Food Policy Tracker

Since then, there have been a dizzying number of changes to the plan. While Trump has backtracked on several other deadlines, he has said August 1 would be the final deadline for countries to negotiate trade deals with the U.S. If they failed to reach a deal, the higher rates proposed earlier would go into effect.

As that deadline approaches, these are a few of the most important things to know about how farmers and America’s food system might be affected, especially with regard  to the country’s biggest agricultural trade partners: Mexico, Canada, China, the European Union, and Japan. Many other smaller markets will also be impacted.

Trade with Mexico and Canada: Since April 2, a 25 percent tariff has been in place for many goods from our closest neighbors, but imports covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) have been exempt. That includes many agricultural products like fruits and vegetables from Mexico and animal feed, grains, and meat from Canada. Trump also reduced the tariff on potash, an important fertilizer not covered by USMCA, to 10 percent. Now, he says Canada’s rate will rise to 35 percent and Mexico’s to 30 percent. The carveouts for USMCA goods and fertilizer are expected to stay in place, but that has not been confirmed. Canada has since imposed reciprocal tariffs on American meat and dairy products.

Exports to China: The U.S. is currently charging a 51 percent tax on imports from China. That could go up to as high as 145 percent if no deal is reached, but Trump has extended the deadline for negotiations, which are ongoing, to August 12. China has retaliated by imposing steep taxes on American farm goods, including corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, meats, dairy products, and more. During Trump’s last term, commodity farmers were particularly hard hit by Chinese tariffs and the export market never fully recovered. Trump’s USDA bailed farmers out with close to $30 billion in taxpayer funds.

The EU Trade Deal: This week, Trump announced a major trade deal with the European Union that set the tax on imports from the E.U. at 15 percent instead of the 30 percent proposed earlier. While the rate is lower, the tariff will likely still drive up prices at restaurants, which buy products like wine and specialty cheeses from Europe, and could make it harder for small, independent restaurants to operate. Trump has also said the deal will benefit American farmers, but details on agricultural tariffs the E.U. has agreed to drop have not yet been shared.

The Japan Trade Deal: Last week, Trump also finalized a deal with Japan to set its tariff rate at 15 percent instead of the 25 percent proposed earlier. As part of the deal, Japan agreed to increase imports of American rice 75 percent and purchase $8 billion in U.S. goods, including corn, soybeans, and biofuels made from crops.

Brazil’s Looming Deadline: Trump has proposed a 50 percent tariff on all products imported from Brazil starting on August 1, and Brazil responded by promising to reciprocate with the same rate. Brazil sends a significant amount of coffee, sugar, and specialty foods like açai to the U.S., so the prices of those products could rise. On the flip side, it accounts for 20 percent of U.S. fertilizer purchases.

In addition to the major trade deals and tariff negotiations, the White House and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the last month have announced smaller deals they characterized as trade wins for American farmers.

On July 1, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Namibia will now accept imports of American poultry products, “unlocking a market valued at $15 million.” On July 23, Rollins said Trump had negotiated access to Australian markets for U.S. beef producers, but Australia’s prime minister later said the decision to ease the restriction on U.S. beef, in place due to historic concerns around mad cow disease, had nothing to do with Trump.

Since March, the percentage of federal revenue provided by tariffs more than doubled, from about 2 percent historically to 5 percent; fiscal year revenue from customs duties topped $100 billion for the first time in June. (Link to this post.)

“The threats posed to our health by foods often considered ultra-processed are clear and convincing, making it imperative that we work in lockstep with our federal partners to advance, for the first time ever, a uniform definition of ultra-processed foods,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in a press release.

The FDA is housed within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a frequent critic of ultra-processed foods, also referred to as “UPFs.” The first Make America Healthy (MAHA) Report, released by the MAHA Commission he leads, focused heavily on the foods’ health harms. Last month, HHS also announced it will run a public-facing campaign to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods.

While many nutritionists have been recommending diets heavy in whole foods for decades, the science on the specific health harms of ultra-processed foods is still new, and no clear, single definition exists. The most common definition comes from the NOVA system, developed by researchers in Brazil. However, some experts point to its limitations.

In the Federal Register notice, officials ask the public to weigh in on some of the complicated details that often get discussed when it comes to what is and isn’t a UPF: Which physical processes should lead to a food being considered ultra-processed? Which ingredients on a label immediately make a food UPF, and does the amount in the food matter?

In an interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns over the weekend, Makary acknowledged that landing on a “perfect” definition will be difficult; he characterized the process as essentially figuring out where to draw the line between simple processing that doesn’t affect the healthfulness of a food (like chopping a cucumber) and industrial processing that does.

The agencies will take public comments until September 23. The process is likely to draw significant input from health and nutrition advocacy groups, food companies and their trade associations, and the agricultural groups that represent farmers growing crops that get turned into common UPF ingredients, such as corn and soy.

In the press release, the agencies said that when completed, the final definition “will allow for consistency in research and policy to pave the way for addressing health concerns associated with the consumption of ultra-processed foods.” That could include significant implications for school meals and food aid programs. While federal regulations in those programs don’t currently include restrictions on UPFs, several states have already begun passing laws that do, with Kennedy’s help.

“At a time when the cost of diet-related disease continues to grow, we welcome any effort to help consumers identify and avoid UPF and build healthier diets,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, in a statement. (Link to this post.)

The Pesticide Injury Accountability Act is a response to Bayer’s ongoing efforts over the past two years to lobby for laws at both the state and federal level that would make it harder for individuals to sue agrichemical giants based on claims that their products caused cancer and other illnesses. Those efforts were successful in two states: Georgia and North Dakota. And last week, Republicans in the House added a clause to an appropriations bill that could also make it harder for individuals to sue. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) plans to introduce an amendment to strike the provision.

“Rather than providing a liability shield so that foreign corporations are allowed to poison the American people, Congress should instead pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to ensure that these chemical companies can be held accountable in federal court for the harm caused by their toxic products,” Booker said.

Organizations including the National Family Farm Coalition and Farm Action praised the bill. Groups aligned with Robert F. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement—including Moms Across America and Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy founded—are also backing it. While advocacy groups have been pushing for reforms to pesticide policies for decades, Booker and Pingree have long been some of the only lawmakers in Washington willing to support them.

Booker’s bill was just one of several pieces of food and farm legislation introduced last week. Some of the following bills could get attached to a farm bill if Congress decides to move forward with a slimmed-down version later this year.

Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act
Named after a California farmworker who died of heat stroke after picking grapes, the bill would direct the Occupational Standards and Health Agency (OSHA) to create stronger regulations to protect workers from dangerous heat. It was introduced in both the House and the Senate with a long list of co-sponsors, all Democrats.

DIGNITY Act
Among other immigration provisions, the bill would fund border security and mandate the use of E-verify while creating a new ​​path toward green card status (but not citizenship) for immigrants who have been living and working in the U.S. without legal authorization for at least five years. It was introduced in the House by Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) and has bipartisan support.

AFIDA Improvements Act 
Makes changes to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) to mandate more comprehensive, timely tracking of foreign investment in and purchases of farmland. Representative Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) introduced the bill along with nine House colleagues from both sides of the aisle. (Link to this post.)

In a five-page memorandum and an unlisted YouTube video aimed at USDA employees, Rollins laid out the details of the plan, which includes four key pillars:

• Ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with available financial resources and agricultural priorities
• Bring USDA closer to its customers
• Eliminate management layers and bureaucracy
• Consolidate redundant support functions

The plan notes that the agency will move “much of” its 4,600 D.C. area employees out of the capital, eliminating what it calls “a bloated, expensive, and unsustainable organization.” Rollins said that the five hubs, where most D.C. staff will be relocated, will bring the USDA closer to its “core constituents.” Those hubs are located in:

• Raleigh, North Carolina
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Fort Collins, Colorado
• Salt Lake City, Utah

The move builds on Rollins’ testimony to Congress in May that the agency was close to finalizing its plan to restructure and shrink the USDA. During the first Trump administration, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue led a similar effort to reorganize and relocate USDA employees. The Biden administration worked to undo those efforts, but the reorganization of two offices within the USDA resulted in a loss of half their staff, and similar moves in the Bureau of Land Management led to an exodus of leadership during the first Trump administration.

Rollins’ message to USDA employees is below; Civil Eats will continue to report on this plan as the details take shape. (Link to this post.)

Among the groups represented at the hearing were the National Pork Producers Council, the Iowa Farm Bureau, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, along with agricultural economists.

The hearing represents  the latest salvo in a years-long effort to overturn animal welfare rules that were established in 2018 by Prop. 12. In advance of the hearing, House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) issued a statement claiming Prop. 12 “has wreaked havoc on America’s food supply chain, forcing chaos and cost onto producers and consumers nationwide.”

“In the name of so-called animal welfare, radical activists are using state law to impose their extreme agenda on all 50 states and our international trading partners,” he wrote, adding that Congress must now “restore order and protect the balance between states’ rights and interstate commerce.”

Republicans and witnesses repeatedly said during today’s hearing that the retail cost of some pork products has increased by  an average of 20 percent as a result of Prop. 12. These numbers are inconsistent with research, however, and, as  Civil Eats reported in May, are based on limited data: a seven-month period during which the law was being phased in.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the USDA’s Economic Research Service both report much lower real and projected increases. BLS data show about a 1 percent increase in pork prices between June 2024 and May 2025, and USDA data show pork prices rose about .6 percent between May 2024 and June 2025. Politico’s Grace Yarrow is reporting that the USDA released new data showing that Prop. 12 increased pork prices in California by nearly 19 percent compared to last year.

Democrats in both houses of Congress are speaking out in opposition to any efforts to roll back the animal welfare rules. In today’s hearing, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Illinois) said that 82 percent of small pork producers (those who raise fewer than 500 pigs) are benefiting from Prop. 12. A group of 28 Democratic and Independent senators sent a letter to the Senate Agriculture Committee earlier this month urging them to reject efforts to repeal the rules, which they say threaten not only these state-level food and farm bills, but would undermine countless state and local laws and create “an overnight regulatory vacuum.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) on Wednesday introduced the Save Our Bacon Act, which is the same language first introduced as Section 12007 in last year’s draft farm bill text.  The new bill would restrict states from passing laws on animal welfare that affect producers in other states. In a press release, Hinson’s office noted that the bill aims to “alleviate this overregulation by prohibiting state and local governments from interfering with the production of livestock in other states.”

Other groups, including animal-welfare advocacy groups and organizations representing small farmers, issued statements in opposition to today’s hearing.

“There are thousands of farmers across the country who support and depend on commonsense bans against the cruel confinement of farm animals,” said Matt Bershadker, head of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). “We encourage Congress to listen to these farmers and protect state laws like Proposition 12, which create vital market opportunities for higher-welfare farming that align with the values of the American public.”

Farmers associated with Farm Action Fund sent a letter to the House Agriculture committee in support of Prop. 12, which they said has “created a stable, premium market that allows us to sustain our farms, invest in better infrastructure and livestock care, and continue farming in an increasingly consolidated industry. . . . [We] now rely on this market as a part of our farms’ financial futures.” (Link to this post.)

On July 9, the USDA sent a letter to state agencies, which administer SNAP, informing them that they will be required to submit data including addresses, birth dates, and Social Security numbers to be collected in a new national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Information Database beginning on July 24.

According to a notice in the Federal Register, the USDA will use the data to “ensure the integrity of Government programs, including by verifying SNAP recipient eligibility against federally maintained databases, identifying and eliminating duplicate enrollments, and performing additional eligibility and program integrity checks specified herein.”

But Senator Adam Schiff (D-California) and a group of about a dozen Democrats in the Senate sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins yesterday saying that the plan violates laws meant to protect Americans from federal government overreach.

“Simply put, this plan negates the right to privacy for any of the tens of millions of Americans in need of food assistance during economic hardship,” the senators wrote. “We demand that USDA cease the unlawful compiling of sensitive and personally identifying information regarding American families under the guise of ‘defend[ing] against’ unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse.”

The senators noted that the USDA identified “verifying eligibility based on immigration status” as one use of the data. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP benefits, and the recent passage of the Republican budget bill made additional groups of immigrants with legal authorization, such as refugees, ineligible. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the Department of Health and Human Services is now handing over data on Medicaid enrollees to Immigrant and Customs Enforcement.

The USDA first requested the SNAP data from the states in May, but then walked it back after a coalition of groups sued, claiming the law says the data must be maintained by the states and that the agency was violating federal privacy laws. Those groups are concerned about the data being used to track Americans based on characteristics like disabilities or gender identity. The lawsuit is ongoing, and yesterday, the groups requested a temporary restraining order in response to the USDA’s renewed effort. (Link to this post.)

“While this legislation provides the administration flexibility on which funds they can return, I included an amendment that clarifies that funding will not be taken from the administration of commodity-based programs like Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole that provide a critical market for our farmers to sell excess commodities to feed hungry people around the world,” Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) said in a press release.

The rescissions process is being used as a way to give Congressional authority to the Trump administration’s spending cuts. With the help of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump began dismantling USAID soon after he took office, and the agency was shuttered on June 30. In a May budget proposal, President Trump proposed eliminating Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program, which funds school meals in low-income countries.

Staff in Uzbekistan unload a shipment of USAID food assistance in 2020. (Photo CC-licensed by USAID Central Asia on Flickr)

However, unlike with other cuts to foreign aid, some Republicans have pushed back on defunding the food programs because they purchase billions of dollars in commodities from farmers in their states. In early July, The New York Times reported that Kansas farmers who lost Food for Peace contracts were looking into dog food as a new market for their grains.

In the press release, Moran pointed out that the recently passed Senate appropriations bill allocating agriculture funding for next year also preserved funding for the Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole programs. Senators included a requirement that the administration provide a report on what it would take to transfer Food for Peace to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A team at the State Department is currently running the remaining USAID programs.

The rescissions package’s zeroing out of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is expected to hit the small, rural affiliates of National Public Radio (NPR) the hardest, since federal funding generally makes up a larger portion of their budgets. The total cuts saved $9 billion, which is about .1 percent of the federal government’s $7 trillion in annual spending. (Link to this post.)

July 16, 2025 – In a draft appropriations bill that House Republicans moved forward this week, lawmakers included a provision that would halt the progress of an influential Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessment related to the risks of forever chemicals in farm soils.

Released by the Biden administration in mid-January, it was the first government report to find that the common practice of spreading sewage sludge on farms for fertilizer poses serious health risks for farmers and their neighbors due to the presence of the chemicals, which are collectively called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). EPA officials found “human health risks exceeding the agency’s acceptable thresholds for cancer and non-cancer effects.” It had been published as a draft in order to accept public comments.

But the appropriations bill includes language that says no government funds “may be used to finalize, implement, administer, or enforce the draft risk assessment.”

“Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst,” said Kyla Bennet, the Science Policy Director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, in a press release. “If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster.”

In May, Trump’s EPA also rolled back limits on some PFAS in drinking water and canceled a collection of research projects that were part of a $15 million investment into understanding PFAS contamination on farms and in food.

The bill also includes language prohibiting funds from being used to change pesticide labeling in any way that conflicts with the EPA’s human health assessments. The pesticide industry has been lobbying lawmakers to strengthen the agency’s authority on pesticide labels as a way to prevent states from adopting labels that advise of different potential risks and to curb lawsuits, but it’s unclear exactly what impact this provision might have.

The bill will now be taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee and then go to Senate appropriators, who could make significant changes; if they do, then the House will need to re-vote on the updated bill.

In June, the House appropriations bill dedicated to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) funding took a similar tack to stop and reverse progress on a set of rules meant to protect farmers from meatpacker abuse. But when the Senate took up the bill this week, it removed that provision. Senators also restored Supplemental Nutrition Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) funding for fruits and vegetables, included funding for Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program, which Trump proposed eliminating, and largely maintained appropriations funding for USDA and FDA programs.

Congress has until October to finish the appropriations process and pass final bills. (Link to this post.)

Correction: This post has been updated to clarify that the bill will go to the full House Appropriations Committee next.

Organizations operating the 12 business centers have had their funding frozen since January and have been struggling to function as they sought answers from the USDA.

“The Biden Administration created multiple, massive programs without any long-term way to finance them. This is not sustainable for farmers who rely on these programs, and it flies in the face of Congressional intent,” Secretary Rollins said in an emailed statement sent to Congressional offices. “USDA will honor existing commitments for over 450 grants to farmers and food businesses to ensure planning decisions on the farm can continue as normal, however stakeholders should not plan on this program continuing.”

The small Regional Food Business Centers program was one of a suite of initiatives created by the Biden administration that were focused on rebuilding regional supply chains. The repaired infrastructure was intended to serve small family farms and push back on the increasing consolidation in the food system that has hollowed out rural communities.

The centers were designed to be hubs of business development activity, including the issuing of small “Business Builder Grants” to farms and food entrepreneurs in their areas. In an October 2024 progress report, Biden’s USDA reported that 2,800 individuals had received technical assistance, recipients had formed 1,500 new partnerships, and 287 businesses reported increased revenue as a result of the program.

But because the five-year grants were awarded in 2023, some centers are still in the process of getting up and running and allocating their funding. The USDA said that those centers that have not yet awarded grants—Great Lakes Midwest RFBC, Southeast RFBC, Delta RFBC, and Islands and Remote Areas RFBC—will see their contracts immediately terminated. However, a source within the USDA who asked for anonymity due to the risk of retaliation said that those centers would have already awarded grants but were unable to do so due to the funding freeze. For those that have awarded grants, USDA said they would honor the contracts and allow the centers to manage them through May 2026.

In a Civil Eats story on the freeze in funding published in April, individuals running the centers said the program was especially impactful because it was designed to link farms, businesses, and others in the local supply chain together to improve economic viability.

“If there ever is a program that really deserves bipartisan support across the spectrum, it’s this program,” Paul Freedman, the director of the Appalachia Regional Food Business Center, told Civil Eats. “Our middle name is business. Our goal here is to help businesses bring food to market so that it’s available at a fair price and so that producers, processors, and farmers can actually make a living doing this.” (Link to this post.)

This article has been updated with new detail on why some centers had not yet awarded grants in their regions.

“Today’s guidance eliminates the illegal threats issued under the Biden Administration that mandated compliance with ever-evolving concepts of gender ideology as a condition for participation in USDA school programs,” reads new guidance posted on July 7 for state administrators of school breakfast and lunch programs.

On X, the Congressional Equality Caucus chaired by Representative Mark Takano (D-California) posted that the change would make it easier to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people. “This is beyond cruel. No American should go hungry just because of who they are or who they love,” they wrote.

A group of Republican states and others had sued the Biden administration over the guidance several years ago, and the USDA mentioned this “litigation risk” the agency faced as a reason to roll back the guidance. The new directive also says rescinding the anti-discrimination rules will prevent “the waste of resources” involved in overseeing compliance with those rules.

At the same time, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the USDA all issued new directives around “public benefits” that will make it harder for immigrants to access workforce protection resources and meal programs.

In an email to supporters, the Food and Research Action Center (FRAC), a D.C.-based hunger policy organization, said that while neither the rollback of discrimination protections nor the new restrictions for immigrants will immediately change who is eligible for school meals or other food programs, “they could have a chilling effect on participation.” (Link to this post.)

The Food Chemical Reassessment Act of 2025 would require the FDA to review, every three years, the safety of certain chemicals added to food. The initial list includes the most common food dyes and other controversial additives, like titanium dioxide and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT).

“Too many chemicals in our food supply haven’t been properly reviewed for safety, or haven’t been looked at in decades,” Jessica Hernandez, the director of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group Policy, said in a statement. “We’re grateful to Rep. Schakowsky and Rep. DeLauro for taking action to make sure the FDA does its job to protect our health.”

The bill is an attempt to crack down on the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) process, which allows companies to self-certify ingredients as safe to eat. Watchdog groups have been attempting to change it for decades, and their efforts have generally been supported by Democrats in Congress.

Over the past year, that has shifted. Supported by his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made food additives a central focus of the FDA.

In March, Kennedy directed the FDA to look into revising the GRAS process. (Biden’s FDA had started a process to do so; last fall, the agency began taking public comments on how to better review chemicals already added to food.) Kennedy also rolled out a plan to pressure food companies into removing chemical food dyes from their products, with a goal of eliminating the dyes by 2026.

Since then, some food giants like Nestle, Kraft Heinz, and General Mills have committed to ditching the dyes. The FDA has also been fast-tracking the approval of natural alternatives. It announced the approval of gardenia blue, derived from a flowering evergreen, on Monday.

Amid an emerging patchwork of state laws that ban dyes and other additives, the federal government has mainly stopped short of regulation. Laws passed by Congress could change that. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) created the Senate MAHA Caucus to provide the legislative force needed to execute Kennedy’s goals.

Marshall’s office has been working on legislation that would also change the GRAS process, but he has not yet introduced the bill. Republicans in the House MAHA Caucus have not yet weighed in on whether they’ll support the Food Chemical Reassessment Act. (Link to this post.)

July 11, 2025 Update 2: The United Farm Workers on Friday announced that one of the workers injured during Thursday’s ICE raid in Camarillo, Calif., died of his injuries.

July 11, 2025 Update 1: The Department of Homeland Security announced today that federal agents arrested 200 immigrants in the farm raids in Carpinteria and Camarillo and that during the operations they also “rescued” 10 migrant children “from potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking.” Officials also said one protester in Camarillo fired a gun at officers; they are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the individual’s arrest. An ABC video appears to show a protester firing a gun; the accompanying summary says no injuries were reported. Our reporter on the scene at the time did not witness gunfire.

July 10, 2025 – Large groups of immigration agents with military vehicles, helicopters, and weapons raided two farms in Southern California today, one in Carpinteria and another in Camarillo, where they rounded up workers and threw tear gas at protestors.

Both were locations of Glasshouse Farms, a cannabis operation that grows marijuana in large greenhouses.

In Carpinteria, farm staff told a local news station that 10 workers had been detained. There, federal agents threw flash-bang grenades and smoke bombs at a group of protestors, including  U.S. Representative Salud Carbajal (D-California) and a local councilwoman.

In Camarillo, Ventura officials estimated 12 to 15 workers were detained. There, live helicopter footage from ABC News showed about a dozen military vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances near the farms. At the site, individuals could be seen lined up against two walls outside. Federal agents blocked a road, where protesters gathered with signs and bullhorns and filmed with their cellphone cameras. At around both 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., agents fired non-lethal rounds and tear gas at the crowd before advancing forward, pointing weapons at the protestors. At one point, some protestors tried to block military vehicles from advancing; several protestors threw water bottles at the phalanx of federal agents.

(Photo credit: Brian Calvert)

Civil Eats was on the ground in Camarillo, where protestors said they had been assembled since around 10 a.m. They said the agents had advanced at least four times and also shot rubber bullets at them. The protestors said they could see agents lining people up outside the farm facility and loading them into vans. One woman said her cousin, who was in the process of applying for legal status, was hiding inside.

“We feed the country, we feed the people. Out here, this is all farmland. This a farm community,” said Javier Martinez, a Ventura County employee who took part in the protests. “There are a lot of farmworkers, field workers; they’re here to work.”

Although the administration has wavered several times as to whether farmworkers would be included in mass deportation plans, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said this week that there would be “no amnesty.” Civil Eats has been tracking raids on farms and other food establishments and has recorded at least 23 to date. (Link to this post.)

This story has been updated so that all times mentioned reflect Pacific Time.

In response to decades of well-documented discrimination against farmers based on race and gender, the 1990 Farm Bill defined “socially disadvantaged” as a category that applied to Black or African American, American Indian or Native Alaskan, Hispanic, Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander farmers. Depending on the program, women may also be included.

Some farm bill grant programs are designed specifically for these groups, like the 2501 Program, which also serves veteran farmers. Other programs administered by the agency, as well as farm loans, have included carve-outs for disadvantaged groups. For example, the 2018 Farm Bill mandated that 5 percent of grant funding in the Conservation Stewardship Program, which pays farmers to implement environmentally friendly practices, had to go to socially disadvantaged farmers.

A National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition analysis found that the policy was successful in helping get funds to farmers who had historically been locked out of USDA support. The new rule would likely end set-asides like that one, although the exact outcome is unclear since Congress has authority over how the USDA spends money.

While many rules are posted as a draft first for public comment, agency officials posted this rule in its finalized form without soliciting input. In the text, they said the USDA’s efforts to address past injustices have succeeded. “These actions collectively support the conclusion that past discrimination has been sufficiently addressed and that further race- and sex-based remedies are no longer necessary or legally justified under current circumstances,” they wrote.

The move is in line with other USDA policy changes made since January to implement President Trump’s executive order on eliminating policies that prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).  USDA officials scrubbed the Equity Commission Report completed during the Biden administration from its website almost immediately after the inauguration, and it has been steadily canceling signed contracts with farmers and organizations that use language referencing race and gender.

In the rule, USDA also referenced lawsuits over its prioritization of racial groups. White farmers, some backed by prominent Republicans, have sued the agency, claiming discrimination.

In response to the rule, Agriculture Committee member Representative Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) put out a statement referring to the move as part of Trump’s “resegregation agenda.”

“The ‘socially disadvantaged’ designation was a long-overdue recognition of the barriers to land, credit, and opportunity that farmers of color have faced for generations,” she said. “This move isn’t about fairness or efficiency. It’s about erasing history and stripping the tools that help level the playing field. USDA must be held accountable, and Congress must act to protect the farmers this country has long ignored.” (Link to this post.)

California voters approved Proposition 2 in 2008 and then Proposition 12 in 2018, both of which include requirements around how much space egg-laying hens have on farms. Since then, other states have proposed cage-free laws, while consumer demand drove a larger shift across the country.

According to recent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, nearly half of the country’s eggs now come from cage-free production.

However, DOJ lawyers argue California’s animal welfare laws violate the federal Egg Productions Inspection Act by imposing requirements that are different from or on top of the federal standards.

“Americans across the country have suffered the consequences of liberal policies causing massive inflation for everyday items like eggs,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we will use the full extent of federal law to ensure that American families are free from oppressive regulatory burdens and restore American prosperity.”

While cage-free eggs are slightly more expensive than conventional eggs, economists say higher national egg prices in recent years are due to a confluence of factors including bird flu, COVID-19 supply chain disruptions, and companies taking advantage of consumers through price gouging.

Analyses of the impact of California’s animal welfare laws have found that while they may lead to price increases on the specific foods subject to the state’s laws (especially in the beginning as supply chains adapt), there’s no evidence they affect prices outside the state.

Proposition 12 has been the target of multiple lawsuits, but the pushback to date has largely come from the pork industry. In a 2022 Supreme Court case, the Association of California Egg Farmers submitted a brief in favor of keeping the law in place. The Court ruled in favor of California against the pork industry; at the end of June, it declined to hear another challenge brought by pork producers. The pork industry is now working to get Congress to overturn the law.

“We fully expect this misguided and disappointing DOJ initiative to meet the same fate as every similar legal challenge before it,” said Scott Edwards, general counsel for advocacy group Animal Wellness Action. “States have the constitutional authority to ensure humane treatment of animals and to protect their citizens from unsafe and unethical agricultural practices. DOJ should be defending these rights—not working to hurt American farmers, consumers, and animals.”

The Trump administration has been targeting California on many fronts, with multiple lawsuits and immigration enforcement actions that are much more aggressive compared to actions in other states. (Link to this post.)

At the event, Rollins unveiled a National Farm Security Action Plan that lays out actions to work with the Border Patrol to prevent plant and animal pathogens from entering the country and review all U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs to ensure they comply with President Trump’s “America First” mandate, among other steps.

But at the top of the list—in the plan and at the event—was a focus on foreign entities owning farmland. More specifically, Rollins pointed to Chinese companies owning farmland near military bases.

“If you look at the gradations of threat, that’s the most obvious,” said Peter Navarro, the White House trade advisor who has also been a driving force behind Trump’s tariffs. “What Secretary Rollins is doing today, it’s a historic day. She’s putting down the marker that the United States is no longer going to tolerate attacks on our agricultural system, not just the land, but the supply chain as well.”

Foreign farmland ownership has become a hot-button issue in Washington, D.C. and states around the country over the last several years, with Republicans zeroing in especially on China. Less than 4 percent of American farmland is owned by foreign entities, but the acreage has been increasing in recent years. Entities in Canada, the Netherlands, and Italy own the bulk of the land. Chinese companies own about 265,000 acres, or .02 percent. Pork giant Smithfield, owned by the Chinese firm WH Group, is responsible for most of that, although the company has been selling off some of its land, according to The Washington Post.

Navarro mentioned both Smithfield and the other large agricultural company owned by a Chinese entity: Syngenta, one of the four largest seed and chemical companies in the world.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on foreign farmland ownership in which it found the USDA’s processes “to collect, track, and report key information are flawed” and recommended several actions to correct them. Some of the actions have already been completed, while others are included in the new farm security plan.

But at the event, Rollins hinted at a more definitive path toward banning foreign ownership and “clawing back” land that’s already in the hands of foreign companies. “We are looking at every available option,” she said. “You’ll likely see an executive order on this very soon from the White House, and we’ll be looking at multiple different authorities.”

Some states have already passed laws, and members of Congress, including Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), have also proposed legislation.

“To me the Chinese owning land is just a small, small piece of the puzzle,” Marshall said at the event. “I’m much more concerned about the food supply down the road here, that right now foreign entities own about a fifth of the protein processing. Between beef and pork, JBS and Smithfield own about a fifth, maybe even a fourth of the protein processing in this entire country. That’s just wrong.” (JBS is Brazilian-owned.)

Rollins was also asked about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown threatening farmers’ ability to hire workers. She said there would be “no amnesty” and suggested Americans on Medicaid who are subject to new work requirements as a result of the recent tax bill passage could fill the gap. Those requirements will be phased in starting in 2027. (Link to this post.)

But information on the event replaced a page on the USDA website that previously led to details on the agency’s season-long annual Friday farmers’ market, which typically runs outside its Washington, D.C., headquarters from May through October, with around 30 farms and food vendors represented each week.

Former Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue visits the USDA Farmers Market in July of 2019. (Photo credit: Tom Witham, USDA)

In March, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which typically runs the Friday market, posted a call for vendors for the 2025 season on Instagram. But while a listing in its own directory says the market is open from May to October, it never opened. A USDA email address provided as a contact within the directory no longer exists.

Nearly 100 AMS employees based in D.C. accepted a Trump administration resignation offer, which was intended to cut staff across the government, and according to two USDA employees who asked to remain anonymous due to the risk of retaliation, most of the staff working on the Friday market were among them.

An agency spokesperson said the suggestion that staffing had anything to do with the discontinuation of the market is “incorrect,” but they did not answer detailed questions about whether the Friday market is officially cancelled, or whether farmers will face a gap in sales due to the closure. Instead, they provided an emailed statement.

“As we approach the 250th anniversary of America, USDA is uniquely positioned to celebrate America’s farmers and ranchers,” it said. “The agency is proudly continuing the long tradition of hosting a farmers’ market at the agency through the Great American Farmers Market.”

After a grand opening celebration on Aug. 3, the event will feature themed days including a MAHA day focused on nutrition and wellness and a day showcasing farmers from around the country, with more specific details to follow. (Link to this post.)

Kennedy traveled to Oklahoma for an event where Republican governor Kevin Stitt signed a waiver eliminating soda and candy from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and an executive order directing state agencies to take artificial food dyes out of meals.

In Louisiana, Governor Jeff Landry signed a similar SNAP waiver and a piece of legislation dubbed the “MAHA Bill” that goes much further. In addition to restricting food dyes in school meals and requiring QR-code labeling for certain additives, the bill mandates restaurants include disclaimers on their menus or in another clearly visible location if they cook with canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, or other seed oils.

That provision is likely to stoke controversy because the scientific consensus around seed oils is that they are not universally harmful (and in some cases are healthier than animal-based options), but that consensus is now at odds with the actions and rhetoric of the federal government’s top health official.

Kennedy’s travel follows earlier trips to West Virginia, Utah, Arizona, and other states to support similar bills. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has partnered with him to get soda and other unhealthy foods out of SNAP, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now maintaining a map showing where waivers have been approved.

On Instagram on July 4, Kennedy said “a new American revolution” is underway to combat chronic disease. “We’ve just gotten started here at HHS to rebuild a food and medical system that are worthy of your trust,” he said. “I’m inviting you to join the revolution too by making healthy choices for you and your family.”

However, on the same day, many advocacy groups criticized the administration and Republicans in Congress for making it much harder for low-income Americans to do just that, by reducing access to SNAP benefits and eliminating SNAP-Ed.

“There is overwhelming evidence that demonstrates these legislative and budgetary actions will have harmful consequences to public health and none of these actions gets us closer to improving the health and nutrition security of Americans, which the Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture share as common goals,” Wylecia Wiggs Harris, Chief Executive Officer of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, said in a statement in response to the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill. (Link to this post.)

July 3, 2025 – After a long night of convincing ultra-conservative and moderate holdouts to vote with their party, followed by a nearly nine-hour, impassioned speech staged by Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), Republicans passed their massive tax bill, complete with sweeping changes to food assistance and many other provisions that will have profound impacts on the food system. President Trump is expected to quickly sign the bill.

“We are going to make this country stronger, safer, and more prosperous than ever before and every American is going to benefit from that,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said right before lawmakers cast their votes, as his Republican colleagues whooped and whistled in celebration.

The bill includes the biggest-ever changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest hunger-relief program. Expanded work requirements are expected to lead to 5 million Americans losing their grocery benefits, while a $65 billion cost-shift to states could lead to states cutting benefits or discontinuing SNAP altogether. Cuts to healthcare could compound the struggle low-income Americans will face in putting food on the table, with 11.8 million people expected to lose Medicaid coverage and 4.2 million losing Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) insurance plans. Farmers rely disproportionately on those plans.

“Pregnant women, children, seniors, single mothers, the disabled, and the low-income Americans among us receiving Medicaid and SNAP will have the peace of mind of knowing that we’ve made these safety nets stronger with our reforms,” Johnson said.

During his record-breaking speech on the floor, Jeffries read letters from families who rely on food aid and farmers in states around the country, calling the bill “an assault” on healthcare, nutritional assistance, children, veterans, farmers, and everyday Americans. “Millions of Americans, our fellow Americans, are at risk of going hungry,” he said.

While the majority of Americans will see slightly lower taxes, the tax breaks in the bill will disproportionately benefit the wealthiest families. Families in the lowest income brackets will see their resources significantly reduced, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The bill includes $67 billion for commodity farm payments, but Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee pointed to the fact that farms and other sectors of the food chain will also be hit by the SNAP cuts as families’ purchasing power dwindles. They estimate the cuts will lead to a $25 billion drop in farm revenue over 10 years. SNAP is also responsible for close to 250,000 grocery jobs.

“Today marks a grave turning point for our country, one which leaves rural communities and farmers behind and places us on the road toward increased hunger, less prosperity, and fewer opportunities for working families,” said Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the committee. Craig said the inclusion of SNAP cuts and some farm bill provisions in the bill will also make it harder to pass a farm bill, leaving other farm programs stuck in limbo.

The bill could also affect farmers and the broader food system by allocating historic resources toward the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, which is already impacting food and farm workers. It includes $121.5 billion in new funding for hiring and training more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, expanding detention centers, and building the border wall. It will also prevent some immigrants in the country legally, including refugees and asylum seekers, from accessing food aid and healthcare assistance.

Finally, the bill will deal a huge blow to the transition to renewable energy at a time when farmers are increasingly confronting the impacts of climate change. It will eliminate Biden-era tax credits for solar and wind farms and other renewable infrastructure projects unless they come online before the end of 2027, a provision that will stop many projects because they often take years to get permits, raise funds, and construct. (Link to this post.)

Rubio said that the work USAID did was not serving American interests. “Moving forward, our assistance will be targeted and time limited,” he wrote. “We will favor those nations that have demonstrated both the ability and willingness to help themselves and will target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect and catalyze durable private sector, including American companies, and global investment.”

On USAID’s last day in operation, a study published in The Lancet estimated that between 2000 and 2021, the agency’s work saved close to 92 million lives, about a third of them children under five. Researchers estimated the current funding cuts could lead to an additional 14 million deaths around the world.

While most of the lives were saved by reducing the incidence of diseases like AIDS and malaria, the study also mentioned nutritional deficiencies. During the 2024 fiscal year, USAID spent around $5 billion on food assistance, about $2 billion of which was used to purchase commodity foods from American farmers.

Food for Peace was USAID’s marquee program, and has long had bipartisan support in Congress. In February, a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate introduced legislation to move the program to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In June, a draft of a House appropriations bill included that change, although Food for Peace’s budget was cut in half. Lawmakers are expected to start working to move the appropriations process along again after the tax bill process is over. The State Department, which has absorbed some pieces of USAID’s programming, was unable to provide comment by press time on the current status of Food for Peace.

But questions remain about whether the USDA has the right international infrastructure to administer the program, especially when the agency has also lost more than 15,000 staff members since January. In May, the agency also began canceling some grant contracts within the international food aid program it already runs.

On USAID’s last day, former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and U2 frontman Bono sent video messages to employees thanking them for work they characterized as lifesaving and reflective of American strength. (Link to this post.)

An updated version released by the Senate earlier today keeps most of the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed earlier. The bill will limit future increases in SNAP benefits; eliminate the popular SNAP-Ed program that teaches healthy eating habits; and make certain groups of non-citizens, like refugees, ineligible for benefits.

Most significantly, it will subject new groups to the most stringent work requirements, shift administrative costs to states, and shift benefit costs—up to 15 percent starting in 2028—to states, based on metrics that measure errors in payment administration.

Those changes are expected to push millions of Americans out of the program, while other provisions in the bill will likely kick as many as 11.8 million low-income people off of Medicaid and 4.2 million off of Obamacare insurance plans.

“Under this legislation—which cuts nearly $1 trillion from essential health programs like Medicaid and SNAP—millions of hard-working people will lose healthcare coverage and food assistance under the heavy burden of new punitive governmental red tape,” said Richard E. Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a statement. “By its very design, the bill will make our country sicker, put children at risk of going hungry, and make it harder for families to afford basic necessities—all to further enrich wealthy individuals and corporations.”

At the final hour, Republicans carved out some exemptions within the changes to SNAP in order to get Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to vote for the bill. The bill as previously written would have hit Alaskans the hardest because of the way changes were designed; Now, Alaska will be exempt from, or have more time to implement, some of the changes. On social media, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) pointed to the deal as Republican hypocrisy. She forced a vote to push back on the exemptions on the floor, but it did not succeed.

The bill also includes an estimated $67 billion in new funding for commodity farm subsidy programs. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was expected to offer an amendment to limit payments within those programs—a longtime goal of his—but was talked out of it by Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas), according to Politico.

“Passage of this legislation is critical to delivering the promises made to the American people by President Trump,” Boozman said in a statement after the bill passed. “We make common sense reforms to SNAP to ensure the program operates efficiently, is accountable to the taxpayers, and helps those who truly need it. There is also good news for hardworking farmers, ranchers, and producers who, for too long, were forced to operate under outdated policies.” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins celebrated the vote, calling it “a desperately needed win for our farmers,” by posting an image of her face next to President Trump’s on Instagram.

Klobuchar, however, pointed to the fact that reduced SNAP spending will hurt farmers, as it will deprive them of customers. “These cuts also mean farmers, who are already operating on razor-thin margins, will see billions in lost revenue and rural, independent grocers will be in jeopardy,” she said in a statement.

The bill now heads back to the House, where it’s still unclear whether Republicans, who are divided on many issues and have the narrowest of margins, have the votes to pass it. While Trump has pushed to sign the bill by July 4th, he wavered on that deadline this morning. (Link to this post.)

The first relates to Bayer’s petition for the court to hear a case that the agrichemical giant hopes could end the more than 100,000 filed lawsuits that claim individuals have developed cancer due to the use of its marquee weedkiller, Roundup. (Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup.) Instead of deciding yes or no on the petition, the court asked the Solicitor General, the federal government’s Supreme Court lawyer, to weigh in on the case first. That pushes the final decision on whether the court will hear the case to the next session, which starts in the fall.

“We see this request as an encouraging step and look forward to hearing the views of the government,” Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said in a statement on the decision. In the meantime, according to the statement, the company will continue to work to get state laws passed that protect them from future Roundup litigation. So far, they’ve been successful in Georgia and North Dakota.

The other case involved the U.S. pork industry in its second attempt to ask the court to overturn California’s animal welfare law known as Proposition 12. Prop. 12 is controversial because its requirements for housing mother pigs approved by California voters apply to pork producers in other states, if they want to sell their meat in California. The law has been the subject of ongoing attempts by the pork industry to stall or overturn it, but more than a year after it went into full effect, Civil Eats’ reporting found that many large producers have already complied with the law, and Prop. 12 may also be helping smaller producers reach new markets.

Today, the Supreme Court denied the Iowa Pork Producers’ Association’s petition to take up the case once again. In 2022, the court heard a different case brought by the National Pork Producers Council challenging Prop. 12, and their 2023 ruling left the law in place. The pork industry is also lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would overturn the law. (Link to this post.)

Kyle Kunkler starts today as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. He will be working alongside Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry executive.

“Mr. Kunkler has a wealth of experience in the agricultural sector, and the president made a great choice in selecting this highly qualified individual to advance EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” an EPA spokesperson said in an email responding to Civil Eats’ questions.

Kunkler most recently worked as director of government affairs, with a focus on pesticides, for the American Soybean Association. He lobbied members of Congress on pesticide policy and other farm topics as recently as earlier this year. At its 2020 annual meeting, CropLife America, the trade association that represents the country’s largest agrichemical companies, presented Kunkler with its “Rising Star Award.”

It’s not uncommon for pesticide-industry veterans and lobbyists to work at the EPA and other federal agencies, but President Trump has repeatedly vowed to “drain the swamp.” And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,  a longtime critic of pesticide use, has railed against industry influence within the federal government and promised specifically to reduce chemical exposures as part of his Make America Healthy Again movement.

In a press release, Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said Kunkler’s appointment represents a clear contradiction. “The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: industry influence is back in charge at the EPA,” he said. “It’s a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they’d stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides.”

In response to those accusations, the EPA spokerson accused previous administrations of having a revolving door with industry and being rife with ethics violations. “Every Trump political appointee works with the career employees in the EPA ethics office to ensure all applicable ethics obligations are addressed,” they said.

Last week, CropLife America President and CEO Alexandra Dunn also sent Kennedy a letter asking him to retract what she called “misleading and alarmist” statements about pesticides made in the MAHA Report and offering 17 policy recommendations to support the pesticide industry. Dunn was an administrator in the same EPA office in charge of chemical oversight during Trump’s first term. (Link to this post.)

Toxic algal blooms are a regular occurrence in Lake Erie as a result of excess nutrients used on farms, particularly concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), escaping into waterways. These blooms pose a risk to human and animal health, as the toxins generated contaminate drinking water and deplete the lake of oxygen, killing off fish.

The EPA selected four Michigan and Ohio grant recipients, including the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the Nature Conservancy, Lenawee County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Regents of the University of Michigan.

Each of the projects selected has set forth initiatives to mitigate nutrient runoff by creating professional development and employment opportunities, as well as providing technical assistance and resources to farmers.

“By implementing edge of field practices, like adding vegetated buffers or two-stage ditches, farmers can help make the Western Lake Erie Basin more resilient while further protecting their fields from short-term threats, including flooding and drought,” Jessica D’Ambrosio, The Nature Conservancy Ohio’s agriculture director, said in a statement.

The funding was provided through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), a program that began in 2010 to accelerate efforts to protect and restore the Great Lakes. Since its inception, more than $5 billion has been appropriated for the GLRI.

While the EPA has been slashing funding for many other programs since March—cancelling almost 800 grants—the GLRI appears to be untouched, continuing business as usual. (Link to this post)

The moves are happening in the midst of a widespread immigration crackdown that is affecting food and farm labor. As raids sweep up undocumented farmworkers and cause others to skip work in fear, the DOL is working alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to make it easier for farmers to use the H-2A program, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

Advocacy groups said the possibility of more guest workers being recruited quickly means protections are needed now more than ever. “Now is the time to strengthen worker protections in the deeply flawed H-2A agricultural visa program, not leave workers vulnerable to abuse and exploitation,” the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) wrote in a statement on the decision.

As the program has ballooned in size over the last decade, multiple reports, including from CDM, have found that H-2A workers are particularly vulnerable to wage theft, health and safety violations, and other abuses because their housing, transportation, and ability to legally work and live in the country are all tied to their employers.

The rule finalized a year ago—Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States—made small changes intended to address those risks. It prohibited retaliation against workers who engaged in workforce organizing activities and protected their right to have guests visit employer-provided housing. It required more transparency in the recruitment process, mandated employers share more details of job requirements up-front, and prohibited them from confiscating worker passports or other immigration documents.

But the Biden-era rule was already on hold in 17 Republican states after those states sued and a judge blocked the DOL from enforcing it. In its announcement suspending the rule, the DOL cited legal uncertainty and inconsistency as a reason for its decision. “A temporary, nationwide suspension of enforcement ensures clarity and consistency while existing litigation over the legality of the 2024 Final Rule continues, and the Department considers further regulatory action,” wrote Donald M. Harrison, acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, in a bulletin.

But CDM sees the action as an affront to workers. “Farmworkers who participate in the H-2A visa program have fought for years—even decades—for strengthened protections against retaliation, fraud, and trafficking,” they wrote. “And now the Trump administration is dismissing them and their hard-won protections.” (Link to this post.)

“Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda,” Rollins said in the press release.

The announcement did not provide details on the 145 grants terminated, such as who the recipients were or what kind of work they were funding, aside from citing three examples identified by single-line descriptors. Those examples added up to just over $3 million, although the USDA said the whole list totals “a maximum savings of $148.6 million.” On X, Rollins thanked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for its help, and the office responded by citing two more examples, without details, that added up to less than $700,000.

The USDA did not respond to a request for full details on the terminated grants. However, Civil Eats’ reporting has found that one grant cited in the announcement was most likely a $2.5 million award to the nonprofit Agroecology Commons through the Land, Capital, and Market Access Program.

In March, the agency publicized its cancellation of a different small grant to the same group, based on the nonprofit’s support of BIPOC and queer farmers. This larger grant termination is a much bigger hit, since the organization was using the funds to purchase land and create a commons for up to 10 “BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and landless farmers,” and the money was supposed to fund more than half of the the group’s staffing capacity over the next three years.

“It’s a seismic blow, but at least we know and can start the next steps,” said Leah Atwood, Agroecology Commons’ director of partnerships.

In early June, the organization sued the USDA alongside other groups that lost funding. Now, their legal team is amending the complaint to reference the likely recent cancellation. (Agroecology Commons has not yet received an official termination letter, so as of right now, the legal team told Civil Eats that “the amended complaint will make reference to the Secretary’s stated intention to terminate a grant that resembles a grant Agroecology Commons has, and that officially terminating such a grant would be unlawful in the way that other terminations at issue in the suit are.”)

Agroecology Common’s leadership said that while Rollins framed the cancellation as a victory for American farmers, their project was contributing to a more diverse, resilient farm landscape through land access and farmer training at a time when young and new farmers are desperately needed.

The Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, created initially out of the Biden-era American Rescue Plan, was championed by the National Young Farmers Coalition. Its members are now pushing to get a permanent version authorized in the next farm bill, and the measure has bipartisan support.

Last week, when Rollins announced the terminations of contracts based on DEI criteria, the coalition posted an image on Instagram in response that read, “Hey USDA, Young, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ producers ARE American farmers.”

At this point, it is unclear whether other grants in the same program will also be canceled, given that all of them specify serving underserved groups, including Black, Indigenous, and immigrant farmers. As a result, the other awardees are left in limbo, said Amanda Koehler, the Young Farmers’ land policy associate director, leaving them fearful that their awards are next.

“The consequences of the funding freeze and uncertainty have already been devastating for LCM awardees and projects,” she said. The termination of this funding will further harm the livelihoods of young, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other underserved producers—and poses a serious threat to the future of our farm and food system.”

Koehler added that her last day at Young Farmers is this Friday, as the organization is cutting 15 staff positions “due to executive branch funding instability and dips in philanthropic giving.” (Link to this post.)

This post has been updated to reflect the exact status of Agroecology Commons’ grant award.

June 23, 2025 – One of the most controversial provisions related to food and agriculture in the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” is now off the table.

Late Friday, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that plans to shift a significant portion of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit costs onto states violated a Congressional rule. MacDonough also axed a provision that would have made certain groups of non-citizens, such as refugees, ineligible for benefits. (Undocumented immigrants are already ineligible.)

Republican lawmakers had hoped federal dollars saved in the SNAP shift would offset some of the billions that would go to tax cuts. Analysts warned, however, that it would also mean millions of Americans would lose access to food aid, and would be a major budgetary challenge for states.

The so-called Byrd Rule determines what lawmakers can and can’t include in the process of budget reconciliation, which they are currently using to move their tax bill without the threat of a Democratic filibuster. The nonpartisan parliamentarian is responsible for evaluating each provision to make sure it complies with the rule.

It is unclear how the Senate Agriculture Committee will proceed, as Republicans across Congress are under immense pressure from President Donald Trump to cut spending in order to pay for the extension of tax cuts for wealthier households and increased spending for military, immigration enforcement, and commodity farms. Congress was aiming to get the bill to the president by the July 4 holiday.

“We are continuing to examine options that comply with Senate rules to achieve savings through budget reconciliation to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) said in a statement.

The committee’s plan to tighten work requirements, which would ultimately push many people out of the program, was not found to violate the rule.

As the process continues, Democrats in Congress will be paying close attention. Since the suite of cuts was first proposed, they have been fighting back on several fronts. They’ve held press conferences, shadow hearings, and roundtables to draw attention to the potential impacts of cuts on American families, farmers, and rural economies.

Last week, Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) sent a letter to Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) urging him to change course on the food assistance provisions.

“While Republicans’ proposed cuts to SNAP will still be devastating to families, farmers, and independent grocers across the country, we will keep fighting to protect families in need,” Klobuchar said in a statement following the parliamentarian’s decision. “Instead of a rushed partisan process, Republicans should work with us to lower costs for Americans and pass a bipartisan Farm Bill that works for all farmers and rural America.” (Link to this post.)

Now, some Republicans in Congress are quietly pushing back on those efforts.

The House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee responsible for funding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submitted a report to explain decisions made in their draft funding bill earlier this month.

“The Committee is concerned that state legislative activity to ban FDA-approved food and color additives threatens both the FDA’s unified, science-based federal food safety system and the interstate commerce of agricultural, food, and beverage goods,” they wrote on page 83 of the report.

The committee members said they were reaffirming “the essential role FDA plays in determining the safety of food and color additives in the nation’s food and beverage supply.” They also requested that the agency provide a report to the committee detailing the additives FDA is reviewing, including safety concerns.

The language suggests that there may be tension within the party around how exactly the regulation of food dyes should happen, which could impact whether Kennedy is able to eventually get the additives out of the food supply.

While Kennedy has made the issue one of the FDA’s top priorities, his recent announcement on the phaseout of food dyes depends entirely on companies voluntarily removing the dyes from their products. Since then, a handful of companies have committed to doing so. Kraft Heinz announced this week it will remove artificial dyes from its products, including Jell-O and Kool-Aid, and General Mills agreed to remove dyes from its products by 2027. However, many companies who made similar commitments about a decade ago, when attention to food dyes’ health impacts was similarly high, reneged on those promises once attention waned.

Because the FDA has declined to outright ban the dyes—with the exception of Red Dye No. 3, which the Biden administration banned—states have moved to fill the gap with their own laws.

In April, in response to the agency’s announcement asking industry to voluntarily remove the dyes, Consumer Brands, the trade organization that represents the country’s biggest food companies, issued a statement defending the additives’ safety. The statement also included many of the same points included in the Appropriations Committee report, including concerns about a “state patchwork” of different laws. “Consumer Brands has long asked HHS and FDA to reestablish themselves as the country’s leading regulatory authority, and we appreciate that the administration has reasserted their leadership in response to the myriad of state activity in the food regulation space,” it read. (Link to this post.)

During the pandemic, legislators allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to waive requirements that mandated all WIC-eligible members of a family—including infants and children—be enrolled in person. Virtual appointments have continued since, but the provision is set to expire in September of 2026. An average of 6.2 million people, including millions of children, rely on WIC to fill nutrition gaps during critical stages of development each year.

“In 2025, or any year for that matter, no mother should have to take three buses, miss work, or find childcare just to keep her benefits, and no child should wait weeks for the nutritional support that they need right now,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania), who co-sponsored the bipartisan bill with Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon). “The MODERN WIC Act brings this critical program into the 21st century by making it work better for the real lives of today’s families.”

WIC, which provides healthy foods and formula to low-income mothers and their children and is linked to improved health outcomes, has historically enjoyed support on both sides of the aisle.

But the push to maintain virtual certification for easier enrollment comes at a time when the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have also proposed cutting WIC benefits for fruits and vegetables. Experts who participated in today’s briefing said this move would undermine recent progress in helping low-income families eat healthier.

During the Biden administration, as part of a plan to help more eligible families take advantage of WIC, the USDA revised the WIC food package to cover more options at the grocery store. In the process, the agency raised the amount of the cash value given to participants for fruits and vegetables to about $26 per month for children and $50 for mothers.

“The extra support made a huge difference in my home,” said Jehimy Benitez, a young mother who used WIC benefits to help feed her daughter, Allison, who attended the briefing with her. “It meant I didn’t have to choose between nutritious foods and other necessities, and then I could bring fresh produce home for my daughter and teach her what it means to be healthy.”

The Trump administration’s discretionary budget request for 2026 proposed rolling back this benefit to a level set in 2014, adjusted for inflation. That would mean a decrease to $10 per month for children and $13 per month for mothers.

During the appropriations process in early June, Republicans in Congress included a smaller cut, but advocates said that would still hurt families.

“Participation [in WIC] has grown pretty significantly in the past couple of years, including about a 15 percent increase in child participation, which is a really exciting step forward for the program, and we want to make sure that no one is turned away,” said Nell Menefee-Libey, senior public policy manager at the National WIC Association. “We are concerned that the recently proposed House Agriculture Appropriations bill does not provide sufficient funding to meet that standard, such that every person who seeks WIC services and is eligible will receive them.” Congress has until October 1 to finalize appropriations. (Link to this post.)

According to a request for proposals posted last week, the campaign will be the first in a series launched by the agency, with others touching on physical fitness and “spiritual growth.” Research shows diets higher in ultra-processed foods are linked to higher risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases, and that connection will be the focus of the first campaign. More than 36 million Americans—about 11 percent of the population—have type 2 diabetes, and rates among children and teens have been rising.

“The campaign’s creative content will turn heads, create viral moments on social media, and—above all else—inspire Americans to take back their health through eating real food,” the request reads. Contractors have until June 26 to submit their proposals for consideration. The request does not include what the winning contract would earn, but NBC News reported the campaign is expected to cost upwards of $20 million.

In 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama launched a national campaign called Let’s Move, which emphasized healthy eating and physical activity as a solution to combat rising rates of childhood obesity and chronic disease.

In May, Kennedy said the health harms caused by processed foods would become a “central focus” of the agencies under his purview, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The MAHA Commission Report, which was found to cite nonexistent research studies and misrepresent the results of others, also put ultra-processed foods front and center.

The request is likely to draw criticism for its emphasis on “how Americans can take personal responsibility for their health” at a time when the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are attempting to cut funds for healthcare and food assistance for low-income Americans. The administration has also slashed funds for research and bringing whole, healthy foods from local farms into schools and food banks. In April, the country’s leading ultra-processed foods researcher left NIH after he said HHS wanted him to tweak messaging to fit Kennedy’s preconceived narrative on processed foods.

The request for proposals also tells contractors the campaign should “popularize technology like wearables as cool, modern tools for measuring diet impact and taking control of your own health.” That directive is likely to draw scrutiny, given MAHA star Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is the co-founder of Levels Health, a company that sells wearable glucose monitors (along with an associated subscription). (Link to this post.)

“This bill takes a commonsense approach to reforming SNAP—cutting waste, increasing state accountability, and helping recipients transition to self-sufficiency through work and training. It’s about being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while giving folks the tools to succeed,” Chairman John Boozman (R-Arkansas) said in a statement.

The Senate’s plan keeps many of the House’s changes to SNAP, including eliminating the popular SNAP-Ed program that provides nutrition education to low-income families, barring refugees and asylum seekers from accessing benefits, and requiring that future changes to the Thrifty Food Plan be cost-neutral.

However, there are other slight differences in the Senate bill. Compared to the House version, the age limit for the strictest work requirements is 64 rather than 65; parents will be required to work if their children are 10 or older, rather than 7 or older; and states would need to pay for 15 percent of the program’s costs, rather than the 25 percent proposed by the House.

Policy analysts at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) predicted those costs are still too high for many states to take on and would likely result in states having to cut food assistance.

“Despite differences around the edges, the Senate proposal mirrors the misguided priorities and harmful impacts of its House counterpart: millions of people would lose some or all of the food assistance they need to afford groceries, all to help to pay for trillions in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy,” CBPP Vice President of Food Assistance Ty Jones Cox said in a statement.

In a document released with the text of the bill, Senate Republicans called the claim that millions would lose food assistance “false,” but did not provide clear evidence to the contrary.

The Senate’s bill also increases spending on farm bill programs including commodity payments, crop insurance, and conservation programs. Like the House bill, it would incorporate additional money from the Inflation Reduction Act into conservation funding, but strip the funding of its original designation for climate-smart practices.

The future of the bill remains uncertain. The Senate is aiming to get all of the components together and vote before the July 4 holiday. The changes are significant enough that it will then have to be passed again by the House before President Trump can sign it into law. The House passed their version by the narrowest of margins, and there are several other provisions that many Republicans still disagree on. (Link to this post.)

June 16, 2025 Update:  On Thursday, June 12, an ICE official directed agents to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” Soon after, United Farm Workers put out a statement questioning whether the guidance would be followed.

June 11, 2025 – As protests against the Trump administration’s arrests of immigrants continue in Los Angeles and spread to other cities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol officers are pressing into produce fields in California, meatpacking plants in the Midwest, and restaurants in the South.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that agents were sweeping across Tulare, Ventura, and Fresno counties in California, among other sites, targeting workers picking blueberries and packing produce. The state provides a third of the vegetables and more than half of the nuts and fruits sold in the U.S; at least half of the 255,000 workers who make that possible are undocumented. In Nebraska, ICE agents raided a meatpacking facility called Glenn Valley Foods and took away 70 workers. In Texas, agents took workers from two restaurants.

The actions and other recent reports suggest immigration enforcement at workplaces is likely to increase as the agencies attempt to meet new White House goals of 3,000 arrests per day. While the Trump administration’s deportation numbers are still lower than numbers under President Biden, many of the Biden-era deportations were happening at the border as high numbers of individuals attempted to enter the country.

Trump’s crackdown has resulted in historically low border crossings, so hitting those numbers means pursuing immigrants already living and working in the U.S. And while the administration has promoted its arrests of immigrants with criminal records, an ICE agent told The New York Times today that all undocumented immigrants are being treated “as criminals based on their manner of entry.”

The food system’s many sectors—especially farms, food processing plants, restaurants, and food delivery companies—rely on the labor of immigrants, a significant number of whom don’t have legal authorization to work in the U.S.

During a House Agriculture Committee hearing today, both Republicans and Democrats brought up the issue with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. “Recent enforcement actions have begun to impact and even target agricultural operations, and yet there’s still a lack of clarity for producers,” said Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania).

Rollins told lawmakers that she discussed the issue with President Trump yesterday and that she is working with the Secretaries of Labor and Homeland Security to address immigration enforcement’s impact on farms.

“This was one of the issues that we spoke about,” she said. “This president’s commitment to ensuring that all laws are followed remains paramount, but also combining that with understanding the significant challenges to our ag producers in finding the labor that is necessary.” Lawmakers did not bring up the impacts of enforcement on immigrant families working in the food system.

As enforcement ramps up, we’ll be updating this list with federal immigration actions that impact farms, other sectors of the food system, and the workers themselves:

January 7, 2025  – Bakersfield, California – Citrus fieldworkers detained

March 25, 2025 – Sedro-Wooley, Washington – Farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino arrested

April 21, 2025 – Berkshire, Vermont –  Eight workers detained at a dairy farm

May 2, 2025 – Albion, New York – 14 farmworkers affiliated with the United Farm Workers arrested

May 7, 2025 – Washington, D.C. –  ICE agents visit nine restaurants

May 31, 2025 – San Diego, California – Federal agents detain several workers at an Italian restaurant

June 4, 2025 – Lovington, New Mexico – 11 workers detained after raid of Outlook Dairy Farms

June 10, 2025 – Omaha, Nebraska – Seventy workers detained after raid of Glenn Valley Foods

June 10, 2025 – Southern California – Immigration agents sweep farms in three California counties

June 10, 2025- Harlingen, Texas – Workers arrested at two restaurants

June 10, 2025 – Rio Grande Valley, Texas – Mexican restaurant owner and several employees detained

June 12, 2025 – Newberg, Oregon – Owner of vineyard service company arrested

June 12, 2025 – East Los Angeles – Two taqueros and four customers detained at Jason’s Tacos

June 15, 2025 – Boston, Massachusetts – Manager of award-winning West African restaurant detained

June 16, 2025 – Long Island, New York – Bagel shop manager detained

June 17, 2025 – Pico Rivera, California – ICE agents conduct raids at several sites, including a grocery store

June 23, 2025 – Ladera Heights, California – Street food vendor taken into custody

June 25, 2025 – Marshall Township, Pennsylvania – 14 people arrested in raid of Mexican restaurant

June 26, 2025 – Bangor, Maine – Three people arrested in raid of Japanese restaurant

July 2, 2025 – San Antonio, Texas – Seven people arrested in raid at seafood retailer

July 6, 2025 – Los Angeles, California – At least two people detained in street vendor raids

July 8, 2025 – Edison, New Jersey – 20 workers arrested in raid on a wine and spirits warehouse

July 10, 2025 – Carpinteria and Camarillo, California – More than 360 workers detained in raids of two cannabis farm locations

July 10, 2025 – Mission, Texas – 18 workers arrested at popular taco restaurant

July 16, 2025 – West Norriton, Pennsylvania – ICE arrests 14 workers at West Norriton grocery store

June 21, 2025 – Ontario, California – U.S. citizen detained by ICE at a Stater Bros. Markets store

Want to send us a tip about immigration enforcement in your community? Email tracker@civileats.com or securely contact Lisa Held on Signal at @lisaelaineh.47. (Link to this post.)

In March, the agency introduced the first $10 billion program for commodity growers of corn, soybeans, and other crops and has already distributed close to $8 billion to those farmers. A $1 billion bucket of funding for livestock producers followed in May.

A group of Congressional Democrats is now focused on the USDA’s handling of a $220 million fund intended for small and mid-sized diversified farms in states with smaller agricultural footprints. These lawmakers say the way the USDA is structuring the Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant program violates Congressional intent.

“This block grant was created specifically to bridge the gap between traditional disaster relief programs and uncovered losses experienced by small farmers who cannot access traditional crop insurance,” the 28 members of Congress wrote in a statement released this week. “USDA is demanding states either accept traditional disaster relief, which has failed most of our small farmers for years, or gamble on an unknown amount of repayment with little to no guidance from USDA. Once again, this choice would leave so many small farms to fend for themselves after a disaster.”

The lawmakers argue that the way the agency set up the program will hurt farmers in their states because the agency told the states that if they choose to cover farmers’ crop losses with the Block Grant money, farmers in those states will then not be eligible to apply for the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP), a different program with significantly more funding. Billy Hackett, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the text of the legislation clearly presents the Block Grant program as separate funding that is in addition to the SDRP, so making states choose one or the other does not seem to be in line with the law.

Lawmakers and state representatives also said some states were presented with the options and given only about a week to decide. “Instead of following the law, [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins is forcing states to make a rushed decision, without all the necessary information or parameters, that pits one essential relief program against another with no regard for how it impacts our farmers,” Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), who spearheaded getting the Block Grant funding into the legislation, said in a statement.

Having to decide quickly is particularly challenging, because the details of how the SDRP will be implemented are not yet available, Hackett said. “USDA has given no guidance about what that option will look like.”

In the past, however, Hackett said the USDA has given out money through SDRP primarily by automatically enrolling farmers who already receive commodity or crop insurance payments. By design, that means larger, commodity farms have gotten the bulk of the money. Under President Joe Biden, the USDA added an option that calculated losses based solely on farm revenue records, which helped give small, diversified farms access to the money, he said, but the approach has gotten a lot of pushback, primarily from Republicans. So, it’s unclear which path the current USDA will take.

In response to questions from Civil Eats, a USDA spokesperson noted that they had extended the Block Grant deadline for one state, Connecticut, that objected to the tight turnaround. The spokesperson then referred Civil Eats to an agency statement stating that Rollins has been working to deliver disaster aid to farmers “quickly and responsibly” and that the agency is offering flexible options and “clear guidance to avoid duplicating existing federal programs.”

“Congressional Democrats are playing politics with disaster aid, withholding critical funding from farmers to manufacture controversy and blame the Trump Administration—when in reality, they’re pushing to misuse taxpayer dollars,” USDA director of communications Seth W. Christensen said in the statement. (Link to this post.)

Under President Joe Biden, the USDA finalized three rules and proposed a fourth related to the Packers and Stockyards Act, a law that has been on the books for more than a century but has lacked teeth. Farmers and ranchers have fought for decades to strengthen the protections, especially as meatpacking companies have become bigger and more powerful, wielding more influence over the producers who raise the animals and who take on significant costs to do so.

The new rules were a landmark step forward in ensuring fairness in contracts and protecting farmers and ranchers from exploitation by meat companies; their trade groups are already suing to overturn one of the rules. This new bill represents another threat.

Appropriations is solely about allocating funding, so the lawmakers inserted language that prohibits any funds from being used to write, publish, finalize, implement, or enforce the four rules, essentially killing them. The only thing the bill would allow funds to be used for is to “withdraw or rescind” the rules.

Members of the full Appropriations Committee are expected to vote on the bill this week. If it passes, it would then have to be approved by the full House of Representatives and move to the Senate. The bill also includes a variety of significant spending cuts to align with the Trump administration’s budget requests, and its chances for success within a closely divided Congress are far from certain. (This appropriations process is completely separate from the ongoing negotiations over the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.)

In the meantime, farm groups are mobilizing to oppose the provisions. This afternoon, the influential National Farmers Union (NFU) sent out an action alert urging members to “act now to defeat a bill that threatens family farmers and ranchers everywhere,” by contacting their representatives in Congress. “These rules protect family farmers and ranchers from anticompetitive and abusive practices in the highly consolidated meat and poultry industries,” the NFU wrote.

In a bill summary released by committee, Republicans characterized the changes as “reining in harmful regulations proposed during the Biden administration that dictate how poultry and livestock producers raise and market their animals.” (Link to this post.)

While the forum was not an official hearing because of its partisan nature, more than a dozen lawmakers showed up to participate, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who said the caucus would use “every tool in our toolbox” to fight the cuts.

“It doesn’t matter what party someone may be affiliated with. All of our constituents are going to be hurt,” Luján said at the start. “We’re going to hear why every community across the country is going to feel this, and especially rural parts of America. What I hope this forum will illustrate is that this significant cut . . . is not just an abstract number printed on a piece of paper in Washington, D.C.”

Republican lawmakers have said the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed in the bill are not cuts because they don’t directly reduce benefit amounts. Instead, they claim they’re saving money by shifting costs to states and tightening various requirements within the program. Klobuchar called that messaging a “sleight of hand,” calling attention to the fact that shifting costs to states would likely force many of those states to cut benefits due to budget constraints.

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a Northwestern University economist who studies federal nutrition programs, testified that shifting costs to states could also make future recessions much worse for SNAP participants, farmers, grocers, and the broader American public.

She said SNAP “serves as an automatic stabilizer in difficult economic times,” explaining that as more people need benefits, that money circulates back into the economy almost immediately. “By design, SNAP can very quickly adapt when we have an economic downturn.” States, however, generally face budget crises during recessions, she said, and wouldn’t be able to deal with ups and downs in the same way.

Senators also attacked Republicans’ plans to expand work requirements, which they argued would cause hard-working people to lose benefits due to red tape. For example, witness Jade Johnson, a SNAP participant, said that she works two jobs while studying to become a dialysis technician and taking care of her daughter as a single mom. One of her jobs, as a home health aid, can involve unpredictable hours. So if she lost hours one month, that might cause her to lose benefits even though she may get more hours the next, she said.

Katy Anderson, a vice president at Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico, testifies in front of the Senate about proposed cuts to SNAP. (Photo courtesy of the office of Senator Luján)

Witness Barbara Guinn, the New York Commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, said certain groups, including refugees, will lose access to benefits because of new immigration restrictions. Katy Anderson, a vice president at the Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico, said lines are getting longer at her food bank and others across the country and that the charitable food aid system cannot meet current needs—and that such large cuts to SNAP would leave many more people without food.

Several lawmakers said that the bill represents Republicans paying for tax breaks for billionaires by eliminating food assistance that would go to children, elderly people, and veterans. “That is the height of cruelty,” said Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). “It is a violation of our values. It is a moral obscenity.”

The bill is currently being negotiated in the Senate, where it’s likely significant changes will be made.It will then have to go back to the House for another vote before President Trump can sign it into law. (Link to this post.)

On May 12, the agency rescinded regulations on the books since the 1990s that required farmers to record basic details about their use of pesticides classified as “restricted use.” Farmers were required to record the chemical’s name, date of use, volume, location, and type of crop treated, and to keep the records for two years.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies pesticides as “restricted use” (RUPs) when they are known to cause serious health and environmental harms when used without following specific precautions outlined on the label. The EPA’s current list of RUPs is 45 pages long and includes products containing chemicals such as paraquat, atrazine, and chlorpyrifos, which are linked to health harms like Parkinson’s disease and birth defects.

Although the USDA required farmers to record the data, neither the USDA nor the EPA collected it from farmers, and anti-pesticide groups and researchers have long pressed for better records that could be used to assess health and environmental impacts from the chemicals. The records were low-hanging fruit; although the agency wasn’t collecting the data, it was theoretically available. Now, that may no longer be true.

“It matters in that this was one of the legs to better understanding potential adverse impacts of pesticides,” said Jay Feldman, the executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit that advocates against the use of harmful pesticides. In his mind, while the regulations were incredibly weak to begin with, eliminating them entirely is a step in the wrong direction. Instead, he said, “I would like to see it improved and better implemented.”

In the notice that it was eliminating the regulations, USDA officials wrote that “upon reviewing these regulations, USDA has determined that they should be rescinded due to their obsolescence.” The agency hadn’t been collecting the records since 2012 due to funding constraints, they wrote. They added that 23 states have their own recordkeeping regulations, and some pesticide applicators keep records to comply with a different rule, the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS). However, that leaves 27 states without state-level regulations, and the WPS requirements are different and don’t apply to all farms.

In rescinding the regulations, the USDA did not follow the typical rulemaking process of proposing a change, taking public comment, and then finalizing it.

In the notice, the agency officials said the regulations are “not a priority” and that “to the extent there is any uncertainty about the costs and benefits [of the regulations], it is the policy of USDA to err on the side of deregulation.”

“That says it all,” Feldman said. “Federal agencies should be erring on the side of protecting public health and the environment, not erring to protect a political motive to deregulate.”

Coming on the heels of the Make America Healthy Again report, which calls some attention to how exposure to chemicals may be harming children, he said it’s yet another example of how the Trump administration’s actions fly in the face of its messaging. “MAHA comes along and is pointing to all of those problems,” he said. “One could argue quite easily that deregulation will make all of that worse.”

After initially granting an interview request to Civil Eats, the USDA’s press office rescinded the offer and was unable to send emailed answers to the questions provided by press time. (Link to this post.)

The details were outlined in budget proposals released by each agency. They are not final: Congress still has to appropriate the funds. Also, these budgets are separate from the budget reconciliation bill currently being considered by the Senate; however, the documents further reveal the scale of the Trump administration’s plans to cut back on farm-conservation work, food and farm research, and enforcement of environmental laws.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget would cut spending by more than half, from $9.1 billion to $4.2 billion. (Over the past decade, the lowest it ever reached was $8.1 billion.) Spending cuts that could impact the food system include nearly $2 billion from a pair of programs that send money to states to help communities clean up contaminated drinking water and prevent runoff into local waterways; some of that pollution comes from agriculture and food processing. In the document, the EPA says it is “encouraging states to take responsibility of funding their own water infrastructure projects.”

The agency also proposes completely eliminating $1.4 billion in grant programs that fund projects on topics including pesticides and pollution prevention, and it cuts $61 million from money used to enforce environmental laws. In a press release, the Environmental Protection Network, an advocacy organization, said that the 49 percent cut to enforcement would undermine “the agency’s ability to uphold the nation’s environmental laws and protect public health.”

At the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed cutting $17 billion in research funding at the National Institutes of Health, $400 million from the Food and Drug Administration, and $550 million from the Centers for Disease Control. In addition to eliminating thousands of jobs, the budget proposal says the agency is “terminating, de-scoping or non-renewing over 5,000 contracts, resulting in significant savings.” It proposes allocating $500 million to a new “MAHA Initiative,” which will now also house programs dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease and childhood lead poisoning prevention that were formerly run by the CDC.

Given the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) broad reach, its proposed cuts would likely have the biggest immediate impact on farmers and eaters. The agency is proposing a $6.7 billion cut in discretionary spending across the board, including a whopping $784 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), where funds would drop from $896 million to $112 million. The savings mainly come from eliminating discretionary funds for conservation technical assistance, a term for USDA employees who help farmers do things like plant cover crops and install fencing. In the document, the agency says the NRCS will fund technical assistance through other sources and operate “with efficiencies that reflect greater reliance on state and local conservation districts.”

The USDA’s budget also zeros out future funding for the popular McGovern-Dole international food aid program which buys food from American farms for school meals in low-income countries. It cuts $600 million in research funding for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and proposes rolling back a pandemic-era change to the Supplemental Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) that allowed families to buy more fruits and vegetables.

In an emailed statement, National WIC Association president Georgia Machell said the change would lead to a drop in average monthly benefits from $54 to $13 for breastfeeding mothers and $27 to $10 for young children. “Reducing the [benefit] significantly hinders access to fruits and vegetables for low-income mothers and young children at nutritional risk, the very populations this program was designed to protect,” she said. (Link to this post.)

Moderna announced yesterday that it had achieved promising results in the first stage of its trials and was expecting to advance to “late-stage development” of the vaccines, when the HHS notified the drug company that the funding had been canceled.

The current outbreak of avian influenza began in early 2022 and has since affected more than 1,700 flocks—or a total of 173 million chickens and turkeys—in all 50 states. It began circulating in dairy cattle in 2024 and has infected more than 1,000 herds in 17 states. Seventy human cases have occurred so far, most of them in farmworkers in contact with livestock. Most of those have involved mild symptoms, with one death in an individual who had underlying health issues.

Recently, there have been some signs that the outbreak is abating. In California, where the largest number of human cases were reported, health officials announced they believe the worst is over. Most important, to date there is no evidence of the virus passing between humans, which would need to happen to spark a pandemic. However, experts say the virus is constantly mutating and it could happen at any time, with opinions varying on how likely that is.

The government already has three licensed, stockpiled vaccines for bird flu, but they don’t match current strains of the virus. That’s why the HHS, under President Biden, awarded Moderna more than $600 million to specifically “accelerate development of an H5N1 mRNA influenza vaccine that is well matched to strains currently circulating in cows and birds.”

But current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is skeptical of mRNA technology, used to develop most COVID-19 vaccines. In an email to Civil Eats, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said the agency’s decision reflects broader concerns about the use of mRNA platforms and referred to “mounting evidence” of side effects associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, such as heart issues in young men.

“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” he said in an emailed statement. “This is not simply about efficacy—it’s about safety, integrity, and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public.”

While the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out quickly, researchers had been developing mRNA technology for vaccines for about 20 years prior. The vaccines are associated with a significant increase in risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), especially in young men, but it’s such a rare condition that the actual occurrence is still extremely rare. Research also shows COVID-19 itself is more likely to cause the same condition.

In the meantime, Moderna said it “will explore alternatives for late-stage development and manufacturing” of the vaccines.

At the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in February, Secretary Brooke Rollins released a five-point strategy to address bird flu on farms, much of which was focused on bringing down egg prices and compensating farmers for dead birds. In March, she said more than 130 facilities had completed “biosecurity assessments” through the USDA and that funding was being made available to develop a chicken vaccine. However, in other statements, she walked back language on vaccinating livestock, which is a controversial trade practice. (Link to this post.)

The pilot project, called Velella Epsilon, has been stalled for about six years; its approval follows an executive order signed by President Trump in April ordering the deregulation of aquaculture and the opening of some protected waters to commercial fishing.

It’s particularly significant because Velella Epsilon, which is expected to produce 20,000 red drum annually about 40 miles off the coast of Sarasota, Florida, has been at the center of a larger debate over farming the oceans for years.

On one side, environmental groups and coastal fishermen see any large-scale ocean farming of finfish as too risky, given past ecological disasters and the potential impacts on wild fisheries. On the other side, experts and advocates say we should find ways to farm more fish for climate benefits, to combat overfishing of wild species, and to reduce dependence on seafood imports.

Supporters of Velella Epsilon say it represents a new kind of open-ocean system that is designed specifically to eliminate the negative impacts of the offshore aquaculture operations of the past. This group has the support of powerful seafood corporations, grocers, restaurant chains, and their lobbyists.

Now, the approval is happening in the context of larger changes to how the federal government regulates the oceans as a source of food. In addition to Trump’s executive order, deep cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are likely to impact the agency’s ongoing efforts to expand and regulate offshore aquaculture.

Earlier this year, the EPA also announced it would take a “nonregulatory” approach to managing water and habitat quality and the wild snapper, shrimp, and other fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump recently renamed the Gulf of America. (Link to this post.)

May 27, 2025 – During an appearance in front of a Senate committee last week, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary said the agency is now using artificial intelligence (AI) to help oversee the safety of the nation’s food supply.

“We’re using AI to identify where we should be concentrating our food inspections,” he said, “and it turns out the AI can sometimes figure out pattern recognition faster than we can as human beings.”

The agency has been working on a pilot program focused on imported seafood for several years, but a bigger shift is now taking place, with an “aggressive agency-wide AI-rollout” announced earlier this month that will impact various departments, including scientific reviews of new drugs.

According to an FDA spokesperson, “all FDA centers will be operating on a secure, unified generative AI platform integrated with the agency’s internal data systems” by June 30.

It’s just one example of the Trump administration’s larger embrace of AI that has implications for the country’s food system. Trump signed an executive order to boost AI in January, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been using his AI program, Grok, to analyze federal data. Last week’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report included a recommendation to use AI to analyze nutrition data “for early detection of harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.”

But the news that the FDA will expand its use of AI within its food-safety procedures comes at a moment of heightened concerns about the agency’s oversight of the food supply. In February, the FDA failed to share the findings of its investigation into an E.coli outbreak that sickened nearly 90 people last fall with the public, according to the Washington Post.

Makary has maintained that no “scientists” have been cut amid the agency’s downsizing, and criticized the Post for using a “misleading headline,” but other reporting has found individuals working on food safety have been fired (and sometimes reinstated). Makary also told the Senate last week that the FDA reduced its communications staff from 380 to 160 positions. “That covers a lot of the communication work,” he said.

At the USDA, which oversees meat and poultry processing, the agency threw out a new rule experts said would have changed the game for reducing salmonella in chicken and eliminated two food-safety advisory committees. However, just today, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a $14.5 million increase in funding for states’ oversight of meat and poultry inspections.

Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the food safety watchdog organization the Center for Food Safety, told Civil Eats he’s not surprised the FDA wants to use AI and that he could see the technology being especially useful for tasks like sequencing pathogens. For example, “faster sequencing of salmonella to learn which mutations promote more lethal strains would be helpful,” he said.

But while Makary emphasized in his testimony that “we also have a human being revising the information” and the FDA spokesperson said “Commissioner Makary has emphasized AI is a tool to support—not replace—human expertise,” Hanson and others still expressed concerns about staffing and how AI would fit into an agency undergoing steep cuts.

“As long as AI is used as a tool, it has uses,” Hanson said. “It would be unwise for FDA to try to use it as an excuse to lay off more food inspectors. FDA is woefully understaffed. AI won’t fix that problem.” (Link to this story.)

May 22, 2025 – In its first report, released today, the Trump Administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission concludes that “the greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.”

The report was the first released by the MAHA Commission, which President Trump created through an executive order in February. The order directed members to study rising rates of childhood chronic disease and advise the president on how to turn the tide. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at the helm, and the Commission also includes Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, and several other cabinet members.

While a subsequent report due in August will lay out a plan to address childhood chronic disease, this initial edition focuses on establishing a “shared understanding of the magnitude of the crisis and what’s likely driving it.” It identifies four likely causes that contribute to a wide range of issues including obesity, diabetes, allergies, asthma, and depression: poor diets, cumulative chemical exposures, a lack of physical activity, and “overmedicalization.”

Poor diet, with a specific focus on ultra-processed foods (UPFs), is front and center. “The excessive consumption of UPFs has led to a depletion of essential micronutrients and dietary fiber, while increasing the consumption of sugars and carbohydrates, which negatively affects overall health,” it reads. It also cites the consolidation of the food system and the influence of food corporations contributing to the rise of ultra-processed foods.

The report cites the cumulative load of chemicals children are exposed to in the environment as the second likely contributor to chronic diseases and cites the pesticides chlorpyrifos, atrazine, and glyphosate in one chart among several classes of chemicals. But on the overall risks of pesticides, it says only that “human studies are limited” and most food residues are within safety standards. On the controversial herbicide glyphosate, it says some studies “have noted a range of possible health effects,” but that a review “did not establish a direct link between use according to label directions and adverse health outcomes.”

“American farmers rely on these products, and actions that further regulate or restrict crop protection tools beyond risk-based and scientific processes set forth by Congress must involve thoughtful consideration of what is necessary for adequate protection, alternatives, and cost of production,” the report reads. Some farm groups still say it went too far.

The pesticides section of the report is likely to draw continued controversy. Many of Kennedy’s most vocal MAHA supporters have long pushed for greater attention to health risks posed by pesticides, especially glyphosate. And as the report release drew near, farm groups and Republicans in Congress pushed hard to keep language focused on pesticide risks out of the report.

Plans to address the issues identified in the report will follow. But so far, many of the administration’s actions appear to fly in the face of the Commission’s prescription.

Far from cracking down on chemicals in the environment, the EPA is pursuing a deregulatory agenda. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), programs that supported farmers growing healthy, whole foods—especially for schoolchildren—have been defunded. And while the report cites researcher Kevin Hall’s studies to support its claims around ultra-processed foods causing excess calorie intake, Hall left the National Institutes of Health in April because he said it no longer seemed possible to pursue “unbiased science.”  The FDA has taken several actions on food additives, such as working with companies to voluntarily remove artificial dyes. The report says the administration will pursue “pro-growth policies and innovations” to address the crisis. (Link to this post.)

“This decision isn’t just a policy shift—it’s a life-altering blow to hundreds of thousands of children who rely on these meals to stay healthy, stay in school and stay hopeful about their future,” CRS CEO Sean Callahan said in a statement. “It is un-American to stand by and not provide assistance while hunger robs children of their chance to learn and thrive.”

The program provides U.S. agricultural commodities and technical expertise to help education, childhood development, and food security in lesser developed countries. Along with Catholic Relief Services, McGovern-Dole projects are undertaken by nonprofit organizations, cooperatives, the United Nations World Food Programme, and others, according to the USDA.

“By providing school meals, teacher training and related support, McGovern-Dole projects help boost school enrollment and academic performance,” the agency says. “At the same time, the program also focuses on improving children’s health and learning capacity before they enter school by offering nutrition programs for pregnant and nursing women, infants and preschoolers.”

The canceled grants will mean less demand for U.S. farmer commodities, even as other trade policies are pinching growers. And it will contribute to shrinking the United States’ soft-power influence around the world. The Trump administration dismantled USAID, a key agency in this endeavor, in March.

The White House Budget for 2026 proposes ending the McGovern-Dole program, not just canceling its contracts, though in the past Congress has supported the program.

At a Senate Appropriations hearing in May, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was questioned about the proposed elimination of the program—which purchased about $37 million of U.S-grown commodities including rice, beans, and corn to feed children overseas in 2023.

“Can you talk about what you’re saying to farmers to address this and how we’re replacing that food that is so desperately needed by people around the world?” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) asked.

Rollins said that the $37 million paid to farmers is too small of a portion of the total $240 million in funding and that while the government works to “reorganize” around efficiency, programs like McGovern-Dole may be cut. “At the end of the day,” she said, “are they serving the American taxpayer, who is funding them?” (Link to this story.)

The 10-point agenda is light on details but includes several proposed actions on deregulation, labor, and market access.

It says the USDA will “streamline delivery and increase program efficiencies” related to application processes, credit, and farmland access. “Small family farmers often have little to no support staff to fill out USDA required paperwork to participate in programs,” it reads, before proposing simplified, digitized forms. In addition to recent layoffs, about 16,000 employees have accepted resignation offers and more staff cuts are expected.

The proposals also include disincentivizing federal funding for solar energy on farms, increasing production of fossil fuels, revising the controversial Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule that regulates farm runoff, and pursuing “additional flexibility” for farmers to comply with other environmental regulations.

The plan also says the agency is reviewing farm size definitions to “ensure they adequately reflect modern-day realities,” suggesting the USDA is considering including larger operations in the small-farm category. And it calls on Congress to ensure farms and ranches “are protected from an increase in the death tax.” Republicans in Congress are currently trying to extend exemptions on estate taxes—which are often referred to as a “death tax”—that already exempt up to $28 million in inherited property.

On labor, a controversial and important issue amid an immigration crackdown that has direct implications for the farm workforce, the plan says, “we must take action to relieve this persistent issue, including H-2A and H-2B non-immigrant visa classification reform.”

Most significantly, in a section on increasing markets and infrastructure for small farms, the plan cites the agency’s reworking of the Biden-era Climate Smart Commodities program as an action it took to support small farms. “Under President Trump, USDA will ensure that all funded programs dedicated to farmers are actually received by farmers,” it reads. However, under Rollins, the USDA terminated many of the projects that were paying small farms directly for conservation work, including produce, livestock, and dairy farms in the Northeast, small commodity crop farmers in the South, and small grain farmers in the Midwest. Within other programs, many individual grant contracts canceled because the administration classified them as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion were also grants that supported small farms.

In addition, the section says the USDA will “prioritize local farmers in institutional and public food procurement policies,” specifically mentioning The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program, among others. Rollins withdrew $500 million in TEFAP funding and canceled $10 million allocated to the Patrick Leahy program earlier this year. That was after she canceled more than $1 billion in funding to programs that paid small farms to get fresh food into schools and food banks. (Link to this post.)

May 19, 2025 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has canceled grant funding to university research teams studying how “forever chemicals” contaminate soil and groundwater, including at least $3 million for two projects specifically looking at contamination on farms.

The chemicals, collectively called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), are linked to a variety of serious health risks. Over the past several years, they have increasingly been found in farm soils due to the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer, causing devastation for farmers. They are also now widely found in drinking water, in the foods Americans eat, and in pesticides, and experts say more research is needed to understand their impacts and find effective ways to eliminate contamination.

According to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) website, the EPA canceled a $1.6 million grant to Texas A&M University for researchers to analyze how plants take up and store the chemicals, and to develop monitoring tools for PFAS in fertilizer, soils, and irrigation water. It canceled another $1.6 million grant to Michigan State University to study how the chemicals accumulate in both crops and livestock. “The expected outcome is to improve the knowledge of the PFAS life cycle in a farm setting,” the researchers wrote in the MSU grant description. “Direct beneficiaries include farmers, agricultural advisors, human health and the environment.”

Additional canceled grants include a University of Florida study looking at how flooding might exacerbate PFAS contamination in water and soil and an Oregon State project to increase understanding of PFAS toxicity. EPA also cut funding to a study on common pesticides called neonicotinoids, which are linked to pollinator declines, in rural drinking water.

The grant cancellations, posted to DOGE’s website between May 6 and May 8, were in line with reporting The New York Times published last month that found the EPA was planning on cutting grants in the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program. Some cancellations were also linked to the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, where the agency is planning to cut staff by up to 75 percent.

President Trump’s recent budget proposed a 45 percent budget cut for that office, in addition to cutting overall EPA funding by more than half. “Such deep funding cuts would make executing the duties EPA is required to perform impossible,” said Michelle Roos, the Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit consisting of former EPA employees, in a statement.

Last week, the EPA also rolled back limits on PFAS in drinking water, eliminating the regulations for some of the chemicals and delaying the implementation of limits that will remain in place. (Link to this post.)

In an Instagram video unveiling the new banners, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote that “the People’s Department is being restored—leaner, stronger, and laser focused on its mission of putting farmers first.”

Lincoln signed legislation establishing the USDA, which he called the “people’s department,” in 1862. Over the years, Trump has repeatedly compared himself to Lincoln, more than once referencing how his first administration impacted Black Americans. During the 2024 campaign, at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, he said, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”

“One of the big areas of neglect has been linking specific food additives and food processes to the chronic disease epidemic. NIH has neglected that area of study. It is now the central focus of NIH . . . and FDA,” he said, listing ultra-processed foods, sugars, and “10,000 additives” that are in our food as areas of concern. The agencies, he said, are “looking at the impact so that we can put accurate labeling on, and when they’re really dangerous, we can revoke their authorizations.”

Kennedy made the comments in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions during the second of two contentious hearings on Wednesday to consider changes to HHS funding requested in President Trump’s latest budget proposal. But lawmakers didn’t address changes like the budget’s proposed $18 billion in research cuts at NIH and $500 million in new funding to “MAHA initiatives,” focusing instead on topics including measles, vaccines, and drug prices.

Democrats primarily railed against Kennedy’s downsizing of the agency by 20,000 employees. They also highlighted recent cuts to NIH research as well as health programs for coal miners and 9/11 first responders, which Kennedy has since reversed. But they rarely let him fully answer a question.

When he did respond, he repeatedly said HHS was simply going back to pre-COVID staffing levels. (The Biden administration significantly increased staff at HHS, but the current cuts take staffing back to a much lower level, one not seen since the George W. Bush administration.) He also said he couldn’t answer specific questions about layoffs or the department’s reorganization due to the lawsuit brought by 19 states challenging the legality of those actions, but said “there were no working scientists fired,” which contradicts previous reporting. (A top processed foods researcher also resigned, citing the fact that “unbiased science” became impossible at the agency.)

Kennedy’s comments on the refocusing of NIH and FDA priorities were significant, though, given those agencies’ typical mandates, but he exaggerated HHS’ moves so far. “Twenty years the Democrats have said, ‘We need to revise the GRAS standards.’ I’ve done it in 100 days,” he said. “We’re getting rid of nine petroleum-based, synthetic dyes in our food. Twenty years the Democrats have been saying we want to do this, and I’ve done that in 100 days.” Kennedy directed the FDA to look into changing the GRAS process, but no definitive action has been taken; Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) is working on a bill that could help the process along. On food dyes, Kennedy’s current plan depends on getting food companies to voluntarily remove them. (Link to this post.)

The decision could have health implications in many farming and rural communities, where the hazardous chemicals have contaminated farm soils and water systems due to the use of sewage-sludge fertilizers. Chemicals in the same family are also increasingly used in pesticides.

In an announcement Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it is stepping away from protections announced in April 2024 that established hazard limits on the amount of these chemicals, known collectively as PFAS, which accumulate in the human body.

PFAS, officially called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have wide-ranging health impacts on humans, according to the Centers For Disease Control. Exposure at certain levels can increase cholesterol, reduce birth weights, and cause preeclampsia and kidney and testicular cancer, among many other risks.

Drinking water contamination from these “forever chemicals,” so called because they do not break down easily, is widespread across the United States, according to research from the Environmental Working Group. EWG President Ken Cook called Wednesday’s announcement “a betrayal of public health at the highest level.”

The EPA says it will keep just two limits in place, on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), though it is extending a deadline for compliance. That means that water utilities now have until 2031 to reduce these chemicals in drinking water.

The EPA says it will not keep limits in place for four other chemicals: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.

The dangers of PFAS have received increasing public attention in recent years, and Biden’s EPA took several steps to begin to address them, including setting the first-ever limits in drinking water. During recent hearings, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has talked about how her mother, a Texas state legislator, is focused on the issue. “She was so stunned by what had happened to these farmers, specifically through PFAS contamination. It destroyed their lives,” Rollins told Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) last week. The USDA, she said, is committed to supporting research on addressing PFAS contamination. (Link to this post.)

May 15, 2025 Update – On Wednesday, House Ag Committee Republicans voted along party lines to advance their portion of the bill, with the $290 billion cut in SNAP spending intact. The entire House is now working on advancing the total bill package.

May 13, 2025 – Last night, House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) revealed a plan to dramatically cut federal spending on food aid while increasing aid to commodity farmers. The provisions—which lawmakers are currently working on as part of the budget reconciliation process—would cut $290 billion in spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and increase subsidies for commodity farms by about $60 billion.

“This portion of the One Big, Beautiful Bill restores the [SNAP] program’s original intent, offering a temporary helping hand while encouraging work, cracking down on loopholes exploited by states, and protecting taxpayer dollars while supporting the hardworking men and women of American agriculture,” Thompson said in a statement.

On the SNAP side, the bill text would require any future changes to the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much money participants receive each month, to be cost-neutral. (For example, benefit amounts would not be allowed to increase if the mix of foods in the plan was updated based on changing dietary guidelines.) The bill would also increase the number of people who are subject to certain work requirements in several ways. It would make it harder for states to qualify for waivers, and change requirements that currently apply to all SNAP recipients 15 to 60 years old to apply to participants between 17 and 65. And the bill would increase the number of people who qualify as “Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” who are subject to stricter requirements, extending their qualifying age from 54 to 64—and by including adults with dependents who are over seven.

However, the most significant change would be increasing states’ share of the program’s administrative costs from 50 to 75 percent and requiring states to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, which they have never done before. All states would have to contribute 5 percent of the cost of benefits beginning in 2028. States with higher rates of payment errors, which can be overpayments or underpayments based on administrative mistakes, would contribute more, with the top tier contributing as much as 25 percent.

Experts say those changes would likely force states to cut benefits. “The language is unclear, but it could end SNAP entirely in some parts of the country if states decide the new state funding requirements are impossible for them to meet,” said Ty Jones Cox, the vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Anti-hunger groups said the plan would increase hunger.

On the farm side, the bill text inserts some of the Republican leadership’s farm bill priorities. It would increase the prices paid to commodity growers between 10 and 20 percent, make additional acres eligible for commodity subsidy payments, eliminate payment limits so wealthier farms can access payments, and expand crop insurance. It also appears to combine Inflation Reduction Act funds allocated for conservation with general conservation program funding, meaning that more money would flow to conservation program funding, but it would remove any climate-related focus for the programs.

Democrats on the committee have said cutting SNAP and adding farm bill programs to the tax bill would likely kill the possibility of passing a farm bill later this year.

“The budget reconciliation bill offers a simple deal—pass up a full, five-year farm bill in exchange for dramatically increased farm subsidies funded by hundreds of billions in cuts that will deepen hunger and threaten farmer livelihoods,” said Mike Lavender, the policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, in a statement.

However, it is still very early in the budget reconciliation process. The House Ag Committee will meet tonight to offer amendments and work on the text. Then it will need to be combined with text from other committees, where many big questions are still being worked out on cuts to other programs like Medicaid. If the House gets a final bill together within the next couple of weeks, it will then go to the Senate, where further changes will be made. (Link to this post.)

In a bipartisan effort, Representatives Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) and Zoe Lofgren (D-California) last week reintroduced the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill that would provide pathways for non-citizens to legally work on farms while reforming the H-2A visa program.

“Due to the diminishing supply of U.S. workers willing to perform migrant farm labor, our nation’s farmers are increasingly dependent on foreign workers to meet labor demands,” Lofgren’s office stated in a summary of the bill. “Without foreign workers, many U.S. farms will go out of business, causing a ripple effect in our economy and increasing our reliance on imported food.”

Among other initiatives, the bill provides a pathway for agriculture workers to attain legal status through continued agricultural work for four to eight years. It also mandates the use of E-verify on farms and seeks to streamline the H-2A temporary visa program for agricultural workers, providing three-year visas. And the law would temporarily freeze and then cap wage increases. H-2A wages are contentious: They are too high for some farms to afford, and at the same time, the program is rife with abuse because employees are tied to their employers for legal status and basic needs.

Due mostly to Republican opposition, previous attempts at similar legislation—which represents compromises between farmworker advocates and industry—came incredibly close to passing but ultimately failed. Farmworker groups are also split on the legislation, with some supporting and others opposing. Now, though, farms are facing the prospect of fewer workers amid an immigration crackdown that has snared farmworkers and decreased border crossings, giving them more impetus to strengthen legal pathways and other reforms.

President Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have both signaled they are in favor of finding ways to keep immigrant labor in farms, despite broader attempts to expel undocumented workers. (Link to this post.)

FDA and NIH are sub-agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Their joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program will play a key role in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) plan to focus on preventing chronic disease, according to a news release.

“Nutrition has always been a priority at NIH. By teaming up with the FDA, we’re taking a major step toward answering big questions about how food affects health—and turning that science into smarter, more effective policy,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the release.

The news comes less than a month after leading ultra-processed foods researcher Kevin Hall left his position at NIH, citing an inability to pursue “unbiased science” under the new leadership. Hall was actively working on studies that experts across the field considered to be the most groundbreaking, comprehensive research to date on why highly engineered foods contribute to a range of health issues. He said freezes on purchasing and hiring also stymied his work.

In March, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of HHS that included cutting 3,500 additional jobs at FDA and 1,200 at NIH. And just two weeks ago, 250 employees at NIH were let go. NIH has also terminated close to $2 billion in research funding since January. President Trump’s latest budget proposal includes another $18 billion in research cuts at NIH; it allocates $500 million in new funding to “MAHA initiatives.”

The press office at HHS did not respond to questions from Civil Eats on whether NIH might hire a new researcher focused on ultra-processed foods to replace Hall, how many employees would be working on the new program, and whether they’d be sourced from other departments.

When Kennedy has been asked about staff cuts in the past, he has said HHS is scaling back excess employees hired during the Biden administration. Communications staff at both FDA and NIH have been swept up in the layoffs, and the agencies have been slow to respond to the media. (Link to this post.)

Means, a health entrepreneur who advocates for changing food choices and farm practices,  and her brother Calley Means have been fixtures of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement since last fall. As surgeon general, she’d join her brother at HHS, where he is a special advisor to Kennedy.

Unlike past surgeons general, Means has limited experience practicing medicine. She got her medical degree from Stanford University in 2014 and then dropped out of a residency program before finishing. She co-founded Levels, a health start-up that sells bracelets that continuously monitor blood sugar in service of healthier choices, in 2019. For comparison, the last surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, had cared for thousands of patients and trained medical students for nearly a decade at Brigham and Women’s Medical Center and Harvard Medical School prior to taking the surgeon general position.

Instead, Means says she was struck by the lack of attention to root causes of disease in modern medicine and set out on her own path to address those. “For most of us (literally 93 percent of adults!), our metabolism is not doing well because of our toxic, ultraprocessed food system and modern industrial environment,” she wrote in a recent newsletter. “This is the root cause of nearly every chronic health issue we’re facing today, and we need to get it back on track.”

Means has called transitioning to organic and regenerative agriculture practices “the number one thing we can do to improve health.” On a wishlist for the presidential administration she made last fall, more than half of the 15 items involve food or farming. First on the list is getting more “real food in schools.” She also lists restricting pesticide use, reforming farm bill subsidies away from corn, soy, and wheat, and breaking up meatpacking monopolies.

As surgeon general, those items would be outside her jurisdiction, but HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture  have already been collaborating on MAHA priorities like getting soda out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Many of Means’ ideas about nutrition are also outside of the mainstream scientific consensus: For example, she advises a diet free of grains and seed oils. On the medicine side, she is an outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry and in an extensive interview last year with right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson expressed a number of critiques of vaccine schedules, the birth control pill, and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.

Trump’s first choice for the surgeon general position, former Fox News contributor Jeanette Nesheiwat, withdrew from the nomination amid concerns about her medical credentials. More details about Means’ confirmation hearings are expected in the coming weeks. (Link to this post.)

“SNAP doesn’t just give away money, it powers our economy,” said Representative Nikki Budzinski (D-Illinois), who spoke along with Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) and Representatives Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) and Jahana Hayes (D-Connecticut).

After the lawmakers spoke, they invited others who rely on SNAP to share their stories. Yolanda Gordon, a U.S. Army veteran, and Meghan Hullinger, a single mother, both spoke about how SNAP benefits had helped them get through difficult times. Two farmers, Kat Becker from Wisconsin, and Carah Ronan from Montana, spoke about how SNAP dollars support their farms. “Farms and nutrition go hand-in-hand,” said Ronan, after detailing how the funds help her provide fresh local produce, eggs, and meat to her community. “Let’s keep it that way.”

The event was one of many that Democrats and anti-hunger advocates organized this week in advance of the Agriculture Committee’s meeting to lay out the details of what they plan to cut, scheduled for next week. While the Republicans who lead the committee are more moderate than others in the party and have resisted deeper cuts to SNAP, the far-right wing of the party appears to be winning the fight. Politico reported yesterday that the House is still expected to make $230 billion in cuts as a part of the party’s plan to fund tax cuts for higher-income Americans.

“There is nothing fiscally responsible about making more people hungry and more people suffer just to hand out billionaire tax cuts,” Brown said at the conference.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board characterized some of the Republicans’ plans to slash spending—like shifting costs to states and tightening rules around work requirements—as common-sense ways to “fix the dysfunctional federal food assistance program.” However, earlier in the week, at the Food Research and Action Center’s Anti-Hunger Food Policy Conference, a recurring message was that all of those changes would effectively mean fewer people have access to SNAP.

“No one is staying home for $6 a day,” said Itzul Gutierrez, the senior policy advocate for the California Association of Food Banks, responding to a common Republican talking point that more work requirements are necessary to prevent people from taking advantage of SNAP benefits, on one panel. Average benefits are about $6 per day. “That is all part of the effort to kick people off SNAP.”

On Tuesday, the food bank operators and anti-hunger advocates who came to D.C. from across the country rallied at the Capitol and then spent the day meeting with members of Congress to share that argument with legislators. (Link to this post.)

The hearing today in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s agriculture subcommittee was scheduled to question Rollins about the President’s budget, released Friday. (She will appear in front of the House’s version of the same committee tomorrow.) The budget includes deep cuts to USDA spending, but it will not be enacted as is, since it will need a simple majority vote to pass in Congress, and there is some level of bipartisan opposition to cuts of that magnitude. Still, the budget reflects the president’s desire to slash spending across most agencies, and Rollins has been prioritizing that task during her first 82 days on the job.

Democrats grilled her on how cuts and freezes are impacting farmers and hungry families, while Republicans repeatedly praised her commitment to eliminating bureaucracy.  However, many Senators shared concerns that crossed party lines, particularly about potential cuts to Farm Service Agency (FSA) staff who work directly with farmers in rural areas, freezing or cutting agriculture research, and the elimination of popular USAID programs that purchased American farm products to provide international food aid.

Here are the topics Rollins was asked about the most.

On the restructuring of the USDA and staff cuts: Republicans said they supported downsizing the agency, but many joined Democrats in asking Rollins to resist cutting staff at local FSA offices. “We do not have sufficient personnel in those county offices today,” said Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas). Rollins said FSA offices “remain a priority” and that the agency is not currently cutting staff or closing offices, but that the FSA is “also working to be again more efficient with online technical assistance so that in the future we may not rely so much on an on-the-ground presence.” Some FSA offices have already been targeted by DOGE for closure and the president’s budget would cut $358 million in FSA salaries and expenses.

Rollins confirmed that 15,000 USDA staff had accepted the administration’s deferred resignation offer, on top of earlier layoffs. Through those processes, she said the agency had lost people in key positions and is now “actively recruiting” to fill those positions.

“You let people go—or however you want to characterize it—who knew these jobs, and now you’re looking for people to fill these jobs because now we know how essential they are,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington). “That doesn’t seem to me to be very efficient.”

In response to a question posed by Senator Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska), Rollins said the agency is very close to finalizing a plan to move USDA staff from D.C. offices to other locations. “We are very in the weeds on that, and an announcement is forthcoming,” she said. During the last Trump administration, the USDA moved its Economic Research Service to Kansas City, leading to major losses in experienced staff with significant costs to taxpayers.

On cuts to food aid and school food programs: Democrats grilled Rollins on her decision to end two programs that move food from local farms into school and food banks and cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Each time, Rollins said the local food programs were COVID-era programs that were not intended to continue. “It was the decision of our president and this administration that perhaps that COVID-era program had fulfilled its purpose,” she said. She also responded to each Senator with numbers saying their states still had money in the bank to spend on local food.

“I can’t speak to what the state is doing, and we’ll be happy to run that to the ground, but the people I’m hearing from are literally the schools and the producers,” said Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico).

During an exchange with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) in which he asked about the $500 million that the USDA cut from TEFAP, which was authorized in 1981, Rollins appeared to confuse TEFAP with the local food programs, calling it a “COVID-era program.”

On farmer grant funds that have been frozen: Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked Rollins to provide an update on which grant programs are still frozen and a timeline for when her review would be finished.

“We are working around the clock, going line by line by line,” she said. “We’re down to the final $5 billion out of, I believe, almost $20 billion of frozen funds.”

But Democrats came back to the point over and over. “What I’ve heard from farmers over the past 100 days of this administration is that they’re not sure they can trust the federal government anymore,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire). “I’ve heard from farmers across our state who no longer know if they can rely on the federal government honoring a basic signed contract.”

On cuts to agriculture research: Murray, Fischer, and Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan) all brought up concerns about cuts to agricultural research. The president’s budget calls for a $159 million cut from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), but Rollins said that only represents a 7 percent decrease and that cuts would be focused on closing outdated facilities. “It shouldn’t affect the key, most important parts of the research,” she said. The funding freeze and cuts to grants have already upended some important agricultural research. (Link to this post.)

The EPA has already completed a strategy on herbicides. These strategies, with others to follow, are intended to protect listed species under the law, while communicating clearly with farmers and other users of these chemicals on how and where they can be applied.

The EPA said it received more than 26,000 public comments and more than 230 unique comments to address, following the release of a draft in July 2024. It adjusted the draft “to provide greater flexibility and options for the agricultural community, while ensuring that endangered species are protected.”

The strategy includes guidance on buffer distances for insecticide applications, a process for crediting growers who use conservation programs, and an interactive map that allows people to look up specific chemicals and their restrictions in specific areas. It also includes a three-step framework for reviewing insecticides and developing prohibitions for their use to protect endangered and threatened species.

“Today’s action is another example of how protecting our environment and safeguarding our economy can go hand in hand,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement about the release. “We have found common-sense ways to keep endangered species safe that won’t place unneeded burden on the growers who rely on these tools for their livelihood, and which are necessary to ensure a safe and plentiful food supply. We are committed to ensuring the agriculture community has the tools they need to protect our country, especially our food supply, from pests and diseases.”

The EPA’s strategies are provided to help steer the agency toward more compliance with the Endangered Species Act. They take into account comments from conservation groups, agricultural industry, and others. But they are not set in stone.

“These strategies are guidance,” Kyle Kunkler, senior director of government affairs for the American Soybean Association, said. “There’s nothing that prohibits them from going back and making changes to strategies, to make continued improvement. It’s going to mean that we still got our work cut out for us, for sure. We’ve got a laundry list of a dozen different things that we think are going to be necessary to make sure that we get these to a good spot for agriculture.”

They also are not the end of the issue, but rather an attempt by the EPA to address a wide majority of species and potential threats.

“They’re putting in place some of these cookie-cutter ESA protections, and the idea is that they’re protecting probably 90 percent of the species that are getting hit by this pesticide,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “And then, you know the deal with the other 10 percent, as time allows.” (Link to this post.)

Marshall is planning on calling the legislation the Food Ingredient Transparency (FIT) Act, a legislative assistant, Lacy Pitts, said at a food policy event hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists’ D.C. chapter on Tuesday.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in March that he was directing the FDA to look into changing the rules around ingredients the agency calls GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe.”

Currently, companies can add their own ingredients to the list without obtaining FDA approval, but Kennedy hinted then that he would need the law to change to get some of that work done. Kennedy said he was hoping to work with Congress to “completely close the loophole.”

Marshall’s bill will require “mandatory notification” for new GRAS additives, according to Pitts. Companies would have to submit paperwork to the FDA alerting regulators to the use of a new additive in a product, but those additives still would not go through an approval process.

The bill will also include provisions related to a plan the FDA proposed last year to strengthen the review of food chemicals already on the market, including those on the GRAS list. Finally, she said it will include language that prevents states from passing laws that contradict the federal regulations.

“We know it’s much easier for food manufacturers in the industry to get products across state lines if they have one united framework to follow,” Pitts said.

Last December, Marshall created the Senate’s MAHA Caucus with a key purpose to “work with RFK Jr. to be the legislative force that ensures the key pillars of MAHA are executed.”

Pitts said that Marshall’s experience as an OB-GYN informed his interest in food-as-medicine, an approach to chronic disease prevention that was championed during the Biden administration at the White House Conference on Hunger, Health, and Nutrition.

“He has long worked on food-as-medicine,” she said. “Now, going into the Trump administration, food-as-medicine has kind of been rebranded to the Make America Healthy Again movement.”

A report on addressing childhood chronic disease that President Trump directed the MAHA Commission to deliver  is set to come out “within the month,” said Pitts. The Commission is made up of cabinet officials and is led by Kennedy.

“We’re waiting on direction from them,” she said. “After that comes out, then it’ll come to the Hill, [and] we’ll have discussions amongst ourselves about what is going to be done regulatory and what’s going to be done by a statute.” As a result, more MAHA-inspired legislation will likely be on the table.  (Link to this post.)

“We’re not gonna’ reduce the amount of money that individuals are getting right now,” said Senate Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas).

“We’re not gonna’ be cutting benefits,” echoed House Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania). “We’re not gonna’ hurt people that are living in poverty, folks that quite frankly are struggling paycheck to paycheck that are really dependent upon this nutritional assistance.”

However, proposals on the table to deliver the cuts far-right lawmakers are demanding are still controversial and could push hungry people out of the program, anti-hunger experts say.

Republicans are looking to slash spending during budget reconciliation to pay for making tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term permanent. They are direction the Senate Ag Committee to find $1 billion in savings and the House Ag Committee to find $230 billion. The final number will be worked out later and the committees are scheduled to begin drafting their plans next week.

SNAP is the most likely place to find the cuts, as it represents more than $100 billion in federal spending annually. Democrats have been loudly pushing back on various proposals that have been floated on the Hill, including rolling back a Biden-era update that increased benefits.

Thompson said he’s not interested in that rollback and that while he suspects the final number will be lower than $230 billion, he has identified a way to get to that number without cutting any benefits, although it would be challenging. Depending on what he can get others in his parties to agree to, he may not have a choice–Republicans are also divided amongst themselves over cuts to Medicaid.

Boozman pointed to overpayments as a place to find savings, and Thompson also cited “program integrity,” a term that generally refers to correcting errors. In 2023, USDA reported the overpayment rate within SNAP at 10 percent. Both lawmakers also mentioned work requirements. One proposal previously introduced by Representative Dusty Johnson (R-South Dakota) would raise the age range for SNAP recipients subject to the strictest work requirements from 55 to 65 and reduce the number of counties in the country that would be eligible for waivers exempting participants from work requirements due to high unemployment.

Finally, another proposal would shift some of the costs of paying for SNAP benefits to state governments rather than the feds. Thompson said he does not like this idea, but that if his hand is forced, he’d choose it over cutting benefit amounts.

Advocacy groups and think tanks argue that while many of these changes would not directly change how much participants receive each month, they qualify as “cuts” because they would push participants out of the SNAP program and therefore could still increase hunger. For instance, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimated changes to work requirements could push 6 million people out of the program and that the proposal to shift costs to states would force some states to cut benefits.

Another analysis of the state cost-share plan found that in the case of a recession, it could lead to an average annual benefit cut of $327 per household and 862,000 additional people falling into poverty.

Last week, Democrats on the House Ag Committee held a briefing to address negative impacts of shifting costs to states.“This proposal would not generate any cost savings—it would merely pass the buck from the federal government to the states and take food away from innocent people in the process,” Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) said in a statement. (Link to this post.)

Immigration crackdowns were central to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and the first 100 days of his administration farmworkers and labor organizers have been detained or arrested alongside student activists and alleged members of Central American gangs. Farmers and farmworkers continue to worry that broader crackdowns will hurt an already tight labor market.

As with other departments, the USDA has worked to implement Trump’s policies.  Rollins has stated she wants “to ensure that illegal immigrants do not receive federal benefits,” the agency said, by implementing stricter eligibility screening for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among other initiatives.

Rollins says tighter restrictions will prevent “illegal aliens” from getting benefits. “We are stewards of taxpayer dollars, and it is our duty to ensure states confirm the identity and verify the immigration status of SNAP applicants,” she said in a statement. “USDA’s nutrition programs are intended to support the most vulnerable Americans. To allow those who broke our laws by entering the United States illegally to receive these benefits is outrageous.”

Rollins did not cite evidence to support that undocumented people in the U.S. are receiving federal benefits, which are denied to non-citizens in most cases. But she said she has issued guidance to state agencies “directing them to enhance identity and immigration verification practices when determining eligibility” for SNAP.

That could add steps to the process and make it harder in general for people to apply for benefits, which in turn could end up hurting farm laborers, foresters, and fishers, many of whom rely on such benefits. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that nearly 20 percent of farming, fishing, and forestry workers received SNAP benefits between 2015 and 2017. “Food workers are roughly twice as likely to need SNAP as the average U.S. worker,” the group said.

Immigrant labor remains a key pillar of U.S. agriculture. This has included a major increase in farmworkers under the H2-A seasonal worker program over the past 20 years, but it also includes the widespread employment of undocumented workers on farms. The farm industry continues to worry about farm labor, despite some assurances from Trump that farms will be able to continue to hire non-U.S. workers. USDA data from the end of the Biden administration suggest that about half of hired crop workers in the U.S. lack legal immigration status.

Under President Trump, immigration enforcement has pushed into farm country. In Washington state in March, plainclothes ICE agents detained a farm labor organizer named Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, and in January Border Patrol agents raided a farm in Kern County, California, arresting 78 people.

Civic organizers are holding a rally in Olympia, Washington today, calling for the release of Zeferino and others held in ICE detention. Meanwhile, a federal court in California has issued an injunction that prohibits Border Patrol agents across large swathes of the state from stopping people without reasonable suspicion they are breaking the law, or arresting people without a warrant and probable cause.

“This order rightfully upholds the law,”  Teresa Romero, President of United Farm Workers, said on Tuesday, following the injunction. “Border Patrol can’t just wade into communities snatching up hardworking people without due process, just for being brown and working class.”  (Link to this post.)

During a visit to a Texas agriculture research center and farm with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said that President Trump “has given us a platform to change America for the better.”

Since January, Civil Eats has been following the flood of White House and agency announcements and actions to keep track of the most important changes that impact food and agriculture. We’ve been regularly talking to members of Congress, government employees, farmers, food bank employees, school food pros, researchers, and advocates to stay up to speed.

Here, we offer our own 100-day (and in no way comprehensive) review of our coverage of the biggest stories to date.

1. Quick action on political priorities. President Biden prioritized climate action and creating equity across the federal government, including at the agencies that work on food and agriculture; Trump made quick work of undoing those policies and programs. The term “climate change” was scrubbed from the USDA website and farmer grant programs that prioritized climate goals were frozen for review and targeted for cancellation.

The rooting out of what Trump calls “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA)” programs included throwing out the USDA’s report on historic discrimination and recommendations for course correction, shutting down the EPA’s environmental justice offices, and canceling grant contracts to farm groups that had identified working with groups such as Black or LGBTQ farmers in their proposals.

Under Rollins, USDA has also engaged in political disputes that don’t impact agriculture: the agency threatened to withhold funding from universities in Maine and California based on policies that supported transgender rights.

2. A farm (and food) economy in turmoil. “Farmers come first at the United States Department of Agriculture in the Trump Administration,” Rollins said in a USDA statement on the agency’s first 100 days of work. “At USDA, I have made bold changes to improve the lives of American producers and consumers.”

However, nearly all USDA grant programs were frozen for review when she took over, which has caused months of financial turmoil for farmers waiting for payments they had been planning on. Many programs have since been unfrozen; the fate of others remains unknown. In addition, more than $1 billion in expected payments to farmers to provide fresh food to schools and food banks was cancelled.

Biden’s Climate-Smart Commodities program was renamed and revamped, resulting in the cancellation of many multi-million dollar projects that were paying hundreds of farmers to implement conservation practices like agroforestry. Small farms selling locally to their communities have been particularly hard hit.

At the same time, Trump’s tariffs have created uncertainty, particularly for commodity farmers, like those who sell soybeans to China and import fertilizer from Canada. Trump has said the long-term payoff will be worth the short-term pain and Rollins has promised to bail out those farms if they do suffer losses—as Trump’s USDA did during his first administration. The USDA also quickly steered extra commodity assistance dollars authorized by Congress last year to commodity farmers.

3. Fewer people working on food and farming. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has worked with agencies to slash staff and cancel office leases. At the USDA, an estimated 16,000 employees took an offer to resign, thousands more were let go, and more layoffs are expected, although many employees have been reinstated due to court orders and the agency backtracking after firing key personnel.

At the FDA, Kennedy is reorganizing the entire agency, including eliminating 20,000 jobs. NOAA has cut at least 1,000 employees and may lose as much as 20 percent of its 13,000-person workforce. One report estimates DOGE’s approach to staff cuts will cost taxpayers $135 billion this year.

4. The MAHA movement focuses on food additives and SNAP. Since Kennedy took office, he’s focused the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement on food additives and unhealthy foods in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). He directed the FDA to review the controversial GRAS process and announced that the agency would work with industry to phase out six food dyes linked to hyperactivity in children.

Together, Kennedy and Rollins are supporting state-level efforts to ban soda and junk food from SNAP. At a food policy event in D.C. this week, one Hill staffer said MAHA initiatives are so popular among Republicans that they’ve “sucked all the air out of the room” in terms of other priorities like the farm bill.

5. Major rollbacks of environmental, food safety, and fisheries regulations. The EPA has been rolling back dozens of environmental regulations, including a key rule that allows for the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions at a time when the food system is reeling from the impacts of climate change. Trump also ordered the deregulation of the fishing industry, and the USDA scrapped rules that would have allowed the agency to stop salmonella-tainted chicken from reaching grocery shelves. (Link to this post.)

Democrats in both chambers of Congress have been trying to get clear answers from the Secretary about how the agency has been making those cuts and the impact they may have on farmers.

Last week, Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee, which Pingree also serves on, sent a letter to Rollins expressing their concerns. “Not only are these the federal employees directly working with farmers on the ground, but these office closures are coming from programs that serve as a lifeline between the federal government and rural communities,” they wrote.

Approximately 16,000 USDA employees opted into the administration’s deferred resignation program earlier this month. Several thousand employees were also fired earlier this year, but some have been asked to come back or have been reinstated through court orders. Other reports have claimed the agency is planning to slash thousands more soon. DOGE also reported it terminated leases for more than 100 USDA offices around the country, many of which were local offices directly serving farmers.

Lawmakers are especially worried about those cuts, since the local offices connect farmers to services including technical assistance, loan programs, and conservation planning. In Maine, Pingree said a Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office previously had six employees, but “now it has one [person] trying to answer the phone and deal with it all.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, told Civil Eats that, in her state, one local USDA office had both of its two employees cut, while another office still had its full staff, demonstrating the haphazard nature of staff firings.

While it was too soon to expect a response to the letter, Pingree said the Appropriations Committee has struggled to communicate with the USDA in the same way they have with past administrations.

“Especially as an appropriator, the clerk in your committee could always call, no matter what administration it was, and say, ‘What kind of downsizing you’re doing?’” she said. “It’s been a very unusual time. Mostly they’re prohibited from talking to us.” For that reason, she said she was looking forward to Rollins appearing before the committee.

Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas), on the other hand, said he has had plenty of communication with Secretary Rollins. In the past, he said, he has raised red flags about closing local USDA offices. However, he said, “reorganizing is not a bad idea” given the size of the federal deficit.

“I think the farm community understands that. I think Congress understands that,” he said. “So, we’re really trying to look and see exactly what [the USDA is] trying to do and be as supportive as we can, in order to make sure that we’re running as lean and mean as we can, but still providing those services that are so very important.” (Link to this post.)

Currently, the USDA tests for salmonella, alerts consumers to food safety concerns, and issues voluntary recalls, but it can’t pull products off the shelves. Food safety watchdog groups had called the agency’s move to change that reality “one of the greatest advances in food safety in a generation.” But Biden’s USDA didn’t finalize the rule, making it easy for the incoming administration to scrap it.

Those same groups slammed the decision, saying that more Americans will get sick as a result. Salmonella is responsible for more than a million infections and 400 deaths in the U.S. annually.

“The administration is sending the message that consumers will be on their own when it comes to protecting their families from foodborne illness,” Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said in a statement.

That message is more pronounced, Ronholm said, because many other deregulatory actions within the Trump administration could impact food safety. Those include staff and budget cuts, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to delay a rule to improve traceability in supply chains, the elimination of food safety advisory committees, and faster line speeds permitted in meatpacking plants.

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment.

The National Chicken Council, which represents the country’s largest poultry companies, stated they appreciated the decision and looked forward to working with the USDA on an approach that is “based on sound science, is implementable, and will have a meaningful and measured impact on public health.”

Earlier this week, election records revealed that JBS-owned chicken company Pilgrim’s Pride, a member of the National Chicken Council, donated $5 million to Trump’s inauguration. (Link to this post.)

It may be the first time since President Trump took office that his escalating efforts around immigration enforcement and deportations directly landed on an American farm. Farmers rely heavily on immigrant labor.

During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in February, Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) brought up the impact that immigration crackdowns could have on his state’s agriculture economy. “It’s very simple,” he said. “If you don’t have farm labor in Vermont, you don’t milk the cows.”

At a cabinet meeting in early April, Trump made unclear statements about deporting farmworkers, saying that he would “slow it down” for farmers and that workers would “go out” and “come back as legal workers.”

In an emailed statement to Civil Eats, CBP Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said that the action was not a raid targeting farmworkers. “Agents were called to a location at a dairy farm located about 2.5 miles from the Canadian border by a concerned citizen,” she said. “This was not a special operation or a worksite enforcement operation, however, when agents encounter individuals who are in the country illegally, they will take them into custody and determine their immigration disposition, including potentially turning those individuals over to other agencies.”

The workers were members of Migrant Justice, an organization that fights for immigrant rights. According to Migrant Justice’s Will Lambek, “Such a call would have been a flimsy pretext at best, as Border Patrol entered farm property, chased workers through barns, and entered a private dwelling.”

Lambek also said there was no evidence agents targeted the workers based on their organizing work with Migrant Justice, although the organization has reported being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the past. In March, ICE agents arrested farmworker activist Alfredo Juarez during a traffic stop in Washington state.

Migrant Justice launched a petition and is holding a rally tonight at Burlington City Hall to call for the release of the workers. (Link to this post.)

Environmental organizations, animal welfare groups, and investors have been fighting to keep the Brazilian company from achieving an IPO for about a year and half based on allegations of bribery, corruption, and environmental destruction.

Many of those groups decried the SEC’s approval of the registration. In one statement, Laura Fox, a research scholar in Yale Law School’s Law, Environment, & Animals Program, said that by not resolving allegations that the company made misleading claims about its role in driving climate change and biodiversity loss, the SEC failed in its obligation to protect investors.

“The SEC should have thoroughly investigated these concerns to prevent investors from being misled and to ensure that corporate greenwashing does not further fuel climate destruction and ecological harm,” Fox said.

A spokesperson for the SEC said the agency cannot comment on “a specific issuer or filing.”

Many groups also called attention to the fact that earlier this week, records revealed the largest donor to President Trump’s inauguration was Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken company JBS has owned since 2009.

“A $5 million donation from JBS subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride was a blatant attempt to buy political favor and seek approval for critical regulatory decisions, including JBS’s ongoing push to list on the New York Stock Exchange,” Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz said in a statement. “The amount was five times what tech giants contributed, underscoring JBS’s aggressive strategy to gain influence over the Trump administration and avoid accountability.” In the past, Mighty Earth has filed complaints with the SEC on JBS’s governance and practices.

Experts have been calling attention to other actions the administration has taken that have benefited major donors in other sectors: A report released this week by the nonprofit Public Citizen found that Pilgrim’s Pride is just one of 58 companies that donated to the second Trump inauguration who are also facing federal lawsuits or investigations.

In 2020, Trump’s SEC and Department of Justice found JBS engaged in a bribery scheme to take over Pilgrim’s Pride and fined the company more than $250 million. However, Trump’s USDA also gave JBS $78 million in taxpayer funds used to bail out farmers during his first trade war.

The White House did not respond to Civil Eats’ questions about the inaugural donation and the SEC’s registration approval. (Link to this post.)

Makary said his agency will work with the food industry to eliminate FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 23 from products, including by approving new natural dye replacements and establishing a national standard and timeline to help companies make the transition.

“There’s no one ingredient that accounts for the child chronic disease epidemic,” Makary said. “Taking petroleum-based food dyes out of the food supply is not a silver bullet that will instantly make America’s children healthy, but it is one important step. This administration is not interested in continuing down the path of doing the same old things as we watch our nation’s children get sicker. We need fresh new approaches.”

For decades, public health advocates have been pushing food companies, regulators, and lawmakers to end the use of the artificial dyes based on their links to behavioral and other health issues in children, especially hyperactivity. The United Kingdom and European Union restrict their use in foods, but the FDA has long maintained that they’re safe for most children. On their way out the door, Biden administration officials banned Red Dye No. 3 based on animal studies showing a link to cancer. California enacted the first state ban on artificial dyes in school foods in September of 2024, and other states have followed suit.

After Makary’s announcement, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates and influencers, including activist Vani Hari and functional-medicine physician Mark Hyman, took to the stage to applaud the announcement. “Now we are entering a new era. An era where we don’t need to worry about artificial food dyes on the frosting of a birthday cake,” Hari said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA, was the closer. Kennedy said while there are many issues he hopes to tackle on his MAHA agenda, “Food dye is just a no-brainer. We can act on that now.” While the FDA’s plan depends on companies’ willingness to work with the agencies, Kennedy said they had already demonstrated an eagerness to do so.

In conjunction with the announcement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent out a statement celebrating a commitment from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) to remove artificial dyes from milk, cheese, and yogurt served in school meals by July 2026. In its announcement, the IDFA said the vast majority of dairy products are already free of the dyes but that some reformulation would be required.

The president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Peter Lurie, who has been driving work on the issue for years, said in a statement that the dyes are completely unnecessary and the harms to children’s health are real. “We don’t need synthetic dyes in the food supply, and no one will be harmed by their absence,” he said.

However, he was critical of the fact that the plan relies on “voluntary food industry compliance” and no major regulatory changes were proposed. He also worried other recent changes at the FDA could hinder longer-term work to fix the system that has allowed chemicals linked to health risks to remain in the food supply for so long.

“Thanks to the brutal staff cuts to FDA imposed by Secretary Kennedy and Elon Musk’s DOGE, it will be harder now for FDA to police other food additives, inspect factories, or perform just about any function than it was four months ago,” Lurie said. Last week, the country’s top ultra-processed foods researcher resigned from his role within HHS after he said he no longer believed it was possible to practice “unbiased science.”

During the conference, Kennedy reiterated his promises of transparency and sticking to science. “We’re going to restore gold-standard science, so we know what’s in our food and we can eliminate it,” he said. (Link to this post.)

The world’s leading climate experts emphasized in their latest series of reports that the food system is already being pummeled by climate change and that impacts on food security will get worse. They also found that changes to how the world produces food could contribute about one-third of the emissions reductions needed to turn things around.

Pingree, an organic farmer, first introduced the bill in 2020, and then again in 2023. It includes provisions to increase research on climate change and agriculture, expand the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) agroforestry centers and create a new soil health grant program, fund small meat processors to serve pasture-based livestock farms, increase funding for renewable energy on farms, and curb food waste.

Two years ago, many of the policies enjoyed significant support in Congress. The Biden administration directed additional funding to similar efforts, in particular through the Inflation Reduction Act, and Biden’s USDA made climate change a top priority. Now, the winds have shifted completely. President Trump’s administration is aggressively rolling back funding for climate initiatives and working to boost fossil fuel production. The USDA has removed pages dealing with climate change from its website and canceled climate-focused grant programs.

Pingree told Civil Eats that farmers in her state are looking for help more than ever as the climate crisis gets worse. “I think we have to stay consistent in our beliefs that these are important priorities for farmers, not only to help them weather some of the difficult climate changes which aren’t going away, but also for economic viability in what’s going to be an increasingly challenging time,” she said.

At a protest against USDA funding and staff cuts in Maine last week, she said, two blueberry growers said they lost grant funding they had been using to apply mulch to their fields, which helped retain water and protect them against drought. “Drought used to be a very rare thing in Maine, and now we have to worry about it,” Pingree said. “These are investments that they didn’t feel like they would have been able to make without this outside funding.” Dozens of farm and environmental groups have also already endorsed the bill.

Still, Pingree admitted garnering support for the bill’s ideas in Congress will be a serious challenge. She said she’s interested in trying to tap into the support in the Republican party for Health and Human Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s ideas around improving American health.

“I know in my own state there are people who are big supporters of RFK and are also big supporters of organic farming or eating more healthy food, so I’m just hoping we can translate some of that to the Washington agenda,” she said.

The bill’s provisions are intended to be attached to a farm bill, but there’s no clear path for Congress to get one done anytime soon. Pingree said the important thing is to introduce the Agriculture Resilience Act and start to build support for the different sections now, so that if a farm bill does move, she’ll be ready. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) also introduced a Senate version of the bill. (Link to this post.)

Van Hollen said that he set up the roundtable because farmers have been calling and writing to his office—especially about tariffs and the cancellation of funding for programs that connect small farms to schools and food banks—and his purpose was to hear more of their stories.

“The freeze on payments under the farm-to-school program is outrageous,” he said at the event. “We will fight this in the courts. We will fight this in Congress.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (left) listens to farmer-brewer Tom Barse of Milkhouse Brewery (right) at Stillpoint Farm talk about “trying to find a way to continue to make a living as a small farm.” (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

It was one of several agricultural roundtables and town halls that lawmakers are holding across the country during Congress’ two-week recess, which ends later this week. Politico reported that Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Adam Schiff (D-California) would all be gathering feedback from farmers over the break.

One farmer told Civil Eats he attended an invite-only event that Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) held in her state, where representatives of both the Minnesota Farm Bureau and Minnesota Farmers’ Union were present. He attended to call her attention to the still-frozen Farm Labor Stabilization Program. In Maine, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) marched alongside farmers protesting USDA cuts to funding and staff.

At Moon Valley, farmer-owner Emma Jagoz emphasized the loss of the Local Food for Schools funding, which had helped her get her organic fruits and vegetables into 12 Maryland school districts. In the past, she said, USDA programs also helped her access land and build high tunnels that allow her to grow and sell produce year-round. “These tools help us to stay in business, grow responsibly for the future, and feed a lot more people,” she said.

Kelly Dudeck, the executive director of Cultivate & Craft, an organization that helps farmers turn their crops into higher-value products, said that the Mid-Atlantic’s craft wineries and breweries are already struggling in the face of tariffs, since most depend on global supply chains for bottles, barrels, and grain inputs. “Brewers specifically are saying that half of them will likely be out of business within a year,” she told Van Hollen.

One farmer expressed concerns over solar development leading to a loss of farmland, a priority of the last administration under Democrats. On the flipside, farmer Elisa Lane, of Two Boots Farm, said she was worried about the USDA eliminating climate change and other environmental terms from its vocabulary and website. “I’m not sure how USDA can support us if we can’t even name the things we’re up against,” she said. (Link to this post.)

“The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader,” Trump wrote in the order, Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness. “But in addition to overregulation, unfair trade practices have put our seafood markets at a competitive disadvantage.”

The order tasks  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the fishing industry to “immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries at the fishery-specific level.” It also orders an examination of trade policies to benefit U.S. fishing.

U.S. fisheries experienced severe overfishing in the 1980s and 1990s, with essential fish stocks either depleting or collapsing. In the decades since, the stocks have recovered, in large part due to stricter fishing regulations and close monitoring. The government agency tasked with monitoring fish stocks, through scientific survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, underwent major personnel cuts after Trump’s inauguration.

The Department of Commerce fired more than 600 probationary employees in February. And while lower court judges ordered many of them reinstated in March, the Supreme Court has since paused some of the reinstatements. Workers told NBC News this week the agency is suffering under “intentional chaos,” due to the cuts. Firings have since resumed, Reuters reported on April 10.

Advocacy groups say Trump’s newest order endangers U.S. fisheries anew, at a time when they are facing increasing pressure from climate change.

“Between firing experts at NOAA, delaying fishing seasons, and disrupting ocean science and data collection, the Trump administration is causing unprecedented chaos,” Meredith Moore, Ocean Conservancy’s senior director for fish conservation, said in a statement. “Today’s executive order would weaken, not strengthen, our fishing industry by increasing the risk that overfishing drives our fish stocks into decline, effectively taking healthy U.S. seafood off the menu. The U.S. fishing management system already maximizes catch to the limit that science says is sustainable.”

It was not the only fisheries-related move from the administration. An official proclamation from the president also announced a plan for “unleashing American commercial fishing” into the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. “This action threatens to reverse decades of progress that have reduced overfishing and exploitation of one of the planet’s last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems and a place of cultural significance for Pacific Islanders,” the Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition said in a statement.

The national monument, which was established in 2009 at the end of the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration, “includes some of America’s most pristine coral reefs and ocean ecosystems,” Douglas McCauley, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and director of Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, said in a statement. “It is a safe haven for endangered sea turtles, the feeding and breeding ground for millions of seabirds, and a place of refuge for endangered marine mammals. Only 3 percent of our worldwide ocean is strongly protected today and our monuments are a significant portion of this figure. In attempting to downgrade the protection of this unique monument, we are devaluing a critically important asset in America’s ocean wealth portfolio.” (Link to this post.)

The concerns come in the form of a letter sent to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing a recent petition that asked the commission to prioritize “eliminating extraordinarily toxic pesticides from food.” Rollins, Zeldin, and Kennedy are part of the Make America Healthy Again Commission that Trump created in February.

Submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, the petition recommends agencies take several actions that would transform current pesticide policy. For example, it says the EPA should eliminate current allowances for residues of pesticides including atrazine, paraquat, and 2,4-D on food and that the USDA should only subsidize crop insurance for farmers who agree not to use a long list of pesticides, including glyphosate, atrazine, paraquat, and the three most common neonicotinoid insecticides.

The Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter that they are concerned that “environmental activists” are “advancing harmful health, economic or food security policies under the guise of human health.”  However, Kennedy himself has pointed to several of the same chemicals in the past as potential causes of rising chronic disease rates, which the petition references.

In February, President Trump also said, on the topic of pesticides, “Bobby Kennedy is actually looking at that very seriously because maybe it’s not necessary to use all of that. We want to be the healthiest country, and we’re not.”

During Trump’s first administration, his EPA rolled back restrictions on the use of several pesticides potentially linked to negative health impacts. The agency, which is the primary regulator of pesticides, is currently focused on deregulation, although it hasn’t taken any major actions on pesticide regulations to date. Since Kennedy has been at HHS, he has focused his MAHA efforts primarily on food dyes, additives, and getting soda out of SNAP. (Link to this post.)

“Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science,” Hall wrote in a post on X. “Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.”

Hall said NIH freezes on hiring and purchasing also made it difficult for him to staff his research projects and pay for supplies, including food for research participants, he wrote in a letter to Kennedy and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. But Hall said since he received no response to the concerns, he felt compelled to accept early retirement, at 54.

Hall was the lead researcher on the most important randomized, controlled trial to date that showed diets high in ultra-processed foods cause individuals to eat more and gain more weight, even when matched for nutrients with a whole-food diet. At the National Food Policy Conference in March, as the keynote speaker, he talked about the preliminary results of his latest trial, which was intended to help get at why the foods “are bad news for health,” he said, in terms of their link to an epidemic of chronic diseases including diabetes and obesity.

Last year, the panel of experts that makes recommendations on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines declined to add restrictions on ultra-processed foods, citing the fact that more research is needed. Kennedy is now working with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on reviewing that report.

In response to a request for comment on Hall’s allegations of censorship, an HHS spokesperson sent Civil Eats a statement: “It’s disappointing that this individual is fabricating false claims. NIH scientists have, and will, continue to conduct interviews regarding their research through written responses or other means. We remain committed to promoting gold-standard research and advancing public health priorities. Any attempt to paint this as censorship is a deliberate distortion of the facts.” (Link to this post.)

April 16, 2025 – Trump administration officials traveled to Arkansas and Indiana yesterday to announce their support for the states’ steps to restrict the purchases of unhealthy foods within the country’s largest food-assistance program. The announcements, as well as a focus on other efforts to change the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), are part of the larger Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

Next to a table piled with bananas, pineapples, and tomatoes, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins joined Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to announce that Sanders had submitted the first official request to Trump’s USDA to allow the state to take soda and candy out of SNAP. Sanders is also asking the USDA to allow Arkansans to use their SNAP benefits to buy rotisserie chicken. Currently, benefits in the state only cover staple grocery items, not hot or prepared foods.

Minutes later, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke in Indiana after Governor Mike Braun announced he signed nine MAHA-inspired executive orders, one of which directs the state to submit a waiver to the USDA to eliminate soda and candy from SNAP.

“We have to figure out new ways to allow Americans to take responsibility and agency for their own health,” Kennedy said. “We also need to change our food system in this country so that we start giving our kids foods that are gonna actually make them healthy and imbue them with vigor and ambition and a dream.”

At both events, Kennedy and Rollins cited the misleading statistic that soda is the number one item SNAP participants purchase. Based on the best data available, SNAP participants spent about 40 cents of every dollar on basic foods including meat, poultry, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread; soft drinks accounted for 5.4 cents. Those purchases do account for a large total dollar amount, since the program is so large.

While there is some bipartisan support for taking soda and unhealthy foods out of SNAP, many experts say there is no evidence the step will actually make Americans healthier. Anti-hunger groups also oppose the restrictions, especially because they see them as opening the door to further restricting benefits. In Indiana, for example, one of Governor Braun’s other executive orders directed the state to more strictly enforce work requirements within the program. Another order attempts to tighten processes that assess financial eligibility for SNAP benefits.

In Arkansas, however, Governor Sanders cited her state’s support of other anti-hunger programs. “We understand that food security is a real problem across the country, which is why we worked to make Arkansas the first state in the South to offer free school breakfast to every student, and why I signed our state up for a second year of summer EBT so kids have meals during the summer months,” she said. Her request to add rotisserie chicken to SNAP-eligible foods is in line with efforts championed by Democrats for years, which now have some bipartisan support, to allow participants to purchase hot, prepared foods.

Sanders also cited the fact that the rotisserie chickens were produced locally in Arkansas, while Braun included an executive order directing his state government to study access to local food in Indiana and make recommendations to expand it. At both events, Kennedy and Rollins were asked how those priorities squared with recent pauses and cuts to USDA programs and funding that have been devastating for many small farms selling local food.

Rollins blamed left-wing media for crafting an untrue narrative and said cuts that were made were simply a rolling back of extra funding that should have ended with the pandemic. Some of the local food funding was initiated by Biden’s USDA as part of pandemic relief efforts; other spending that was cut was for programs that have been in place for more than a decade. She said the USDA is “working to realign every taxpayer dollar around what is the best, most effective spend.”

Both secretaries encouraged other governors to follow the lead of Sanders and Braun. (Link to this post.)

April 14, 2025 – After nearly three months of frozen payments, the USDA announced today that it would officially cancel the Biden-era Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. However, the agency said it would review existing projects based on new criteria and continue to fund those that qualify under a new name, the Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative.

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a press release. “The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines.”

While Trump’s USDA has paused funding across many programs that pay farmers, the Climate-Smart Commodities Program freeze has caused an outsized amount of turmoil among farmers and organizations that support them due to the scale of the $3.1 billion investment in 135 projects across the American farm landscape. Projects were spearheaded by large corporations, universities, and tiny nonprofits. In June of 2024, the USDA reported that 14,000 farms were enrolled, implementing climate-smart practices on 3.2 million acres. Those ranged from simple cover cropping to the adoption of advanced agroforestry systems.

In the release, Rollins said many of the projects had high administrative costs and that in many cases less than half of the funding was going directly to farmers. To continue under the AMP initiative, the agency said, projects now must show a minimum of 65 percent of funds go directly to producers and grant recipients must have enrolled and made a payment to at least one producer by December 31, 2024.

The grants were for five-year terms and many organizations spent the first year hiring staff, designing their projects, and enrolling farmers. Many were already making payments to farmers, but some had just gotten to that phase in the project. At the end of March, a coalition of 105 organizations running the projects and 260 farmers sent Rollins a letter asking her to keep the program going.

Working Landscapes, an organization that was running a $5 million project with vegetable, livestock, and row-crop farms enrolled across North Carolina, received a termination letter from the USDA saying their project did not meet the first parameter on percentages. The letter said the team can resubmit a proposal by June 20 to try to align the project with the new priorities.

Jon White, the project director, said it’s not clear at this point how the agency calculated the percentage of dollars going to producers. In addition to the money paid directly as incentives to farmers, he said, the organization spent money on tasks that supported the work, including technical assistance, soil sampling, and equipment.  “While the reapplication process has not been detailed yet, we are interested in submitting a revised application that meets the current agency’s priorities,” White said.

Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, which was running a large project across 15 states, also received a termination letter based on the fact that the USDA’s evaluation concluded that 45 percent of their funding is directly supporting farmers. But Pasa director Hannah Smith-Brubaker said she’d calculate it at closer to 85 percent, because Pasa pays contractors assisting farmers directly rather than giving the funds to the farmer to pay the contractor. For instance, to implement an agroforestry project, farmers often hire a tree-planting business, and Pasa pays the business directly. Smith-Brubaker has asked the USDA for a review. (Link to this post.)

The list confirms that the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program, which was slated to move $3.1 billion to thousands of farmers across the country, is still under review. It also includes the Rural Energy for America Program, despite the fact that the USDA announced it had unfrozen that program at the end of March.

However, missing from the list is the Farm Labor Stabilization Program, which farmers report they have still been unable to get answers on. Also missing is the Regional Food Business Centers program, which has been paused since January. The Organic Market Development Grant and the Transition to Organic Partnership Programs are also still paused, although farm groups told Civil Eats that the USDA has indicated to the organic industry that it is nearly done with its review.

Other programs that farmers and organizations have reported to Civil Eats as having paused payments included the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program, the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, and the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Also unclear is whether all funding for the Environmental Quality Incentive Program and Conservative Stewardship Programs has been released or if only a first $20 million chunk was unfrozen. (Civil Eats’ ongoing list has been updated to reflect additional programs the USDA identified as frozen.)

The USDA froze funding soon after President Trump took office. In a letter to Senator Klobuchar, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the pause is in service of a “substantive review of contracts, personnel, and spending” that is her responsibility during a transition. The agency has also canceled some individual contracts within programs that it says violate President Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Since then, farmers have struggled to get answers as to when expected reimbursements might arrive or if their contracts might be cancelled, causing significant financial distress and uncertainty. The USDA has provided few details in response to press inquiries, and the list provided to Senator Klobuchar represents the first significant disclosure of details.

Civil Eats sent a list of the missing programs to USDA and asked the agency to clarify if those were also under review despite not being on their list. A USDA spokesperson did not provide specific details but sent the following statement: “While USDA can confirm ongoing review of most of these programs, USDA offered this information to the Ranking Member in response to her ongoing oversight inquiries. Taking that good faith exchange and introducing it to the press is unfortunate.”  (Link to this post.)

Marker bills are small bills that senators and representatives attempt to insert into the larger legislative package during farm bill negotiations. Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), said getting bills out there, even when the future of the farm bill is uncertain, helps advocates and members of Congress organize support (or opposition). Plus, the farm bill process could begin at any time. “Essentially, we have to be ready,” he told Civil Eats.

Here are six bills to pay attention to.

Food Security and Farm Protection Act, introduced by Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas): A revision of the EATS Act  that would overturn California’s Proposition 12, which banned selling pork from pigs raised in tight confinement. This new bill would prevent states from restricting food sales based on farm production practices if the “pre-harvest production” occurred in another state. This would mean California couldn’t stop pork from pigs raised in gestation crates in Iowa from being sold within its borders. It’s a top priority for the National Pork Producers Association.

New Producer Economic Security Act, introduced by Nikki Budzinski (D-Illinois), Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), Joe Courtney (D-Connecticut), Don Davis (D-North Carolina), et al.: A major priority of the Young Farmers Coalition, the bill creates a new program within USDA that would help young and new farmers access land, credit, and capital.

Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act, introduced by Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Peter Welch (D-Vermont), Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): Creates an office and team of investigators within the USDA to prevent anticompetitive practices in the meat and poultry industry and enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act. Backed by the National Farmers Union and U.S. Cattlemen’s Association.

Dairy Nutrition Incentive Program Act, introduced by Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) in the Senate, Jim Costa (D-CA) and Nick Langworthy (R-NY) in the House: Backed by the dairy industry, the bill would give SNAP recipients who buy dairy products extra dollars to buy more cheese and yogurt.

Livestock Owned By Communities to Advance Local (LOCAL) Food Act, introduced by Peter Welch (D-Vermont), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont): A simple tweak to the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) that will make it easier for farmers to sell animals slaughtered on their farms directly to consumers. It’s a priority of the National Family Farm Coalition.

Save Our Small (SOS) Farms Act, introduced by Jahana Hayes (D-Connecticut) et al. in the House, Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) in the Senate: Supported by NSAC, the bill would make it easier for small farms to access crop insurance and disaster aid. (Link to this post.)

Vaden, who served as the top lawyer for the USDA during Trump’s first term and is currently a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade, is being considered for the role of deputy secretary, reporting to the Secretary of Agriculture, and tasked with running daily operations.

Previously, Vaden provided the legal justification for the agency’s controversial decision to move the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service out of Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, Missouri. At the start of the hearing, Chairman John Boozman (R-Arkansas) referenced that experience and asked whether Vaden anticipates “any future reorganizations that might be necessary to maximize the efficiency of the department?”

Vaden skipped answering that question and instead emphasized his commitment to communicating with the committee. Since Trump took office, the USDA has laid off thousands of employees and recently offered another opportunity for staff to resign. Other outlets have reported that more significant layoffs and reorganizations are coming “within weeks.” During that last stint at the USDA, Politico reported that Vaden’s leadership led to plummeting morale.

When ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) asked Vaden about a list of 15 programs the USDA provided that have been affected by the agency’s funding freeze, he also emphasized communication. “We’ll get you the information that you need.”

For most of the hearing, though, senators on both sides of the aisle brought up how tariffs might impact farmers and how to tackle trade deficits. Vaden pointed to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ six trade missions planned so far and said the agency should also tackle “phony” health and sanitary concerns that countries use to keep American products out. China recently stopped imports of some American chicken, for example, because they said the meat contained a banned antibiotic.

“What I hope to bring, should I be confirmed as deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture, is a constant reminder to the president’s trade team that we need to be on offense when it comes to American agriculture,” Vaden said. “Because ultimately what we’re going to be judged on is how many new markets we have opened up for our producers where they could not previously sell.”

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia), who signed onto a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus that claims Vaden’s record “reflects a pattern of undermining civil rights protections,” voiced the importance of outreach efforts to ensure underserved farmers can equitably participate in the USDA’s programs and the department’s history of discrimination against Black farmers. “Do you agree that USDA has a well-documented record of racial discrimination against minority farmers?” he asked.

“I do agree that there are court rulings that have found that, yes, Senator,” Vaden replied.

Since Rollins took over at the USDA, she has celebrated the cancellation of grant contracts to groups that highlight helping Black and other underserved farmers to align with President Trump’s executive order to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Vaden responded positively to a question from Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas)  about making sure the “guardrails are loose enough” for farmers to access pesticides, sharing that his family has long been involved in no-till row crop farming.

“That only becomes possible if you have in your tool kit as a farmer the amazing chemicals that are provided in order to clear the land so that you can plant. And so if you take those chemicals away, what you are doing is you are taking a tool out of the tool kit of the farmer,” he said.

While the USDA does not regulate pesticides, he said he looks forward to working with agencies that do, like the EPA, on the issue. Tyler Clarkson’s nomination to take the top lawyer job Vaden previously held, running the Office of General Counsel, was also considered during the hearing. (Link to this post.)

The hearing came during the same week that House lawmakers are expected to vote on a budget bill that might lock in those cuts. A version of the budget passed in the Senate last week, but House Republicans are eyeing more significant cuts before a vote, in order to get more fiscally conservative members of their party on board. One number that has circulated so far is $230 billion in cuts to SNAP, which would likely come from rolling back a Biden-era update called the Thrifty Food Plan that increased benefits by about $1 a day to align with the current cost of a healthy diet.

In her opening statement, Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) accused Republicans of supporting those cuts in the budget bill “to pay for tax cuts that predominantly go to billionaires and large corporations.”

“If making families hungrier so the rich can get richer weren’t bad enough, cutting SNAP also cuts farm income for America’s family farmers,” she continued. “This cut would slash farm revenue by approximately $30 billion, on top of the markets they’re losing because of the dumbest trade war in American history.”

Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) noted at one point that Democrats were talking about “a bill that doesn’t exist yet,” and his team told Civil Eats that while he did not support the 2021 update to the Thrifty Food Plan, he is not looking to roll it back now. During the hearing, he largely expressed support for SNAP while pointing to what he sees as a need to strengthen “the connection between receiving SNAP and securing employment.”

“We must preserve benefits for those truly in need, but also ensure that SNAP guides participants to independence and self-sufficiency,” he said.

Most SNAP recipients are either children or elderly; most recipients who can work do. The program also has general work requirements, employment and training programs, and additional requirements that apply to working adults without dependents. However, about 40 percent of working adults are not subject to the requirements due to state waivers, a point Republicans emphasized. “States are abusing loopholes in the law and keep people on the sidelines and stuck in lives of government dependency,” said Representative Mike Bost (R-Illinois).

During the hearing, Angela Rachidi from the American Enterprise Institute repeatedly said evidence points to the benefits of work requirements in SNAP, while Diane Schanzenbach, a professor and economist at Northwestern University, said the most recent research shows the requirements do not actually lead to increased employment.

“If I have to sit through one more Republican lecture about how SNAP discourages work, I might lose it. Spare us the condescending talk about the dignity of work. If you guys cared about that, you’d be raising the minimum wage, but you don’t,” said Representative Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts). “Call me radical, but I don’t think it’s morally right to slash a food benefit that costs a sliver of the budget while farmers get hammered and food prices go through the roof.”

Behind the scenes, lawmakers told Civil Eats that if Republicans get deep SNAP cuts into a budget bill, which they can pass through a process called reconciliation with fewer votes, the prospect of getting a 2025 farm bill passed will become even more remote. (Link to this post.)

This story has been updated to more accurately reflect Chairman Thompson’s position on a Thrifty Food Plan rollback.

The news came after a series of executive orders signed by President Trump that define sex and gender so that schools that allow transgender female athletes to participate in women’s sports are in violation of Title IX. “In order to continue to receive taxpayer dollars from USDA, the state of Maine must demonstrate compliance with Title IX, which protects female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males,” Rollins wrote in a letter. The National Collegiate Athletic Association estimates less than a tenth of 1 percent of college athletes are transgender.

In response, Maine today filed a lawsuit against the USDA. “Under the banner of keeping children safe, the Trump Administration is illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed,” Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said in a statement. “This is just another example where no law or consequence appears to restrain the administration as it seeks capitulation to its lawlessness. The President and his Cabinet secretaries do not make the law and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the President that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law.”

In the statement, Frey said that the Child Nutrition Program of the Maine Department of Education was “unable to access several sources of federal funding, all of which are necessary to feed children and vulnerable adults.” That’s despite the fact that Rollins, in her letter, said school meals would not be affected but that funding for “certain administrative and technological functions in schools” would be withheld. “This is only the beginning,” she said, “though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”

The USDA did not respond to a question from Civil Eats asking for details on what other kind of funding the agency, which oversees food and agriculture, would withhold from a state education department.

This is not the only such dispute: Earlier this year, the agency initiated a Title IX compliance review of the University of Maine. In March, it announced the university system complied with the orders on keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports and as a result “has been able to access all federal funds from USDA.” Then, at the end of March, Rollins sent a letter to California governor Gavin Newsom initiating a similar review of USDA funding that flows to California’s Department of Education, this time related to a state law that stops schools from requiring teachers to notify parents of their children’s gender identity.

In her letter, Rollins said she is assisting the U.S. Department of Education in investigating whether that law violates the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The USDA also did not respond to a question asking for details on what the agency’s role in that investigation would be, given the issue is not related to food or agriculture. In the meantime, California’s state superintendent said it would defend the state law, which he said protects the rights of LGBTQ+ students. (Link to this post.)

Rollins said she was inspired by the healthy foods offered at Ferdinand T. Day School, part of the Alexandria City Public School system. “This is what we should be supporting at USDA,” she said, pointing to the salad bar behind them, including “moving farm-fresh produce, as much as is possible, into the schools.”

However, the visit came just a week after the USDA cancelled $10 million in fiscal year 2025 funding for USDA’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant program. That followed the earlier cancellation of $660 million in funding for the Local Food for Schools and Child Care program. Both programs enable schools to get more fresh, local food into cafeterias while supporting small farms.

When asked about how canceling funding fit in with her stated commitment to healthier food in schools, Rollins said she is realigning the agency around “what works well, what’s important” and that a lot of the money being pulled back had not yet been spent or committed. “What we are pulling back now is the COVID-era programs that were affirmed under the last administration that were always meant to come back,” she said.

The Patrick Leahy Farm to School grant program has been in place since 2013, and the school Rollins and Kennedy were visiting likely benefited from it, at least tangentially. The Virginia Department of Education received the grants in 2017, 2020, and 2022 to expand farm-to-school efforts across the state. Last year, Alexandria City Public Schools’ nutrition staff participated in raising awareness of Virginia Farm-to-School; they posted a photo of the same salad bar set-up to showcase their commitment.

In addition to getting more fresh food in school meals, Kennedy spoke about getting processed foods out. He said he and Rollins were in the process of revising the report that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee delivered under President Biden, which is meant to inform updates to the standards. Kennedy said that it “looked like it was written by the food processing industry, and we are going to come up with a document that is simple, that lets people know with great clarity what kind of foods their children need to eat, what kind of foods they can eat, and what’s good for them.”

Finally, Kennedy and Rollins talked about their focus on supporting state-level efforts to get food dyes out of school meals and soda out of the SNAP program, which Kennedy highlighted at an event in West Virginia last week. (Link to this post.)

Representative Seth Magaziner (D-Rhode Island) said that one of those offices is a branch of the National Marine Fisheries Service in his district, noting that NOAA is an “economic engine” for fishing and agriculture, two industries that depend on weather and climate data. “Fishermen rely on accurate weather predictions to safely navigate our waters,” he said. “Farmers rely on NOAA’s climate models to make informed decisions that affect their crops and livelihoods.”

Mary Glackin, a 30-year NOAA employee who is now retired, emphasized that NOAA’s National Weather Service data underpins all private weather forecasting in the country.

NOAA is also the primary regulator of fisheries, and witnesses said they are already seeing impacts from cuts. Elizabeth L. Lewis, at attorney at Eubanks & Associates, told the lawmakers that Atlantic bluefin tuna was overfished by 125 percent this year because NOAA failed to close the fishery on time and that several other fisheries, including scallops and Pacific salmon, likely face delayed openings.

Sarah Schumann, a commercial fisherman from Rhode Island, said she had approached Trump’s populist rise with cautious optimism but now she believes DOGE’s cuts threaten the livelihoods of Americans who work the waterfronts.

“All of the ambitious and visionary things that fishermen desperately need—the faster, more collaborative data collection and decision making, the greater attention to the multitude of stressors affecting fishery habitats, the supports for young people to enter thriving fishing careers—will be vastly more difficult to achieve with a diminished and distressed NOAA workforce,” she said. “How can NOAA and other agencies possibly ever solidify and sustain the kind of partnership with working people in coastal communities that is so urgently needed when the agency is being terrorized by oligarchs and their minions who’ve never done an honest day’s work in their lives?”

Schumann had previously volunteered to serve on NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, which the agency disbanded on February 28 along with two other committees that served as interfaces between the fishing industry and NOAA.

Representatives Sarah Elfreth (D-Maryland), Melanie Stansburg (D-New Mexico), Val Hoyle (D-Oregon), Julia Brownley (D-California), Maxine Dexter (D-Oregon), and ranking member Jared Huffman (D-California) also attended the forum. (Link to this post.)

April 3, 2025 – A day after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began firing employees and eliminating entire departments as part of a massive reduction and reorganization of its workforce, Calley Means defended the cuts in a combative interview at a Politico Live healthcare event in Washington, D.C.

Means, the co-founder of healthcare startup TrueMed, is working with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a special government employee at HHS and is a central figure in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, and he described the cuts as a dismissal of bureaucrats.

Politico’s Dasha Burns pushed back on that framing, citing the fact that career employees, including scientists, have been let go. “Those scientists have overseen a record of utter failure,” Means said. “Fundamentally what Bobby has done is, he has taken over a department that has utterly failed.”

While sparring with hecklers in the audience, whom he accused of being lobbyists, Means accused Burns and the media at large of ignoring a chronic disease epidemic among American children and said Kennedy’s focus is on solving that issue, starting with understanding “what’s in our food.” But he didn’t provide answers as to how Kennedy plans to get that work done with a drastically reduced workforce, including at least 3,500 dismissed Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees.

Means said cutting “indirect costs” would allow HHS to send more money to researchers, although some research funding on chronic disease has already been cut. That same day, a coalition of researchers filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is part of HHS, challenging cancellations of research grants.

He also mentioned Kennedy’s commitment to “radical transparency,” specifically citing the White House MAHA Commission. However, the commission’s first meeting and a followup meeting with MAHA supporters in March were both closed to the press. In addition, this week’s HHS cuts reportedly included the entire FDA communications team and staff that work on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Meanwhile, around the corner on Capitol Hill, lawmakers in both chambers asked Kennedy to provide more details on the layoffs and restructuring. Representative Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky) said HHS staff will brief the House Energy and Commerce Committee next week, while Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) invited Kennedy to appear in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Cassidy was initially skeptical of Kennedy’s nomination to lead the department but ultimately voted to confirm him. (Link to this post.)

April 9, 2025 Update: President Trump announced he is pausing the higher, country-specific tariffs announced on April 2 for 90 days. The universal 10 percent tariff is still in effect. China, which has since retaliated with higher tariffs and imposed a ban on imports from some American chicken and sorghum companies it attributes to contamination, will now face a 125 percent tariff. European Union member states also voted to impose tariffs on American goods including corn and soybeans.

April 2, 2025 — At an event in the White House Rose Garden today, President Trump announced a 10 percent baseline tariff on imports from all countries and higher retaliatory tariffs on some of the United States’ most important agricultural trade partners.

Trump will levy tariffs of 34 percent against China and 20 percent against the European Union. Mexico and Canada will be exempt from the new tariffs, but Trump has already put in place existing tariffs against those countries. A long list of other food and farm trade partners are subject to higher tariffs as well; Trump has set each country’s tariffs at about half the rate of its existing tariffs on U.S. goods.

“We have to take care of our people, and we’re going to take care of our people first,” Trump said, pitching the idea that the tariffs will encourage more companies to produce and sell goods within the U.S., boosting American manufacturing. He said his plan has already sparked $6 trillion in new investments in the U.S,, and the White House put out a fact sheet on the success of the tariffs he implemented during his first term. “It’s going to be fantastic for the workers. It’s going to be fantastic for everyone,” he said.

But economists say that the tariffs will cause food prices to rise and negatively impact Americans struggling to feed their families, not to mention small businesses like independent grocers and restaurants. Farmers and others across the food system are also incredibly worried about profound economic consequences. Last time around, the tariffs caused farmers who export their crops to lose billions of dollars; Trump’s USDA bailed them out with close to $30 billion in taxpayer funds.

“By declaring a worldwide trade war, the administration is hurting American farmers, workers and consumers. Increasing input costs, shutting farmers out of export markets and causing middle-class families to pay more at the grocery store is not a winning strategy,” said Representative Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, in a statement.

Brooke Rollins, who sat directly in front of Trump in the audience, has already hinted that the administration will again issue payments to commodity farmers if they are hurt by the tariffs. Rollins also made two announcements related to boosting trade for farmers over the past week. She announced she’ll travel to Vietnam, Japan, India, Peru, Brazil, and the United Kingdom this year to boost agricultural trade, and that the USDA is making about $300 million available for programs intended to expand international markets for farm products. (Link to this post.)

“There is no better governor in America than your governor, Kim Reynolds,” Rollins said. “Everything she sends us, whatever the waiver is, especially on school programs in the summer, we will be looking at very very closely and are really really excited about.”

In 2024, Reynolds submitted a waiver request to the USDA to run a program she said would serve more kids at a lower cost. Her office said it did not want to participate in SUN Bucks because the program didn’t explicitly promote healthy foods. Instead, she proposed giving out boxes of healthy foods at distribution sites.

The USDA, under President Biden, denied the waiver. Hunger groups across Iowa also fought hard to get Reynolds to opt in to SUN Bucks instead, arguing that the flexibility of the cash benefit is what makes the program effective, allowing it to surmount the challenge of getting meals to families when kids are not in school. Congress modeled SUN Bucks after the COVID-era Pandemic EBT program, which researchers estimate lifted around 3 million children out of hunger. But Reynolds doubled down and resubmitted the waiver request after Trump took office.

Rollins’ comments come as other waivers to restrict hunger programs are also on the table. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently indicated the administration will also grant waivers for states to restrict SNAP participants from buying soda and other unhealthy foods. But a recent bill that passed Iowa’s House takes those restrictions to a new level, whittling down SNAP-eligible foods to a short list of staples while boosting incentives for fresh produce purchases.

During her trip, Rollins also met with members of the Iowa Farm Bureau, spoke at the Iowa Ag Leaders dinner, and announced she would release $537 million in funding already committed to oil and gas companies and fuel distributors to pay for shipping, storing, and dispensing higher ethanol and biodiesel fuel blends. (Link to this post.)

March 31, 2025 – Last week, lawmakers in the House voted to overturn new efficiency standards for commercial refrigerators used by food processors, distributors, grocery stores, food banks, and restaurants, a move that could significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions from the food system.

Because the standards were finalized by the Department of Energy (DOE) at the end of the Biden administration, Congress has the ability to roll them back through a process called Congressional Review. For that to happen, the Senate would also need to vote on the resolutions. Trump’s DOE already paused the implementation of the standards, along with many other energy efficiency rules that affect home appliances as well.

During a floor debate, Republicans said the standards represent burdensome regulations that will increase costs on businesses. “Cafes, restaurants, and grocery stores would be forced to purchase more expensive, less effective equipment. As we all know, those costs would be passed on to consumers,” said Representative Craig Goldman (R-Texas).

Democrats countered that the standards are common-sense updates to energy efficiency guidelines that will lead to significant savings. They pointed to the fact that two thirds of products on the markets already meet the standards and that the DOE determined increased initial costs, on average, are balanced by energy savings after just three and a half years. Businesses would not be required to update appliances currently in use; the standards only apply to new purchases. “Republicans continue to do the bidding of Big Oil and Gas. This resolution proves that Republicans are completely out of touch,” said Representative Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey).

While the standards float under the radar as technical details, Sarah Gleeson, climate solutions research manager at Project Drawdown, said that when it comes to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions from refrigeration are ​​“extremely important.” Globally, cooling—which includes refrigeration and air conditioning across all sectors—accounts for about 10 percent of emissions. Two thirds of those emissions come from energy use, while the other third stem from the use of refrigerant chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin already announced he’s reconsidering another Biden-era rule that would phase out the use of HFCs over time. Managing leaks of those refrigerants and switching to alternatives both rank high on Project Drawdown’s list of effective climate solutions. (Link to this post.)

According to The New York Times, during the event, Kennedy told states to submit waivers to his department, although he does not have jurisdiction over SNAP.  However, the Times also reported that Calley Means, a White House advisor, said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who does have SNAP jurisdiction, agreed to grant the waivers that states need to make the change. Rollins had previously indicated she was open to granting the waivers.

Restrictions on soda in SNAP have been at the center of heated debate for years. Proponents say they’re common sense and will improve Americans’ health. Opponents say there’s no evidence that will happen and that low-income Americans deserve to make their own choices. (Link to this post.)

March 27, 2025 – Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan to make sweeping changes to his agency’s structure and workforce this morning, with the most significant job cuts planned for the agency that regulates food safety, food additives, and antibiotic use in agriculture.

Of the 20,000 jobs Kennedy said he’ll eliminate across the HHS, 3,500 will be at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He’ll also cut 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which monitors infectious disease outbreaks, including the bird flu that is still spreading on poultry and dairy farms. The cuts are in addition to several thousand probationary employees fired from the HHS in February.

In a video posted to YouTube, Kennedy said that in the first few months on the job, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency, he determined that HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy filled with “tremendous waste and duplication,” including subagencies working at cross purposes. “We’re going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” he said. “We’re going to imbue the agency with a clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.”

The plan is in line with multiple pledges Kennedy made before his confirmation as Secretary, when he said in different instances he’d eliminate entire departments and told FDA employees to “pack your bags.”

In addition to job cuts, he’s consolidating 28 HHS divisions into 15 and combining five smaller agencies into a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). FDA was still in the process of a restructuring that started in 2023 to move all of its work on food into one place to better prioritize food safety and nutrition. Jim Jones, the director of that division, resigned in February in response to the earlier job cuts, which he said threatened his team’s ability to do their work.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, put out a statement today highlighting similar concerns. “Despite recent encouraging statements about addressing infant formula safety and harmful food chemicals, mass layoffs will undermine these initiatives and hinder the FDA’s ability to ensure our food is safe to eat,” he said.

In the video, Kennedy said that the job cuts would lead to a painful period but that no essential services will be cut and the changes will save taxpayers money while radically improving quality of service. “Our key services delivered through Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA and CDC and other agencies will enter a new era of responsiveness and a new era of effectiveness,” he said. (Link to this post.)

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the number of layoffs proposed by Kennedy. The numbers have been updated to align with the fact sheet provided by HHS.

Called the Honor Farmer Contracts Act of 2025, the bill directs the USDA to immediately “implement all agreements and contracts entered into” and to “rapidly pay past due amounts.” It also says the USDA “shall not cancel” any signed contracts with farmers or organizations supporting them unless they’ve failed to comply with the terms. Technically, the contracts are already legally binding documents, but the agency has not been treating them as such.

“Farmers across the country have been in limbo ever since the USDA froze previously signed agreements and contracts, with many facing catastrophic consequences if these freezes continue,” Senator Booker told Civil Eats. “USDA’s refusal to pay what is owed to farmers and the organizations that support them is theft, plain and simple.”

Booker, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, had previously prepared similar language to potentially attach to a legislative package but ultimately decided to introduce the standalone bill. About a dozen other Senate Democrats, including fellow Ag Committee members Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont), signed on as cosponsors. Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-New Mexico) will introduce a companion bill in the House.

Since President Trump’s inauguration, payments for already-contracted projects have been paused across a broad array of farmer programs. The USDA says it has been reviewing those programs and contracts to ensure they align with Trump’s directives. The agency has also canceled individual grant contracts based on their inclusion of diversity and equity language. Pauses and cancellations have caused serious financial distress on farms and gutted many nonprofit organizations that provide training, market opportunities, and other support.

At the same time, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has targeted the USDA’s “boots on the ground” through office closures and employee cuts, prompting concerns about the availability of services like loan administration and conservation and technical assistance for farmers.

“It’s a critical time of year for farmers and ranchers. They should be doing what they love—feeding our communities, not worrying about unpaid contracts,” Booker said. “This legislation will fix that by forcing USDA and the Trump Administration to hold up their end of the deal.”

“We thank Senator Booker and Congressman Vasquez for their leadership in forcing Secretary Rollins to honor USDA obligations,” said Joe Maxwell, president of Farm Action Fund, which brought together more than 300 organizations to sign a letter in support of the bill. “When farmers shake hands, it’s a deal. No less should be expected of our government or the Trump administration.”

In addition to enforcing the terms of contracts, the bill requires the USDA to provide Congress with written notice and justification at least 60 days ahead of closing any Farm Service Agency (FSA) county office, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) field office, or Rural Development Service Center. Two weeks ago, AgDaily reported that the USDA listed nearly 60 FSA and NRCS offices on a list of lease terminations on DOGE’s website. Those offices are generally farmers’ first and only pathway to connect with USDA programs and services. Questions also remain as to how the agency will fulfill Trump’s order ending remote work if offices are shuttered.

So far, Republicans have refrained from calling attention to the pauses and cuts; when asked, they have said they support the USDA’s work so far. With the Republican Party in control in both the Senate and House, the bill has little chance of moving, although GOP lawmakers have been faced with angry farmers and USDA employees at town halls and public events in their districts. (Link to this post.)

These grants were paid for by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and many small farms used the funds as a cost-share to afford solar arrays on their land, simultaneously reducing their long-term energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

In a day-one executive order, Trump ordered agencies to freeze that funding and to determine whether the grants aligned with policies to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy.” A separate executive order directed all agencies to terminate funding related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), which are also known as DEI initiatives.

In yesterday’s announcement, the USDA said farmers will have 30 days to voluntarily edit their projects to “remove harmful DEIA and far-left climate features.”

“President Trump made tackling America’s energy emergency a top priority from day one, and this review allows rural energy providers and small businesses to realign their projects with that mission,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in the release.

But Hana Vizcarra, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said that it’s not clear how farmers who installed solar panels might do that, since the order is primarily about boosting fossil fuel production. Since Congress allotted the funds for specific types of projects, she added, the agency can’t legally go back and change what the money is used for.

“I think they’re being completely disingenuous. This is about finding another way to deny farmers what they’re owed,” Vizcarra said. “To me, this is not any more reasonable or lawful than the blanket freeze.” Earthjustice is currently suing the USDA over its freezing of IRA funds.

In a letter sent to farmers with REAP grants today, the agency said that if farmers don’t make updates through a web portal the USDA has set up, “it will be considered that they do not wish to make changes to their proposals, and disbursements and other actions will resume after the 30 days.” In response to a question regarding whether “other actions” might include cancellations, a USDA spokesperson sent Civil Eats the same language that was in the announcement and emphasized the word “voluntary.” Within other programs, they have been canceling individual contracts they determine don’t align with Trump’s order on DEI. (Link to this post.)

On March 14, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) sent a letter signed by 80 House Democrats asking Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to provide details on the canceling of two USDA programs that help move local food from small farms into schools and food banks. On March 20, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and her New York colleagues Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative John Mannion sent a letter to Rollins regarding a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) proposal to close a state office housing three USDA sub-agencies that support farmers and rural communities. She asked for an explanation as to how the USDA plans to maintain services if the office closes.

And today, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) led 25 Senate Democrats in asking for details on the reported cancellation of food purchases within an emergency hunger program. Klobuchar asked for a prompt response to her questions within a week.

Staff in both Pingree and Gillibrand’s offices told Civil Eats that they have not yet received a response to their letters. It does typically take federal agencies some time to respond to inquiries from Congress, but multiple sources have told Civil Eats off the record that overall, the agency has not been communicating with lawmakers in the way that has historically been typical of the relationship.

However, a spokesperson for Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) said that Boozman has had “recent conversations with Secretary Rollins about issues important to farm country” and that Senate Republicans struggled to get timely responses from former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who dismissed their concerns. Boozman is likely referring to an October 2022 letter to then-USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack asking for details about how the agency was using COVID-related funding for non-COVID-related programs. But Democrats are stressing the urgency of their current concerns, such as funding for emergency food purchases that organizations had been expecting to pay farmers and use to feed hungry people.

In response to written questions, a USDA spokesperson echoed that sentiment. “Secretary Rollins prioritizes serious, timely engagement with Congress. The idea that there’s a lapse in responsiveness—based on letters sent just days ago—is simply absurd. Juxtaposed with the Biden Administration, where Secretary Vilsack took months—plural—to respond to even the simplest of inquiries, the Trump Administration values its relationship with Congress.” (Link to this post.)

First, farmers report that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has paused payments within the Farm Labor Stabilization Program, a Biden-era effort intended to help farmers offset the cost of hiring H-2A workers while improving conditions for those workers.

At the same time, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has interrupted efforts to increase the recruitment of H-2A workers from northern Central America.

Some farmers are now facing labor challenges as a result of both actions.

This story grew out of the daily reporting we’re doing here at the Food Policy Tracker; we have been talking to farmers around the country who alerted us to the freeze and the cuts, and we followed up with a number of labor recruiters and former USAID officials. Get the full story here. (Link to this post.)

The rules tighten standards around record keeping within supply chains, so that when food safety issues arise, it will be easier to trace and contain them. They were first proposed in 2020 during President Trump’s first term and finalized under former President Biden.

In December, more than 100 industry groups sent a de-regulatory wishlist to incoming President Trump that included an ask to delay the food safety requirements by “at least three years.” Among the signatories was FMI, The Food Industry Association, which represents grocers and other food companies. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who oversees the FDA, has said repeatedly that he would eliminate food industry influence within FDA.

In February, advocacy group U.S. PIRG released an analysis that found hospitalizations and deaths from contaminated food doubled in 2024 compared to 2023. “In the year 2025, the United States has access to some of the best technology in the world for keeping track of products moving through the food system, yet we still have a hard time figuring out where a bag of lettuce came from and getting contaminated peanut butter off the shelves,” Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), said in a statement criticizing the FDA’s decision. “Unfortunately, this delay will only serve to keep the public in the dark.”

On the same day, the agency also debuted a new tool that allows consumers to search for the contaminant levels FDA sets for substances including lead and pesticides. “HHS is committed to radical transparency to give Americans authentic, informed consent about what they are eating,” Kennedy said in the press release.

Tom Neltner, executive director of Unleaded Kids, a nonprofit that focuses on gaps in lead policy, applauded the agency. “The tool is helpful for food companies trying to comply and for consumers trying to understand what they can expect from food companies,” he said. Neltner noted that while the tool does a good job of showing the standards FDA does have in one place, what many people are concerned about are the standards the agency doesn’t have. For example, there are no limits for cadmium or arsenic in baby food or for PFAS in food.

CSPI President and Executive Director Peter Lurie, echoed the sentiment, telling Civil Eats that while it may be beneficial to have the information in one spot, what the tool lays bare is that “most toxic elements are not regulated in most commodities by the FDA.” (Link to this post.)

But the announcement came on the same day that Politico reported another yet another USDA program’s already-allocated funding has been paused, this one covering $500 million for food banks, with $148 million in food purchases already canceled.

Overall, a lack of clarity remains as to which farmers and groups will receive grant payments and when. Yesterday, Civil Eats reviewed an email from a USDA employee saying the agency has completed its review of the Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) and payments are cleared to resume, but several other programs remain frozen. (Link to this post.)

However, the announcement comes at a time when experts are questioning whether the agency will even have the resources to maintain its basic responsibilities related to food safety.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has long been concerned about heavy metals in food, and the announcement came just a day after Consumer Reports shared tests with the agency that identified metals in some infant formula products. While Consumer Reports’ scientists found almost no mercury or cadmium in common products, in some, they found levels of arsenic and lead that were high enough to be concerning to experts. (Formula companies challenged the testing methods and results.) Brian Ronholm, head of food policy at Consumer Reports, called the quick announcement “very encouraging.”

Current law does not require the FDA to test for toxins like heavy metals. The agency does regulate the nutrient content of formula and tests for microbial pathogens, like the bacteria that set off the infant formula shortage of 2022. In the announcement, the agency said it will also kick off a review of the nutrients in products and take steps to expand the country’s supply of formula.

However, earlier this month, the Trump administration shut down a joint FDA-USDA committee that had been studying the situation that led to the shortage in order to make recommendations on preventing another. The FDA has also fired critical staff working on food safety and put a freeze on credit cards researchers use to purchase products to test.

“The FDA is deeply committed to ensuring that moms and other caregivers of infants and young children and other individuals who rely on infant formula for their nutritional needs have confidence that these products are safe, consistently available, and contain the nutrients essential to promote health and well-being during critical stages of development and life,” Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner said in a statement announcing the plan. (Link to this post.)

Congress included $10 billion in last December’s spending bill to compensate those farmers for low crop prices and high input costs. Farmers will be able to apply for the funding starting tomorrow. The USDA also said it will streamline the process by sending pre-filled applications to farmers who are eligible: The program is for growers of corn, soybeans, rice, sorghum, oilseeds, and other row crops.

“With clear direction from Congress, USDA has prioritized streamlining the process and accelerating these payments ahead of schedule, ensuring farmers have the resources necessary to manage rising expenses and secure financing for next season,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a statement. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle celebrated the announcement.

In the end-of-year spending bill, Congress allocated another $21 billion to compensate farmers for damage caused by natural disasters. Agency officials said those payments will be available later this year. The quick rollout is happening at a time when other farmers who already have signed USDA contracts to fund conservation practices, new processing facilities, and market development say their payments are not being processed. The USDA is also canceling contracted payments for projects, including young farmer training, that prioritize equity. (Link to this post.)

In a press release, the agency said it would also reduce the amount of worker safety data plants are required to provide and that the changes would ensure meatpackers can meet demand. “America leads the world in pork and poultry production, and we are committed to ensuring our producers remain competitive on a global scale without being held back by unnecessary bureaucracy,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in the release.

Republican agriculture leaders Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas) and G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) applauded the decision, as did industry groups including the National Chicken Council and the Meat Institute, the trade group that represents the country’s biggest meatpackers. Meat Institute CEO Julie Anna Potts said it showed Secretary Rollins will eliminate hurdles to efficient production of safe meat and poultry. “We appreciate her wasting no time to support innovation in our industry. We look forward to working with the Secretary and our livestock and poultry suppliers to provide certainty to the supply chain and to allow additional companies the opportunity to utilize this system,” she said.

However, Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which represents more than 15,000 poultry workers, said workers cannot safely process meat at the faster speeds. “Increased line speeds will hurt workers—it’s not a maybe, it’s a definite—and increased production speeds will jeopardize the health and safety of every American that eats chicken,” he said in a statement.

Trump’s USDA started this same process during his first term, initially granting waivers to speed up meat production at the start of the pandemic, but the Biden administration withdrew the rule that would have permanently increased speeds. Biden’s USDA then allowed some plants to run at faster speeds and launched studies to measure impacts on workers.

When the results of those studies were released in January, Republicans and industry groups pointed to them as proof that faster speeds are safe, while worker groups said they showed evidence of dangerous conditions. The studies did not find a clear correlation between slaughter line speed and worker injuries,  but workers who had a higher “piece rate,” a different measure of individual job pace, did have increased risk of injury. And the studies found 81 percent of poultry workers and 46 percent of pork workers, regardless of line speeds, had increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders and reported high rates of moderate to severe upper extremity pain. (Link to this post.)

Today, the environmental group Earthjustice sued the USDA on behalf of five farms and three nonprofit organizations over the freezing of funds allocated through former President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). (A previous lawsuit over frozen IRA funds targeted the Trump administration more broadly.) Researchers at the University of Illinois recently estimated farmers stand to lose $12.5 billion if those funds are not delivered as promised.

“The Trump administration’s unlawful actions are hurting communities across the country. This is not government efficiency. It is thoughtless waste that inflicts unwarranted financial pain on small farmers and organizations trying to improve their communities,” Hana Vizcarra, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement.

At the same time, a group of Democrats in the Senate are sending a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins asking her to reinstate the two local food programs USDA canceled earlier this week, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, shared with Civil Eats a legislative amendment he’s prepared that would order the USDA to honor its signed contracts with farmers. The amendment directs the USDA to immediately “unfreeze funding for and implement all contracts entered into by the Secretary prior to the date of enactment of this Act” and to pay past-due amounts on contracts as rapidly as possible. It also prohibits the cancellation of “any signed contract with a farmer or an entity providing assistance to farmers, unless the farmer or entity has failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the contract.”

Booker has been vocal in recent Senate hearings about calls and emails he’s been getting from farmers across his home state. “For some of these farmers, they’re saying if they’re not able to move forward with their spring planting, they’re ultimately at risk of losing their farms,” he said.

At this moment, there is no clear path for Booker to introduce the amendment. The Senate is currently debating a Republican-backed bill to keep the government funded beyond Friday night; Booker, like most Senate Democrats, is committed to opposing the bill, so won’t introduce the amendment until the current crisis is resolved. (Link to this post.)

In their last evaluation of the climate crisis, the world’s top scientists found climate change is already making it harder for farmers to produce food—and that challenges including extreme heat, droughts, and destructive weather events will get worse without rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Zeldin’s actions will move the EPA off that path significantly with a reconsideration of what is called the “endangerment finding,” a scientific decision the agency made determining greenhouse gases endanger public health, which underpins the agency’s other climate rules and regulations. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families,” Zeldin said in a statement.

Another stop in Zeldin’s plan is to once again review a rule that determines which bodies of water are subject to restrictions on runoff from farms. Called Waters of the U.S., or “WOTUS,” the rule has been in flux for decades, with every administration changing it and the Supreme Court already weighing in. It has been a key issue for the American Farm Bureau Federation, and House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) thanked Zeldin “for listening to America’s farmers and delivering much needed relief to our rural communities.”

And Zeldin officially ended all of EPA’s office environmental justice work, shutting down offices around the country. Some environmental justice programming at EPA focused on communities disproportionately affected by air and water pollution from the food system. “By shutting down environmental justice, Trump’s EPA is turning its back on protecting clean air and safe drinking water for every American, regardless of where they live or who they voted for,” said Michelle Roos, Executive Director at the Environmental Protection Network, in a statement. (Link to this post.)

That grant was a 2023 award to the Agroecology Commons, a nonprofit that runs a beginning farmer training program and incubator for young farmers who are just starting out and helps them access training, land, and local markets. At the NASDA Conference two weeks ago, Rollins specifically called out the need to make it easier and more attractive for young people to farm. “We need more young farmers to carry on the proud agricultural legacy of innovation, of entrepreneurship, and of feeding our nation,” she said at the time.

That’s in line with Agroecology Commons’ mission, said Leah Atwood, the group’s director of partnerships. Atwood told Civil Eats that the grant helped fund training programs that include farmer-to-farmer skill shares on topics including composting and beekeeping. Three cohorts of beginning farmers have made it through the nine-month training that includes 12 local farm partners so far, and she estimated about a dozen are farming on their own so far. The organization also works to help farmers sell fresh food to their local communities. “There’s a focus on being able to have a livelihood in farming,” she said.

The grant was terminated because it was identified as promoting DEI efforts. Atwood said their programs are open to all farmers, especially low-income individuals, but center those from groups that have historically been left out of farming and barred from accessing resources. “You don’t have to be BIPOC or queer to be here, that’s just who we’re actively welcoming into the space because there’s a need for that,” she said.

The contract was through the Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program, a tiny grant program that got an extra $14 million allocated in 2023 through Biden’s American Rescue Plan. As to Agroecology Commons’ $397,000, “It’s a rounding error for the USDA,” Atwood said. (Link to this post.)

Now, deeper cuts are coming into focus. Last night, Marcia Brown at Politico reported the agency officially ended two local food programs expanded under Biden to connect small farms to school meals and hunger assistance programs like food banks. Organizations with active contracts in those programs told Civil Eats they were devastated by the cuts.

And more cuts are likely: According to an internal USDA document viewed by Civil Eats, staff that cover programs under the agency’s Farm Production and Conservation mission area were given a flowchart to help them determine which funds to continue to distribute and which contracts to refer for potential cancellation.

The document confirms the agency’s review of grant contracts to determine if they include “DEIA or EJ” (diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility or environmental justice) and whether they were funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and include energy or conservation. The chart directs staff to send contracts funded by IRA money that meet certain criteria to the Office of Management and Budget to review. It directs staff to send contracts with other sources of funding that meet certain criteria to the Office of Secretary Rollins to “decide on whether to terminate the agreement or modify the scope of work.”

This is a developing story. Civil Eats is compiling a list of grant program cancellations and pauses, below, and will continue to update the list as more information becomes available. This list is based on cancellations and pauses reported directly to Civil Eats. Email tracker@civileats.com to submit a tip.  (Link to this post)

Full Programs Reportedly Ended to Date

• Working Lands Conservation Corps
• Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Agreement (LFSCC)
• Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program (LFPA)
• Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program (FY 2025 funding canceled, added April 4, 2025)
• Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program (canceled April 14, 2025, some projects continuing under new program)
• Regional Food Business Centers (canceled July 16, 2025)

Programs With Individual Contracts Reportedly Canceled

• Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP)
• Equity in Conservation Outreach Program
• Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program
• Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (added July 16, 2025)

Programs with Payments Reportedly Paused 

• Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) (reported unpaused April 16, 2025)
• Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program (reported unpaused April 15, 2025)
• Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) (some funding released, total status unclear, April 2025)
• Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) (some funding released, total status unclear, April 2025)
• Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) (reported unpaused March 18, 2025)
• Organic Market Development Grants (reported unpaused May 8, 2025)
• Transition to Organic Partnership Program (added April 8, 2025, reported unpaused May 8, 2025)
• Rural Energy for America Program (unpaused March 26, 2025, with changes)
• Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Program (added March 20, 2025)
• The Emergency Food Assistance Program (added March 20, 2025)
• Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) (added March 25, 2025)
• Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (added March 26, 2025)
• Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (added April 11, 2025)
• American Rescue Plan Technical Assistance Investment Program (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Bioproduct Pilot Program (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Infrastructure Investment and Job Act Joint Fire Science Program (Research & Development) (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Restoration/Revegetation (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Capital Maintenance and Improvement (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Forest Service Reverse 911 Grant Program (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Forest and Grassland Collaboratives (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Conservation Outreach, Education and Technical Assistance (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• Farm Loan Borrower Relief Program (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)
• DSA COVID Relief Program (added April 11, 2025 based on USDA list)

The process—called Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)—has been criticized for years as allowing companies to self-certify food ingredients as safe without government regulators evaluating potential risks. “For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the U.S. food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” Secretary Kennedy said in a press release.

While President Trump has put a pause on all new regulations across the federal government, the HHS announcement falls short of committing to a rule change by only directing FDA to “take steps to explore” the option. It also says the agency is “committed to working with Congress to explore ways legislation can completely close the GRAS loophole.”

The action came up during the first panel at the Consumer Federation of America’s National Food Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, where Beth Johnson, the founder of Food Directions, said the FDA “could be an outlier” when it comes to the Trump administration’s overall deregulatory agenda. (Link to this post.)

Since the USDA began regulating organic certification, NOSB meetings have been the primary public forum for organic farmers, processors, and other industry players to engage with the board, which is responsible for evaluating and voting on updates to the regulations. The meetings happen twice a year. Since 2010, only one meeting, in 2013, was cancelled.

In response to questions as to why the meeting was cancelled or when it might happen, a USDA spokesperson said it is being rescheduled “for a time frame that will provide the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) with sufficient time to brief Secretary Rollins about the role of the NOSB and other AMS federal advisory committees.”

The rescheduling sparked concern among organic advocates since the agency has been making cuts and pausing funding to other farm programs that prioritize climate and environmental aims. The news also comes at a time when organic farmers and advocates have been fighting to restore organic programs, including federal help with the cost of certification that Congress left out of the recent farm bill extension.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a staunch proponent of organic agriculture. At HHS, he does not have jurisdiction over the organic program, but Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has pledged to work closely with him. (Link to this post.)

“Childhood obesity is not a willpower problem, and the rise of early onset Alzheimer’s is not a genetic cause,” Marty Makary said in his opening statement. “We should be and we will be addressing food as it impacts our health.”

Makary is an accomplished surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He’s also been an outspoken critic of the medical establishment’s emphasis on disease treatment over prevention for years. Before the presidential election, he emerged as a close Kennedy ally and supporter of his Make America Healthy Again campaign.

When asked by Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) about the FDA’s controversial list of food additives that are subject to almost no regulation because they’re deemed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), Dr. Markary said he’s concerned about chemicals added to food that create inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract and alter the gut microbiome.

“There’s a body of research now that suggests concern with some of these ingredients. We have to look at those ingredients, and you have my commitment to do so if confirmed as FDA commissioner,” he said. Tuberville also asked him to speed up the timeline on phasing out the use of Red Dye No. 3, which the Biden administration banned at the very last minute, and about seed oils, which Kennedy frequently rails against. Most nutritionists say there is no evidence that they cause harm.

“Seed oils are a good example of where we could benefit from a consolidation of the scientific research,” Dr. Makary said, “and I don’t think it’s any one ingredient in the food supply that’s making our nation’s children sick.” He added that he’d like to work on a pilot program to make school lunches healthier, although the FDA does not run the school lunch program, the USDA does.

School lunch standards were given a nutrition overhaul by the Obama administration, and many pilots to further improve meals have been in place ever since, supported by USDA grants to get fresh food from local farms into schools and shift to more scratch cooking. There’s also a vast landscape of nonprofits and private companies working on these efforts, including the Chef Ann Foundation, Edible Schoolyard, and Brigaid.

Dr. Makary mostly sidestepped multiple questions about the purpose and impacts of recent FDA layoffs—which included staff working on food ingredient oversight—but committed to conducting an assessment “to ensure that the scientists and food inspectors have all the resources they need to do their job.”

He also didn’t directly answer a question from Senator Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) about whether he agreed with HHS’s recent decision to end public comment periods for some rule changes and whether that decision aligned with Kennedy’s stated commitment to radical transparency. “If confirmed, my goals are very clear at the FDA: more cures and meaningful treatments for Americans, including diagnostics, healthy food for children, and rebuilding the public trust,” he said. (Link to this post.)

March 5, 2025 – On Tuesday morning, President Trump doubled the 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods to 20 percent and put 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. The three countries are America’s biggest trading partners. During the State of the Union address last night, Trump pitched the tariffs as a step toward prioritizing “America first” production and markets while boosting America’s power within international trade; Trump said additional tariffs should be expected on April 2. Trump said the tariffs “will be great” for American farmers—but also said that “it may be a little bit of an adjustment period.”

“To our farmers, have a lot of fun, I love you, too,” he said.

Over the past several weeks, farmers representing a wide range of agricultural interests have expressed concerns that tariffs would hurt farmers by threatening export markets and raising the costs of imported goods. At multiple events, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has told farm groups the president understands and is considering those concerns. Economists also warn that tariffs will cause food prices to jump. Some of the biggest potential impacts include:

Fertilizer imports:  According to trade group The Fertilizer Institute (TFI), 85 percent of the mineral fertilizer potash used by American farmers comes from Canada; our northern neighbor also provides a quarter of farmers’ nitrogen needs. In a statement, TFI asked the administration to consider exempting fertilizers from the Canadian tariffs. “A stable and affordable supply of fertilizers is critical to maintaining the global competitiveness of U.S. farmers, strengthening rural economies, and keeping food prices in check,” said CEO Corey Rosenbusch.

Agricultural exports: China is the biggest export market for American farmers. In response to Trump’s tariffs, the country announced it will reciprocate with 15 percent tariffs on American food and agricultural products including soybeans, meat, and chicken. Mexico and Canada are also promising retaliation, which could impact exports of American wine and beer, grains, and meat. During Trump’s first term, tariffs caused economic losses in farm country and the USDA paid farmers tens of billions of dollars to make up for it. Secretary Rollins has said the agency is prepared to do that again.

Food imports and prices: Beyond farmers, economists say everyday Americans should expect higher food prices. That’s because the U.S. imports about $200 billion in food, beverages, and animal feed from the three countries, especially fruits and vegetables from Mexico and animal feed, grains, and meat from Canada. In the past, importers have passed the cost of tariffs on to consumers. Specialty items like avocados and tequila from Mexico and maple syrup from Canada may be harder to find, and major food distributors are already scrambling to figure out what to do.

Still, a lot remains unknown, since Trump uses tariffs as a bargaining tool and has already demonstrated an openness to adjusting them as countries respond. (Link to this post.)

In the Senate, top Agriculture Democrat Amy Klobuchar is bringing third-generation farmer Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union. In the House, Representative Andrea Salinas (D-Oregon) is bringing dairy farmer Bubba King. Representative Sharice Davis (D-Kansas) invited Joe Newland, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau, and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) will be accompanied by farmer Seth Kroeck. As the growing season rapidly approaches, Kroeck is waiting on about $90,000 in frozen conservation funds related to contracts he signed with the USDA last year.

“Like so many hardworking Mainers, Seth has been directly impacted by the President’s illegal funding freeze—which has left farmers without the resources they need to not only keep their businesses running, but to keep our communities fed,” Pingree said in a press release. “Seth’s story is a stark reminder that this administration’s policies aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet; they have real consequences for real people, real families, and real livelihoods.”

To call attention and build opposition to Republicans’ proposed cuts to SNAP benefits (which are not yet final), Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) will host Kristin Warchoza, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. (Link to this post.)

At the NASDA Winter Policy Conference, the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum, and the Commodity Classic, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins talked about her priorities, including fixing a challenging farm economy, supporting a new generation of young farmers, and getting disaster aid out the door. Her announcements included an update that, on March 20, the USDA will begin accepting farmer applications to receive some of the $10 billion in economic hardship assistance that Congress authorized last December. Rollins added that the USDA will begin distributing $20 billion in disaster assistance after that.

But just around the corner from NASDA, Kaitlyn Kimball was one of a group of farmers who traveled to Capitol Hill with the National Family Farm Coalition who said she can’t access $30,000 in funding she already signed a contract for, to implement conservation practices that will make her Connecticut fruit and vegetable farm more self-sufficient. “These programs are a form of risk management,” she said. “As a younger farmer, I’ve only farmed with the weather changing. I’m trying to adapt and make my business resilient, and I’m being punished for that.”

Rollins later announced she had released funds for those programs, but the USDA did not respond to a question as to whether that means all conservation program funding is now flowing, or if she was referring to the first sliver of $20 million released earlier. (And farmers told Civil Eats this week they’re still having trouble accessing any USDA funds.)

At the USDA Forum, Rollins gave a virtual keynote, during which participants rapidly upvoted an audience question about when more conservation funds might be released. “There are a lot of starting farmers that entered contracts (in a lengthy process) with the government that expect those partnerships and obligations to be met,” the participant wrote. Rollins ended the session without addressing any audience questions.

In another Forum session on hunger and nutrition, Artees Vannett, who works on economic development and regenerative agriculture for the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, raised his hand and asked about challenges his tribe was having accessing grant funds. The USDA employees appeared confused by the question and referred him to Rollins’ letter outlining her vision for USDA’s nutrition programs.

Afterwards, Vannett told Civil Eats the USDA owes the tribe $250,000 in reimbursements through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program and is also waiting on payments through a Local Food Purchase Assistance grant (neither of which are part of the bucket of conservation funds Rollins said had been released). “We’re fronting the bill, and it puts excessive risk on us,” he said. “Having claims that are not being reimbursed means we can’t give food to our elders, give food to our people.” (Link to this post.)

In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that “per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.” But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

As the primary regulator of American fisheries, NMFS sets restrictions and enforces laws that prevent overfishing, ensures the safety of the seafood supply, and is involved in permitting for aquaculture systems. It also provides a wealth of data the American seafood industry relies on, including maps, assessments, and research on the state of the oceans and marine life.

As a result, experts and lawmakers are concerned. One former NOAA administrator told a trade publication the impacts on fisheries could be serious. Representative Seth Magaziner (D-Rhode Island) is holding a roundtable discussion today to discuss impacts on his state’s fishing and aquaculture industries, and Representatives from California and Colorado have sent letters calling for investigations into the cuts. Representative Jared Huffman (D-California) told The Hill that he’s been speaking to fisherman and individuals from the shellfish industry who are distressed by the cuts.

Huffman has also expressed concern over NOAA’s climate work, since staff were reportedly directed to make lists of grants that reference the climate crisis and other related terms. NOAA is a premier provider of climate science, and the crisis has profound impacts on fisheries, with warming ocean temperatures and shifting currents affecting marine life in profound ways.

Asked whether and how the cuts might impact the work NMFS does, the NOAA spokesperson said the agency does not do speculative interviews. “NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” he added. (Link to this post.)

Her announcement directs the division of USDA that runs SNAP to “immediately clarify and enforce all rules restricting its beneficiaries to U.S. citizens and legal residents only” and to make sure the department’s messaging does not encourage undocumented immigrants to utilize SNAP. USDA did not respond to questions asking for clarification around whether data exists showing undocumented immigrants are somehow accessing SNAP benefits or whether Secretary Rollins is pointing to current messaging she wants changed.

“The days in which taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize illegal immigration are over,” she said in a statement. “Today’s directive affirms that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will follow the law—full stop.”

Many immigrants, including those that do not have legal authorization to work in the United States, pay taxes but don’t have access to the programs those taxes pay for. According to estimates from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, with an average of close to $9,000 per person. Undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in jobs that feed Americans, on farms, in meatpacking plants, and in restaurants, and food workers have higher rates of food insecurity compared to workers in other sectors. (Link to this post.)

February 26, 2025 – Days after she visited a poultry operation run by Cal-Maine, the country’s largest egg producer, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins revealed a new, five-pronged plan for the USDA to “combat avian flu and reduce egg prices” and said she planned to discuss the situation with President Trump during the administration’s first cabinet meeting.

“We will not solve this issue overnight, but we are confident that our comprehensive strategy will help to stabilize the market in the next three to six months, if not sooner,” she told state agriculture officials at the National Association for State Department of Agriculture’s (NASDA) Winter Policy conference, where she made the announcement.

The plan involves an investment of up to $1 billion. It’s not clear whether that money is in addition to the $800 million investment the agency announced last year. Rollins plans to put the biggest chunk of money, $500 million, into expanding Wildlife Biosecurity Assessments, an approach that Biden’s USDA had successfully piloted at a smaller scale, assigning USDA staff to help farms identify ways to prevent infected wildlife from making contact with farm chickens.

Another $400 million will go toward helping farmers who have had to kill their flocks recover and more quickly bring in a new flock. And $100 million will fund research and strategies for vaccines. In early January, the USDA began building a new stockpile of vaccines, but agriculture groups have been hesitant to deploy them because of impacts on trade.

Rollins’ new plan barely mentions dairy, although the virus has affected nearly 1,000 herds in 17 states and most human cases of the virus have been in dairy workers. The plan also includes temporarily increasing egg imports from Turkey and other countries to bring down prices, and removing “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on poultry farmers. Previous reporting has pointed to a lack of USDA regulatory oversight as one reason the virus has spread so much to date.

NASDA leaders applauded the plan, particularly the push for a vaccine strategy and compensating producers for losses, as did Agriculture Committee Chairs John Boozman (R-Arkansas) and G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania). Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, called it an “important step” but also called on Rollins to make sure staff and funding cuts at USDA don’t disrupt the agency’s response.  In a press release, animal rights group Animal Wellness Action criticized the plan for not quickly implementing vaccinations, among other things, and said the “plan is a deep disappointment and won’t allow us to turn around this problem.” (Link to this post.)

In Colorado, Mancos Conservation District received a letter canceling a $630,000 Equity in Conservation Outreach Program grant intended to support beginning farmers and ranchers, small farms that were grossing less than $170,000 a year, and the local tribal community, the Ute Mountain Ute. In a Facebook post, president Michael Nolan explained that his team had planned to distribute a rural living guidebook, host an educational water festival, and produce 12 land-stewardship workshops.

“I’m sad about not being able to support this outreach,” he wrote, “but I’m most pissed about the fact that I spent hours today going over staff positions that we thought were secure for a few years and starting to make a plan for who will be let go,” in addition to other cuts to staff time.

In Kansas City, local community organization the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council received a letter canceling its $165,000 Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) grant. (Ivanhoe was required to come up with 25 percent of the grant, so the government portion totaled about $133,000.) Director Alana Henry said Ivanhoe had contributed to a “boom in urban farming” in the area and her team planned to expand their farmers’ market to offer low-income residents more options. Henry had just finished the interview process for an assistant market manager position the grant would help fund and had been working on other planning.

After the cancellation, she stopped the hiring process and is now figuring out how her small staff can take on the extra labor of expanding the market. She is also trying not to cancel farmer trainings on expanding production that were planned, but she said she’ll have to see if she can get volunteer growers to do the trainings without compensation. “Ultimately what we want to do is help get healthy food on the plate and help small business owners here in our agroeconomy flourish,” Henry said. “Our program, I thought, really spoke to the beauty of both of those things working in tandem.”

The USDA also canceled an FMPP grant to the Fairshare CSA Coalition that enabled them to develop a national CSA Innovation Network to expand community-supported agriculture around the country. As a result, the organization has had to pause projects and let farmers know they can longer compensate them, Tess Romanski, the Coalition’s communications and development manager, told Civil Eats by email. “The termination of this funding has been devastating,” she said.

On its website, DOGE lists various USDA agreements with private contractors it has canceled (for things like DEI trainings at the agency) but does not list cancelled grant projects. The letters came from a USDA administrator, not DOGE. It’s unclear if cuts to grant funding will be added to DOGE’s list or shared separately or at all. The USDA did not respond to an inquiry from Civil Eats. (Link to this post.)

The money represents a drop in a very large bucket of money farmers are waiting on, since a long list of additional USDA programs remain paused. USDA called it the “first tranche” of released funding and said additional announcements will be made soon.

“After careful review, it is clear that some of this funding went to programs that had nothing to do with agriculture—that is why we are still reviewing—whereas other funding was directed to farmers and ranchers who have since made investments in these programs,” Rollins said in a statement. “We will honor our commitments to American farmers and ranchers, and we will ensure they have the support they need to be the most competitive in the world.” Rollins added that the agency is continuing to review “IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] funding” to make sure USDA programs support farmers and ranchers, “not DEIA programs or far-left climate programs.” However, the funds that have been frozen since President Trump took office extend far beyond money granted through Biden’s IRA.

In a statement, National Farmers Union president Rob Larew said the pause has been exacerbating economic uncertainty among farmers and in rural communities and called the announcement “a welcome first step. . . . Farmers are now making business decisions for the coming year and can’t wait much longer. We urge USDA to quickly complete its review, release all remaining funds, and ensure continuity in these essential programs,” he said. (Link to this post.)

February 20, 2025 – This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) added a note to its website stating that the 1890 Scholars Program “has been suspended pending further review.” The agency has been reviewing its programs to determine if they violate President Trump’s executive order ending what he deems “DEI policies,” or those related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

1890 Land-Grant Institutions are historically Black colleges and universities that focus on agricultural education. They were created by segregated states after the second Morrill Act made funding for land-grants available only to states that allowed students of all races to access admissions.

The scholarships, which started in 1992, “are intended to encourage outstanding students at 1890 institutions to pursue and complete baccalaureate degrees in the food and agricultural sciences and related fields that would lead to a highly skilled food and agricultural systems workforce,” according to the USDA’s website.

Representative Alma Adams (D-North Carolina) released a statement calling for USDA to immediately reinstate the program. “This is a clear attack on an invaluable program that makes higher education accessible for everybody, and provides opportunities for students to work at USDA, especially in the critical fields of food safety, agriculture, and natural resources that Americans rely on every single day,” she said. (Link to this post.)

February 19, 2025 – In a post on X on February 14, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced it had ended an $8.2 million USDA contract as a “perfect Valentine’s gift for all taxpayers.”

That contract, Civil Eats has learned, was a key piece of infrastructure in the Biden-era Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which set up projects to pay farmers for implementing conservation practices. USDA contracted with the Clark Group to provide third-party review of certain practices.

Now, even if the courts or the Trump administration were to end the current freeze on grant payment disbursements, at least one farm group will not be able to make promised payments to farmers.

Pennsylvania-based Pasa Sustainable Agriculture is running a project that includes thousands of farmers across more than a dozen states. Without the participation of the Clark Group, director Hannah Smith-Brubaker said, project staff are unable to get the most popular farm practices approved. Therefore, they can’t make payments for things like fences and water lines, many of which farmers have already invested time and resources in.

DOGE’s own accounting shows that because the contractor had already been paid in full, canceling the contract resulted in $0 in taxpayer savings.

Smith-Brubaker reached out to House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) today to share her concerns. “How will we look in the eyes of dairy farmers, providing the whole milk for which you’ve advocated, and tell them that, to save the government $0, we have to cancel work that would have brought them more stability and more business?” she asked. (Link to this post.)

This is a developing story with more reporting to follow. Was your organization working with the Clark Group? Email tracker@civileats.com or message Lisa Held on Signal at @lisaelaineh.47. 

Jones was brought in from the EPA in 2023 to oversee a restructuring of FDA’s food programs intended to prioritize food safety and elevate work on nutrition and diet-related disease. In his resignation letter, he said had been looking forward to working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose stated goals aligned with those priorities. But he noted he was upset by both the indiscriminate nature of layoffs and accusations that current staff were corrupt. He said 89 people on his team were fired, including those working on the safety of chemicals in food, and that it would be fruitless to try to continue the work.

Advocacy groups including the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said the cuts would undermine food safety. “If you go into surgery with a hatchet instead of a scalpel, the result is carnage,” said CSPI President Peter Lurie, M.D. On the contrary, at a Politico Live event on Wednesday morning, Kennedy ally Del Bigtree, the founder of MAHA Action, said that he wasn’t sure if Kennedy was driving the cuts but that it’s likely the government is spending too much money on employees who aren’t improving the health of the country. “I can’t imagine what 80,000 employees are needed for when it comes to health,” he said.

The FDA did not respond to a request for comment. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Bloomberg that the cuts were part of President Trump’s mandate to only employ “the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people.” (Link to this post.)

Bloomberg also reported that USDA Secretary Rollins told White House reporters that farmers who are waiting for payments that have been committed “will come through.”

February 18, 2025 – As farmers and nonprofits across the country continue to wait for payments that have been frozen across a wide spectrum of conservation, local food, and climate grants, the big question many are asking is: Will the pause be temporary, or are the contracts permanently canceled?

So far, officials at the USDA and the EPA are not providing answers.

Last week, both agencies sent out announcements celebrating the cancellation of multiple contracts but failed to provide any details on those cancellations, including which programs the contracts were related to or the organizations that lost funding.

USDA said it ended 78 contracts totaling more than $132 million and that 1,000 more are still under review for termination. In its announcement, it included a list of 10 select examples—such as “Diversity Dialogue Workshops” and “Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Utility Van”—but the titles, most of which were associated with small amounts of spending, didn’t provide much information on the contracts. The agency did not respond to two requests from Civil Eats for the full list of 78 contracts with specific details on the grantees, funding amounts, and project descriptions.

At the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency canceled nine contracts totaling close to $60 million that were related to “wasteful DEI and environmental justice initiatives.” The EPA did not respond to two requests from Civil Eats for the full list of nine contracts with specific details.

During a White House press briefing two days earlier, on February 12th, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the administration is happy to provide receipts. “There’s great transparency,” she said. “We have contracts upon contracts that we can send and provide this information to you. Let me be very clear: We are not trying to hide anything. We have been incredibly transparent, and we will continue to be.”

Earlier in the week, Zeldin did name one organization when he shared that he was cancelling a $50 million contract with the Climate Justice Alliance. He noted that the group has linked climate justice to a “free Palestine,” although the cancelled contract was for the organization’s Unite-EJ program, which distributed grants to community organizations and local governments to clean up environmental hazards like pesticide and air pollution and improve food access. The organization announced it has now ended the program. (Link to this post.)

Citing high rates of chronic disease and health conditions like obesity and autism in children, Trump said the government’s policy will be “to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.”

The order requires the Commission to deliver an assessment of childhood chronic disease within 100 days and a strategy based on that assessment within 180 days. It includes looking at basic issues such as nutrition and physical activity but also orders an assessment of the “threat posed by” medications including popular weight-loss drugs and antidepressants, both of which Kennedy has been critical of in the past.

Trump stated the efforts would be done with methodological rigor and transparency, but it’s unclear how agencies will be able to accomplish any of the work given the scale of cuts to the workforce that are happening at the same time. Since Trump took office, health agencies have also been deleting records of scientific data and studies. The administration is also trying to cut National Institutes of Health research funding.

In a broader sense, the order had several points in common with former President Biden’s efforts to encourage cross-agency work connecting the dots between the food supply, nutrition, and health. For example, Biden’s HHS hosted the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in 50 years, where it launched a national strategy that called for the integration of nutrition and health and investments in “food is medicine” initiatives.  (Link to this post.)

Second on her to-do list was to “end identity politics, identity celebrations, and DEI.” The USDA has already begun purging language and efforts focused on racial equity from its programming and has told employees they are required to report staff that may be disguising efforts that qualify as DEI.

Finally, Rollins said all USDA personnel who currently work from home will be required to return to the office. Speaking to her broader vision, she said, “We will keep the trust handed us in our programs to fight disease, to feed the needy, to manage our land and our forests, and most of all, to work for all of American agriculture.” (Link to this post.)

Kennedy was one of Trump’s most controversial picks because of his anti-vaccine advocacy and history of spreading (sometimes dangerous) conspiracy theories. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) was the only Republican who voted against his confirmation, along with all Democrats.  Kennedy is an outspoken critic of ultra-processed foods and has vowed to “Make America Healthy Again” by focusing health policy on how nutrition and chemical exposures impact chronic disease risk. He has also said he will root out pharmaceutical and food industry influence at HHS and is an advocate for regenerative agriculture.

Rollins is a close Trump ally and the founder of a conservative think tank, and despite her lack of professional experience in agriculture, she garnered bipartisan support. All Republicans voted for her confirmation, along with 19 Democrats. During her confirmation hearing last month, she said that as Secretary of Agriculture, she’d prioritize tackling bird flu, “modernizing” the USDA to align with Trump’s principles, and getting disaster aid for farmers out the door. Some of the first things on her desk will undoubtedly be addressing the growing number of farmers and farm groups seeking answers about USDA’s freeze in grant funding and how Trump’s tariffs may impact farmers. (Link to this post.)

Republican lawmakers are proposing deep cuts across the government to pay for extending tax breaks and increasing spending on the military and immigration enforcement; the House resolution released yesterday calls for the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion in savings. The resolution does not specify exactly where the cuts will come from, but Republicans on the committee have previously proposed rolling back a Biden administration update to SNAP that increased benefits for participants by about $1 a day. And Politico reported earlier this week that Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) was eyeing changes to that update in addition to updating SNAP work requirements and reducing error payment rates.

In response to questions from Civil Eats, Representative Thompson’s staff said the $230 billion number is far from final, and that reports so far on where he plans to find the savings are speculation. They noted that Thompson “has long supported federal food assistance programs like SNAP.” But they also confirmed that Thompson opposes the update the Biden administration made to SNAP benefits and sees it as “egregious Executive overreach,” signaling an openness to rolling it back.

Hunger groups like the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) see that as slashing benefits they believe are needed to tackle food insecurity and have been mobilizing Americans to oppose the cuts, while Democrats in the House and Senate are calling attention to potential impacts.

“These proposed cuts come at a time when we should be focused on helping our farmers and ranchers, children, seniors, and rural Americans tackle rising costs, not giving a tax giveaway to billionaires,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement. Thompson’s team also noted that USDA data shows the extension of Trump-era tax cuts will lower tax liabilities for most farms. (Link to this post.)

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats focused on how the Trump administration’s actions over the past three weeks have impacted farmers. They called out the potential consequences of tariffs that have been both enacted and proposed, the dismantling of USAID that threatens $2 billion in commodity crop purchases and could cause food intended for hungry people to rot in warehouses, and the freeze on USDA grant payments to farmers that continues to cause distress across the country.

A dozen young, Mid-Atlantic farmers growing vegetables, flowers, and other crops for direct sale in the region also attended the hearing to represent their concerns about that freeze, at the invitation of the Democratic leadership. But after they spoke with the press prior to the start, their small-farm perspective was mostly absent from the conversation, since the witnesses all represented larger, commodity-scale interests. (Still, farms of all sizes and types have been impacted by USDA funding pauses.)

Lawmakers from both parties repeatedly called for a bipartisan farm bill to pass this year and blamed each other for partisanship that has held up the process since 2023. “We cannot let this year be a repeat of the last,” said committee Chair GT Thompson (R-Pennsylvania). (Link to this post.)

In the announcement, the agency said 11 of the employees were working “in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” and 160 were working on environmental justice initiatives. In the past, the agency included environmental justice considerations in various efforts that touch the food system, including rules that protect farmworkers and rural residents from pesticide spray drift and a proposal to reduce water pollution from slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants.

“The previous Administration used DEI and Environmental Justice to advance ideological priorities, distributing billions of dollars to organizations in the name of climate equity. This ends now,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “We will be good stewards of tax dollars and do everything in our power to deliver clean air, land, and water to every American, regardless of race, religion, background, and creed.” (Link to this post.)

Groups that represent the interests of American farmers and ranchers have been pushing for truth in labeling on meat products for years because they say cheaper, unlabeled imports put domestic producers at a disadvantage. Last year, the Biden administration’s USDA closed a loophole that enabled importers to use the “Product of USA” label even when animals were born and raised outside of the country. The American Beef Labeling Act would also require importers to label meat with the country it comes from.

Senators could attempt to attach the bill to an upcoming reconciliation package or farm bill. However, powerful meat companies have fought against country-of-origin labeling in the past. (Link to this post.)

During the main panel, National Farmers Union president Rob Larew and American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall painted a picture of struggling American farmers facing a multitude of challenges. Net farm income hit a high in 2022 and then dropped significantly in 2023 and 2024, but it is still far above average compared to previous years.

Senators on both sides of the aisle asked repeatedly about the impact President Trump’s proposed tariffs might have on farmers. Larew said farmers are already seeing suppliers of goods like fertilizer raise costs in anticipation of tariffs (although tariffs on Mexico and Canada have been paused). Duvall said he trusted Trump to pay farmers if they were hurt by the tariffs but that farmers would prefer to make the money through trade. “One of the concerns we’ve expressed is the potential of shrinking markets,” he said.

But in his opening statement, Duvall said the number one worry he hears from farmers is about finding workers. “It’s important that the committee recognize that the greatest domestic policy threat to American agriculture is an outdated guestworker program and the labor crisis farmers are facing across the country,” he said. Several Democrats then made connections between Trump’s promises of mass deportations and the large number of undocumented immigrants working on American farms.

“What happens if 40 percent of the workforce for farmers and ranchers disappears?” asked Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico). “It would be devastating to agriculture,” Duvall answered. “You would see farms go out of business and we could see interruptions in our food system.”

Both Larew and Duvall also expressed worries over the still-rising age of the American farmer and said a modernized farm bill passed this year could lay the groundwork for stability that appeals to younger growers. They asked for expansions of crop insurance and higher subsidy payments for commodity growers. Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) said his “highest priority for the next farm bill is to improve the farm safety net,” but while that’s a popular plan in the Committee, other Republican lawmakers have proposed cuts to farm programs in order to slash spending. (Link to this post.)

In the announcement, newly confirmed EPA administrator Lee Zeldin first emphasized the Gulf as a source of oil and gas. Then, he said the agency is “ready to protect” one of the most productive fisheries in the world by “helping develop voluntary, nonregulatory actions and public-private solutions to improve water and habitat quality.”

The EPA is the country’s primary regulator of water pollution, but another executive order issued by Trump directs all agencies to deregulate. (It requires them to repeal 10 regulations, for example, for every new one proposed.)

Every year, runoff from agricultural fields that makes its way down the Mississippi River is the main contributor to a dead zone that kills aquatic organisms, harming fisheries. Oil spills and natural gas infrastructure also cause damage that threatens the fishery. It’s unclear what a new, “nonregulatory” approach might entail. (Link to this post.)

February 4, 2025 – Over the last several days, Elon Musk has taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The agency’s headquarters have been shuttered, the website disappeared, and employees were locked out of systems.

At a press conference and protest outside the headquarters on Monday, February 3, Congressional Democrats said the actions would put children around the world at risk of starvation, since USAID is a primary supplier of global humanitarian food aid. USAID purchases that food aid—about $2 billion a year of rice, wheat, lentils, and peas, according to DTN—from American farmers, prompting questions about how the agency’s shuttering might also impact rural America.

The White House put out a statement that included a list of USAID programs it said represented waste and abuse at the agency, but it did not mention humanitarian food aid. “For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous—and, in many cases, malicious—pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” it said.

At the press conference, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said the agency’s shuttering was “plain illegal” and that lawmakers are working to get an injunction to stop it. (Link to this post)

February 3, 2025 – According to emails obtained by Politico, officials at the USDA have ordered employees to create a spreadsheet documenting all references to climate change on the agency’s website and to delete landing pages dedicated to climate change. Some pages have already been deleted. In addition, Politico reported that President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency denied that there is established science showing climate change is caused by human action in her written responses to Senate Agriculture Committee questions.

During Trump’s first term, he scrubbed the term “climate change” from the USDA vocabulary and withheld releasing the agency’s own studies on potential dangers climate change could cause farmers and the American food supply.

The new directive follows his earlier executive order pausing disbursement of Inflation Reduction Act funds, which includes billions of dollars in USDA grant funding allocated to farmers and rural communities for climate-smart practices and projects.

In recent years, American farmers have increasingly grappled with climate-related disasters, including hurricanes, drought, rising sea levels, and wildfires. In their most recent global report, the world’s leading climate scientists found those impacts will get worse. They also found solutions in food and agriculture could significantly contribute to slowing warming—but that the window for action is rapidly closing. (Link to this post.)

Employees that received the email were hired within the past year, and the message said the agency has the right to immediately terminate them. An EPA spokesperson declined to confirm to the Times whether or not EPA administrator Lee Zeldin would fire the employees but added, “Ultimately, the goal is to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans.”

The EPA provides crucial data on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the impact of climate change on farms and the broader food system, and has been working on data and solutions to food waste, a major driver of emissions. (Link to this post.)

January 31, 2025 – The White House press secretary announced this afternoon that starting Saturday, February 1, 2025, the Trump administration will impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.

According to the USDA, Canada is the number one supplier of agricultural products to the U.S., including produce, grains, and meat. Mexico is the third largest supplier and accounts more than 30 percent of horticultural products, including fruits and vegetables.

President Trump said the tariffs would benefit the U.S. economy. However, many economists predict tariffs will lead to food price increases. Experts also say the tariffs could impact farmers, since countries often respond by placing tariffs on American agricultural exports. During his last term, President Trump paid farmers tens of billions of dollars to offset losses they accrued due to tariffs. (Link to this post.)

Cassidy then quickly pivoted to his concerns about Kennedy’s past and current beliefs on the science, safety, and efficacy of vaccines. That conversation, and the high stakes associated with it, dominated the rest of the hearing.

In the few other moments where food and disease prevention were mentioned, Kennedy repeatedly focused his answers on chemical additives in the food supply. He skewered the GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”) standard, which the FDA uses to allow certain additives into food without the rigorous safety testing other ingredients face, and said food companies shouldn’t have different ingredient lists for foods they sell in the U.S. vs. Europe.

Later, Kennedy said, “NIH, CDC, and FDA should identify the toxins that are contributing to chronic disease and eliminate them.” (Link to this post.)

Republican Senators unanimously voted to confirm him. Democrats voted against Zeldin, with the exception of three who voted in support: John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), and Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona). Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) did not cast votes.

Civil Eats covered Zeldin’s background and confirmation hearing in detail here. (Link to this post.)

“Something is poisoning the American people and we know that the primary culprits are the changing food supply, the switch to highly chemical-intensive processed foods,” Kennedy said. “We need to fix our food supply, and that’s the number one.” In his opening statement, he also said he “will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply.”

Despite those comments, Kennedy’s potential oversight of the FDA—which regulates food additives, food safety recalls, and antibiotic use in agriculture—was barely mentioned throughout the hearing. Instead, Republican senators generally praised his overall commitment to investigating the root causes of chronic diseases, while Democrats hammered him on his past false statements on vaccines and anti-vaccine advocacy, his actions tied to a deadly measles outbreak, and his recent about-face on the issue of abortion and how that might impact access to the medication mifepristone. Medicare and Medicaid were also popular topics.

And while no one asked him much of anything about the FDA, the USDA—an agency he will not oversee—came up several times, with several farm-state Republicans asking Kennedy to commit to working in collaboration with farmers and the agency that supports and regulates them. Kennedy said President Trump “has specifically instructed me that he wants farmers involved in every policy and that he wants me to work with Brooke Rollins at USDA to make sure that we preserve American farmers, that all of our policies support them.”

Later, he said that while he won’t have regulatory power over farms, he thinks the government should incentivize a transition to what he called “regenerative agriculture, no-till agriculture, and to less chemically intensive. And by the way,” he added, “I’ve also met with the chemical industry and the fertilizer and herbicide companies, and they want to do the same thing.”

(In our investigative reporting last year, we extensively documented the pesticide industry’s tactics for keeping chemicals in use despite documented health and environmental risks. Just this month, Bayer, one of the world’s largest agrichemical companies, hired Ballard Partners, a D.C. lobby firm with multiple ties to Trump’s inner circle.)

Kennedy also said he believes SNAP should not pay for unhealthy foods and that processed foods should not be served in school meals. Both of those programs fall under the USDA.

At the very end of the hearing, as Senators rushed through final questions, Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) asked him about how he would approach the CDC’s response to bird flu, which so far is not a serious health risk for everyday Americans but is spreading quickly on farms and changing in alarming ways. Kennedy said he would devote “the appropriate resources” to preventing pandemics. Earlier in the hearing, he was grilled on a petition he submitted in 2021 to stop the rollout of COVID vaccines for children.

Tomorrow, Kennedy will face a second hearing in front of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. (Link to this story.)

January 28, 2025 – According to a memo released yesterday, a federal freeze of all grant and loan payments will go into effect at 5:00p.m. EST today, January 28, 2025. Since the news dropped, fear and confusion has been spreading among groups that have received federal grants to pay and support farmers, feed communities, and strengthen rural infrastructure.

The White House later clarified that the pause is temporary and is meant to align federal spending with President Trump’s recent executive orders on ending DEI and climate-focused programming, but that did little to clear up what would happen to ongoing grant funding that has been allocated to food and farm groups for initiatives such as climate-smart farming and community hunger solutions but has not yet been fully distributed.

A diverse range of groups reacted to the decision throughout the day. The Prairie Rivers Network, based in the Midwest, said the pause “jeopardizes critical funding streams and threatens key investments in rural communities, small towns, and local economies across Illinois and the country.” In D.C., the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), an influential hunger policy organization, said the freeze was a violation of the law and that “FRAC is especially concerned about the grave potential ramifications any disruption to vital nutrition and other essential programs will have in increasing hunger and hardship in America.”

At least one lawsuit has already been filed to challenge the freeze. (Link to this post)

Those fired included HHS Inspector Christi Grimm, who was appointed by President Biden, EPA Inspector Sean O’Donnell, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, and USDA inspector Phyllis Fong, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and had been on the job for more than two decades.

Trump defended the decision, while top Democrats in Congress sent him a letter pointing to the law’s requirements and “urging him to withdraw your unlawful action and comply with your obligations to the American people.”

The top Democrats on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees also sent out statements pointing specifically to potential impacts at the USDA. “While the president has the right to replace inspector generals, the late-night firing of these independent watchdogs not only violates the law but also hampers our ability to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure programs are run as Congress intended,” said Representative Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), “whether it’s disaster assistance for farmers or nutrition programs.” (Link to this post)

“Last year’s bill had some really strong provisions, and others that needed work. It didn’t have the votes to pass then; and it doesn’t now,” Craig said. “I want a different result this Congress.”

So far, the same fights over cuts to hunger programs and the farm safety net are likely to surface, both across the aisle and between Republican lawmakers who face tension between spending more money on farmer subsidies and tightening purse strings across the board. Craig also referenced the menu of cuts Republicans started circulating last week that could be included in an upcoming reconciliation bill, which, she said, will jeopardize “the bipartisan support we all know a farm bill needs in order to pass.” (Link to this post.)

Senators on both sides of the aisle asked about her support for ethanol (which she confirmed) and whether she’d ensure farmers are not negatively impacted by Trump’s proposed tariffs. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s largest safety net for food-insecure families, also came up often. Rollins said she supports work requirements and would not rule out overall cuts to benefits. She also said she supports overturning California’s animal welfare law Proposition 12. See our more in-depth coverage here of Rollins’ background and hearing and that of her counterpart Lee Zeldin, tapped to lead the EPA. (Link to this post.)

The email, reviewed by Civil Eats, also  said officials are aware of “efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.” In addition, all employees are now responsible for reporting any knowledge they have of changes to personnel or contract language made since November 5, 2024, “to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies” within 10 days. Failure to report the information within 10 days “may result in adverse consequences.”

Under Biden, former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack aspired (at Biden’s behest) to infuse equity efforts across the department. He hired the agency’s first senior advisor for racial justice and equity, launched an Equity Commission, worked on heirs property issues for Black landowners, and directed many grant funds to disadvantaged communities through Biden’s Justice40 plan. As a result, it’s unclear exactly which of those efforts may now be ended because they meet Trump’s definition of “DEIA”—and which employees may be let go. (Link to this post)

January 22, 2025 – Officials inside the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the agency that oversees both the CDC and the FDA, have halted external communications, according to the Washington Post. The length and full scope of the directive is not clear, but the CDC manages updates on bird flu in humans, and the FDA is responsible for sending alerts related to food safety outbreaks and recalls. 

Stefanie Spear, an HHS deputy chief of staff and longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy, Trump’s nominee to lead HHS, delivered the instructions. While cabinet member hearings have been moving at a steady clip, RFK’s hearing has still not been scheduled.

“Americans depend on timely information from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other agencies to avoid foodborne illnesses like E. coli and Salmonella, and to navigate other health concerns,” the government watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest wrote in a press statement. “When it comes to stopping outbreaks, every second counts.”

In response to the question of whether food safety alerts would be impacted, FDA directed Civil Eats to HHS. HHS has not yet responded. (Link to this post.)

After pledging to “drill, baby, drill” in his inauguration speech, Trump declared a national energy emergency to boost fossil fuel production, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, and halted leasing for offshore wind power. In the past few years, farmers have been reeling from the effects of climate-related disasters. In the last global assessment, the world’s top climate experts found the crisis is already affecting the world’s food supply and that without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, a “livable and sustainable future for all” is in jeopardy.

He also declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and issued several directives to crack down on immigration. To speed deportations, he said the administration would created ​​Homeland Security Task Forces in all states and wrote that the Secretary of Homeland Security, “shall promptly take appropriate action to use all other provisions of the immigration laws or any other Federal law . . . to ensure the efficient and expedited removal of aliens from the United States.”

He also attempted to end birthright citizenship, although that move is likely to be challenged in court. Accurate estimates are hard to come by, but millions of immigrants work on farms, in food processing plants, and in restaurants without legal authorization.

Trump issued a sweeping order to unravel the Biden administration’s equity and environmental justice initiatives, such as the USDA’s Equity Commission and EPA grants that supported community solutions to environmental justice challenges.

He also withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) at a time when avian influenza is surging on U.S. farms and could pose a greater risk to humans in the future. Finally, his order to freeze government hiring and require federal agencies to end work-from-home policies will also likely lead to staff shake-ups at agencies including the USDA, where many established employees have been working almost entirely remotely. (Link to this post)

Farmers have been fighting for the right to repair their own John Deere tractors and combines for several years, and the issue of John Deere’s repair monopoly has united farm groups across a broad ideological spectrum. Under Chair Lina Khan, the FTC has taken a more aggressive approach to antitrust policy across the board, but it’s unclear how the change in leadership will affect the outcome of the case. (Link to this post)

Over the past few years, PFAS contamination has increasingly been discovered on farms due to the historic spreading of sludge. The impacts have been most pronounced in Maine, and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is currently suing the EPA for failing to regulate the chemicals in sludge. (Link to this post)

For instance, the box might just  show levels of added sugar, sodium, and saturated fat and clearly state if those levels are low, medium, or high. In other countries, some research has shown front-of-pack labels lead to healthier choices and may push companies to improve the nutritional profile of foods. Public health groups including the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Heart Association celebrated the news.

Whether the rule advances will now be up to the incoming Trump administration. Last time he was in office, President Trump generally sided with industry and was hostile to nutrition regulations, but with MAHA supporter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. likely coming in to lead FDA’s parent agency, it’s unclear how the administration will treat new regulations like this one in the future.(Link to this post)

USDA withdrew a fourth rule that would have changed the definition of “unfair practices” in favor of farmers because the agency ran out of time to finalize it. Farm Action, a group that has been at the forefront of pushing for the rules, said farmers would suffer due to the “unfinished business” but also praised the agency for progress made. “We applaud the USDA for its efforts in proposing and now finalizing this critical rule that will improve its ability to hold monopolistic poultry integrators accountable for unfair and deceptive payment and capital improvement systems for poultry growers,” said Angela Huffman, Farm Action’s President, in a press release. (Link to this post)

The studies compared worker outcomes at plants with varied line speeds and did not find a clear correlation between the slaughter line speed and worker injuries. However, the studies found 81 percent of poultry workers and 46 percent of pork workers had increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders across the board and reported high rates of moderate to severe upper extremity pain. Workers who had a higher “piece rate,” a measure of individual job pace, did have increased risk of injury. In other words, working faster did have an impact, but line speeds weren’t always associated with faster work.

In response, the Republican Agriculture Committee chairs released a joint statement that characterized the studies as a Biden administration attempt to villainize the chicken and pork industries and as proof that faster line speeds are safe. “We look forward to working with the incoming Trump administration to develop a long-term solution to ensure meat and poultry companies have the ability to operate at higher line speeds, while maintaining rigorous food safety and worker safety standards,” they wrote.

Worker groups, on the other hand, said the studies emphasized the increased risks revealed in the reports. “We call upon OSHA and the USDA in the incoming administration to make worker safety a priority, and mitigate risk at poultry plants to address the dangerous conditions outlined in the reports,” Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which counts 15,000 poultry workers among its members, said in a press release.

“We need to mandate job modifications that reduce ergonomic stressors and additional staffing to decrease repetitive motion and work speed; increase workers’ access to early and adequate medical treatment; and create better tool-sharpening programs to reduce the impact of cutting jobs.” (Link to this post)

In response, House Agriculture Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) released a statement condemning the proposed cuts. “We are happy to work with Republicans on a bipartisan basis when it’s on behalf of the American people and family farmers,” she said. “But instead of increasing investments in our rural communities and supporting the next generation of family farmers, Republicans are starting the new year by workshopping a plan to take money from America’s farmers in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.” (Link to this post)