendors from around the country and multiple appearances from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and other members of the Trump administration. USDA employees also interrupted the programming to protest staff cuts and the reorganization of […]

The post USDA Farmers’ Market Drew Farmers From Across the US, Corporate Sponsors—and Employee Protests appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> August 11, 2025 – A six-day event hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week featured farm and food vendors from around the country and multiple appearances from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and other members of the Trump administration. USDA employees also interrupted the programming to protest staff cuts and the reorganization of the agency.

Dubbed the Great American Farmers’ Market, the event featured around 60 tents, plus sponsor booths with free swag from Chobani, Tractor Supply, John Deere, and Visa. In April, the Trump administration first allowed corporations to sponsor the White House Easter Egg Roll, prompting ethics concerns about the potential for influence peddling.

At the event, farmers and food producers from Georgia, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maine, and elsewhere sold jerky, popcorn, rice, and more. Unlike at a typical farmers’ market, a smaller group of vendors sold produce, dairy products, and meat, since those vendors had to be located close enough to transport fresh items.

Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Great American Farmers’ Market. (Photo credit: Tom Witham, USDA)

“We have assembled this crowd as a national celebration of local products and as a testament to the self-sacrifice and patriotism that have been exhibited by American farming families for generations,” Rollins said in an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Examiner.

When the USDA announced the Great American Farmers Market, it replaced a page on the agency’s website that used to host information about the USDA’s weekly farmers’ market, which for more than 30 years was held every Friday from May to October. Local farms had already applied to sell at that market this spring, but it never opened.

Civil Eats sources inside the agency said staffing cuts were to blame. An agency spokesperson denied that was the reason, but failed to provide an alternate explanation. Small farms that sell at farmers’ markets have also been the hardest hit by USDA funding freezes and cuts.

Attendees watch the main stage at the farmers’ market. (Photo credit: Christophe Paul, USDA)

Staffing, funding cuts, and the recent announcement of a major reorganization that would require about 2,000 more USDA employees to either relocate or lose their jobs also prompted protests at the Great American Farmers’ Market. On Monday, as Rollins, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, and Republican governors got on stage to open the market for “MAHA Monday,” a group of about a dozen current employees booed, yelled “shame,” and chanted “USDA” as individuals in the crowd tried to drown them out with a “USA” chant.

Many of the employees wore hats, glasses, and masks for fear of retribution. They held signs that read “A weaker USDA hurts farmers” and “Support USDA unions, support American farmers.”

Protesters at the Great American Farmers’ Market. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

As part of the Market’s MAHA Monday, prior to taking the stage, Rollins and Kennedy hosted a press conference during which Rollins signed waivers allowing six more states—West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas—to prevent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants from purchasing soda and unhealthy foods with their benefits. The move brought the total number of state waivers approved to 12.

During the press conference, Kennedy also said that he expects HHS and the USDA to release the highly anticipated 2025 dietary guidelines by the “end of September.” (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/usda-farmers-market-drew-farmers-from-across-the-us-corporate-sponsors-and-employee-protests/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/01/bipartisan-proposal-aims-to-make-up-for-usdas-cuts-to-local-food-funding/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/01/bipartisan-proposal-aims-to-make-up-for-usdas-cuts-to-local-food-funding/#respond Fri, 01 Aug 2025 16:04:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66464 Programming note: Civil Eats will be on vacation the week of August 4; our publishing schedule will probably be much slower for this week, and we will catch up on the news starting on August 11. August 1, 2025 – Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced legislation yesterday that would create a new, permanent program for […]

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]]> Programming note: Civil Eats will be on vacation the week of August 4; our publishing schedule will probably be much slower for this week, and we will catch up on the news starting on August 11.

August 1, 2025 – Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced legislation yesterday that would create a new, permanent program for states and tribal governments to purchase local food from small and mid-sized farms for distribution to community organizations such as food banks.

In a press release, Pingree said the Local Farmers Feeding our Communities Act is intended to make up for Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ cancellation of more than $1 billion in funding that helped food banks and schools source local food from small farms. Earlier this year, Rollins said she cut the funding because it was meant to be a COVID-era program. By authorizing $200 million in annual, mandatory funding, Pingree’s bill could create a program with more staying power.

States and tribal governments would enter into cooperative agreements with the USDA to purchase minimally processed food from farms within their state (or tribal boundary) or less than 400 miles away. Eligible farms within that radius would have to meet certain criteria, for example be small- or mid-size, or be operated by beginning or veteran farmers. “It’s a practical, community-driven solution that invests in our nation’s farmers, builds regional resilience, and fights hunger,” Pingree said.

At a time of partisan division, the bill has a significant amount of support from both parties in the House, with Representatives Rob Bresnahan (R-Pennsylvania), David Valadao (R-California), and Josh Riley (D-New York) co-sponsoring the introduction. The bill has also been endorsed by a long list of leading hunger and farm groups, including Feeding America, the National Farmers Union, and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC).

“This program strengthens local economies by creating stable markets for regional producers, while ensuring that nutritious food reaches families in need. It’s a commonsense investment,” Hannah Smith-Brubaker, executive director of Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, said in an NSAC press release. Pasa has been hit hard by USDA funding cuts over the last several months.

Despite support for the Local Farmers Feeding our Communities Act, its fate is uncertain. The bill is one of several introduced in the last few weeks that would theoretically be attached to an upcoming farm bill, including other Pingree bills introduced this week on food date labeling and biochar.

Republicans have said they want to pass a slimmed-down version of a farm bill this fall. However, the bipartisan coalition of groups needed to pass the wide-ranging legislation has been fractured since Republicans passed their recent budget bill, which incorporated some staples of farm bill policy such as increased commodity spending and major cuts to food aid. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/01/bipartisan-proposal-aims-to-make-up-for-usdas-cuts-to-local-food-funding/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/07/31/usda-deputy-secretary-defends-reorganization-plan/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/31/usda-deputy-secretary-defends-reorganization-plan/#respond Thu, 31 Jul 2025 18:58:06 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66440 July 31, 2025 – During a hearing in front of the Senate Agriculture Committee yesterday, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden vehemently defended the agency’s reorganization plan, saying it will reduce costs for taxpayers, move employees closer to farmers, and reduce living expenses for agency employees. The plan, announced by Agriculture Secretary […]

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]]> July 31, 2025 – During a hearing in front of the Senate Agriculture Committee yesterday, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden vehemently defended the agency’s reorganization plan, saying it will reduce costs for taxpayers, move employees closer to farmers, and reduce living expenses for agency employees.

The plan, announced by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last week, will move half of the agency’s D.C. staff out of the capital and into five regional hubs around the country, consolidate and close some offices, and change the structure of some sub-agencies. About 90 percent of USDA’s staff already work outside D.C.

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) told The Hagstrom Report last week that the USDA had not briefed Congress on its plans, and described that as atypical. During the hearing, he and other Republicans largely expressed support for the overall plan while also voicing concerns about the lack of consultation with senators and requesting that Congress be involved going forward.

Democrats were more forceful. Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar called it a “half-baked plan” and asked Vaden if the agency had consulted with the country’s largest farm groups first. “I want to point out that this reorganization plan, as I noted at the beginning, was developed without the input of Congress or the very stakeholders USDA aims to serve,” she said. “It is unacceptable that we learned about this proposal just minutes before it was announced.”

Vaden said the plan was “the first step, not the final step,” and that the agency is now soliciting feedback.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden gives remarks at the USDA on July 11, 2025, in Washington D.C. (Photo credit: Christophe Paul, USDA)

Senators also asked questions about how the agency chose the locations of the five new hubs, pointing out that none of them would be in a top-five farm state. In fact, one is in Utah, which ranks 37th in agricultural production. Vaden said that the agency identified places where the USDA already had core staff and office capacity and the cost of living for employees would be lower. When Senator Adam Schiff (D-California) asked why the country’s number one agricultural state didn’t get a hub, Vaden said the new hubs would be closer to California than D.C. is.

“It’s hard not to perceive this as a political calculation rather than one that’s in the best interests of farmers, given our dominance in agriculture,” Schiff said, citing other cuts USDA has made to assistance for California farmers over the last few months. “What do you have to say to California farmers who are feeling that the administration, the president, is not representing them, but he’s punishing them because the state didn’t vote for him?”

Senators from both parties asked Vaden whether important agricultural research would be impacted, since the USDA plan directs the Agricultural Research Service to eliminate its area offices. Vaden assured them only four of 94 research centers are being closed and that the closing of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, where long-term field trials on sustainable agriculture have been ongoing for decades, will happen “slowly.”

Several senators expressed concerns about how many skilled and experienced employees would leave USDA rather than move, and if a further cut to staff would also affect USDA’s ability to serve farmers efficiently. The agency’s staff has already been reduced by 15,000 employees since January due to the resignation package offered.

During the last Trump administration, the USDA moved the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City, Missouri. Reports later found the move led to the ERS producing half the number of economic reports and longer grant processing times at NIFA. Vaden said the agency had learned important lessons from that experience and that they expect to have “better results this time around.”

While the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) barely came up during the hearing, Robert Bonnie, who was part of the USDA leadership team during the Biden administration, told Civil Eats he’s concerned about the loss of senior leadership at the NRCS, who may be less likely to relocate, especially at a time when staffing cuts have left farmers with less help.

The NRCS currently has four regions based on states that share conservation concerns. For example, farmers in Western states might need more assistance with irrigation, while farmers in the Northeast might be accessing conservation programs to protect against flooding. USDA’s reorganization plan proposes changing those regions to align with the five new hubs, but those groupings won’t stem from conservation priorities.

“They act like the design of USDA is some random thing they’re trying to fix, but the reason it looks the way it does is because it actually works pretty well,” Bonnie said. “I don’t know what the problem we’re trying to solve here is, unless what you want to do is dramatically reduce the size of the agency, the ability to service farmers and ranchers be damned.” (Link to this post.)

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