The Food Policy Tracker: A Behind-the-Scenes Discussion | Civil Eats

Inside the Food Policy Tracker

At our latest Civil Eats virtual salon, our team talked about the launch and evolution of the Tracker, a running report on federal actions that affect food and agriculture.

By Riley Ramirez

June 26, 2025

Paulina Velasco from the Institute for Nonprofit News moderated a discussion with Brian Calvert, senior editor, Lisa Held, senior staff reporter and contributing editor, and Matt Wheeland, operations director.

Paulina Velasco from the Institute for Nonprofit News (at left) moderated a discussion with Brian Calvert, Civil Eats senior editor, Lisa Held, senior staff reporter and contributing editor; and Matt Wheeland, operations director.

Civil Eats recently hosted a virtual salon to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at our Food Policy Tracker, a tool we launched in January to help monitor the federal government’s actions as it moves to transform our food system.

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The Speakers: Paulina Velasco, collaborations project manager at the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), moderator; Lisa Held, Civil Eats senior staff reporter and contributing editor; Matt Wheeland, operations director; and Brian Calvert, senior editor.

Quick Overview: The discussion focused on how we find, choose, and report our posts. The panelists also addressed what it takes to keep the Tracker current, their approach to information (and misinformation), and what they’ve learned since the launch of the Tracker when Trump took office.

Why Create a Food Policy Tracker?
- “Trump was promising to come in and move really quickly and make sort of sweeping changes to everything, including all the agencies and systems that impact the food system that we cover,” Held said.
- Held and Wheeland began brainstorming how Civil Eats could best serve readers as these changes happened.
- As a result, the Food Policy Tracker was born.
- The reasons for creating the Tracker:
  - To keep a clear, robust record of all changes coming out of Washington, D.C. that affect the food system—to serve as a reference now and in the years to come.
  - To fill a food policy news vacuum at the precise moment when more reporting would be needed.

How the Tracker Works
- Reports the play-by-play:
  - The Tracker is designed to give readers information about important changes or actions as they are happening in real time, sometimes out of view of the public.
  - The team moves as quickly as possible to keep up with the news.
- “The benefit we bring to this work is that we have the context, and we can connect the dots that nobody else is connecting,” Wheeland said.
- Calvert said keeping a laser focus on actions and their implications makes the Tracker easier to manage and allows for quick decision-making.

Key Topics
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cuts:
  - Rose to the top of coverage because of the sheer speed of grant contracts being frozen.
  - Held said that keeping track of funding cuts was—and still is—difficult. While most of the funding has been unfrozen, many contracts have been canceled outright—like several projects within the $3.1 billion Climate-Smart Commodities Program, which has been converted into a new program with new requirements.
  - We decided to keep a running list of grant program cancellations and pauses, updating it regularly as the situation changes.
- Agricultural Appropriations Bill
  - A draft of the bill was released with a provision that would take away the USDA’s ability to enforce Packers and Stockyards rules finalized by the Biden administration.
    - Went almost unnoticed because it was tucked into the back of a document more than 100 pages long.
    - Also, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” was drawing attention away from this provision.
  - Held had already been covering the Packers and Stockyards Act for years, so she said the post was easy to put together.
- Immigration
  - When covering immigration, the Civil Eats team looks to understand:
  - “Another important impact of the Food Policy Tracker is that even though you’re talking about policy, you’re really talking about people,” Calvert said.

- Obstacles and Challenges
  - Getting sources to go on the record is extremely difficult right now.
    - Layoffs, firings, and slashes in funding have made many workers and farmers fearful about speaking to the media.
    - Held, Wheeland, and Calvert said they’re less concerned about their own safety as reporters and more concerned about their sources’ safety.
  - The hardest aspect of tracking policy changes is navigating the misinformation and lack of transparency from the Trump administration.
    - Case in point: the MAHA Commission report and its use of fabricated scientific citations.

Building Trust Amid the Chaos
- For 16 years, Civil Eats has reported on the food system in depth, bring critical context and analysis often missing from other publications.
- “What is most exciting to me is to see the way that we can use this kind of reporting to reach new people and help them get just a little sense of—yes, you’re seeing this story in the news—here’s what it means, here’s a little more detail, here’s how we got here,” Wheeland said.
- As possibly startling and confusing impacts of policy begin to unfurl, said Wheeland, “That’s where we are ready to jump in and keep an eye on all these things and share the most important stuff with the readers.”
- Whenever the news changes, updates are added to the top of stories to give readers a grasp of what’s happening, with the full context below.

How Readers Can Get Involved
- Sign up to receive posts!
  - Our instant updates email lands in your inbox as soon as we publish a post, and our weekly digest, which collects the week’s posts in one email, is sent on Friday afternoons.
  - Sign up for either or both by logging into your account (or creating an account).
- Got a tip? Email tracker@civileats.com.
  - For secure communication, use civileats@protonmail.com. Civil Eats reporters respect the privacy and individual wishes of their sources as to whether and how they are identified. We will do everything within our power to protect our sources.

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