BREAKING: The Trump administration asked an appeals court on Friday to immediately halt a judge's recent ruling that would require the government to pay food stamps in full. (That's supposed to happen by today.) In short, it could again jeopardize critical aid to millions of poor families. Story TK.

The USDA has transferred billions of dollars to a slush fund at the Office of the Secretary for the farmer trade bailout. Shockingly, the money seems to be coming from the Conservation Reserve Program and Dairy Margin Protection Program, and even potentially loans. www.govexec.com/management/2...

Are we living in a post Farm Bill world? We try to answer this question and more in our latest Q&A.

Every story on this topic needs to mention the cost of daycare in the U.S. In the Twin Cities, spending $25k a year on infant/toddler care at a daycare center is common. And it's even more expensive in cities on East/West coasts. Of course people are having less kids. www.npr.org/2025/10/27/n...

Secretary Rollins’ claim that the Trump Administration is unable to deliver November SNAP benefits during a shutdown is unequivocally false. The Administration is legally required to use contingency reserves to fund benefits for the 1 in 8 Americans who need SNAP to afford their grocery bill.

It was a great getting to talk about our work at the Reducetarian Foundation Summit this past weekend in Atlanta. For 8 years @ewgofficial.bsky.social has been using satellite/aerial imagery to locate factory farms on the landscape to help our fight for clean water and healthy communities.

Lots of people have opinions on Trump's decision to increase Argentine beef imports. Argentina only accounts for 2.2% of U.S. beef imports currently, so quadrupling their imports as proposed would make them still only a small share of the total U.S. beef supply. www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...

Trump is certainly showing who he is to farmers and ranchers. Of course, ranchers don't set consumer prices - that's controlled by the big 4 companies (JBS/Tyson/Cargill/Natl Beef) that dominate the beef sector, several just settle price-fixing cases. www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/t...

"Mr. Trump has committed to a destructive mix of tariffs, bailouts, biofuels mandates and immigration crackdowns that will make consumers pay more for food and saddle taxpayers with more debt. It’s a bizarre combination of crony capitalism and agricultural socialism." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/o...

People have talked about ag biologicals being silver bullets for a long time. We know by now that they are not. But potentially some hope on reducing nitrogen pollution/nitrous oxide emissions in the future. ambrook.com/offrange/tec...

As an avid @mprnews.org listener, it was extremely exciting to talk with @paulhuttnerweather.bsky.social for Climate Cast this week! We talked about my recent report for @ewgofficial.bsky.social on continuous corn, and its associated nitrous oxide emissions www.mprnews.org/episode/2025...

This week on Climate Cast from @mprnews.org, EWG's @anneschech.bsky.social tells us why a corn-corn crop rotation is bad for the environment. The short of it is that corn requires a lot of fertilizer, and that fertilizer requires a lot of energy to make. one.npr.org/i/fis-414685...

Farm Action is sending a petition to Ag Secretary Rollins to undo the cuts to USDA's local food programs and ensure that USDA sends potential bailout funding to small farmers who grow actual food, not just large commodity growers. Anyone can sign the petition here: farmaction.us/tell-secreta...

An overview. @profsecchi.bsky.social and @anneschech.bsky.social also write about this and point out the absurdity of USDA crowing about 2M farms to justify welfare programs. Reality: there is high concentration and only 1.9M "farms" and shrinking. www.ers.usda.gov/publications...

Me in a new @insideclimatenews.org article talking about our new @ewgofficial.bsky.social report: "Nitrous oxide is powerful. It lasts a long time. But it’s also something that these types of conservation practices can really have an impact on reducing." insideclimatenews.org/news/0810202...

Another EWG 🎯, read the 🧵 “the top 4 practices that would generate the largest reductions in GHG emissions on continuous corn […] are: riparian forest buffers, tree or shrub establishment, hedgerow planting & windbreak establishment” Note how these are all PERMANENT practices,unlike cover crops.

Great work from the folks ag EWG! From thr report... "We found that adopting the four best conservation practices on just 1% of continuous corn acres each in the four states would reduce total greenhouse gas emissions at an amount that would be like taking over 850,000 cars off the road."

New @ewgofficial.bsky.social analysis released today from me and @albine14.bsky.social. We found that just under 15 million cropland acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin are used for continuous corn, representing 20% of the total harvested cropland. 1/4 www.ewg.org/research/fer...

"The findings suggest that only about a quarter of climate articles in 11 major US outlets, including the Guardian, mention food and agriculture as a cause. And of the 940 articles analyzed, only 36 – or 3.8% – mentioned animal agriculture or meat production." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Trump's USDA is Engaging in Partisan Politics. That is a Threat to us All, and Could/Should Be Illegal.

I think a lot of us haven't known what we can do about all of this *waves hand* in 2025. But one thing that makes me feel better is knowing that I'm not on the wrong side of history. I'll keep talking about what the government is doing (and not doing) to hurt the environment, climate, public health.

Just a staggering transfer of wealth from taxpayers to mostly large commodity farms. "Since 2018, USDA and/or Congress have paid nearly $176 billion in inflation-adjusted economic assistance to farmers." farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/09/hist...

New research from @farmdocdaily.bsky.social shows that public support for #farmsubsidies has decreased, while it has increased for food assistance. And yet the One Big Beautiful Bill Act increased farm subsidy money while decreasing food assistance. farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/09/do-c...

Me: “I like to say we’re in this gold-rush era of regenerative certifications and claims, because everyone, essentially, is rushing to label their food products, to label conservation practices—anything a farm is doing—as regenerative.” @insideclimatenews.org insideclimatenews.org/news/2209202...

New @ewgofficial.bsky.social piece published today, exposing different "regenerative" food certifications. We found that USDA organic, “Regenerative Organic”, and "Demeter" certifications were the best guarantee a food has been produced with regenerative practices. 1/2 www.ewg.org/news-insight...

It was a great experience talking with people at #farmaid40 about @ewgofficial.bsky.social's Meat and Dairy Label Decoder as well as our work on nitrous oxide emissions from big ag this weekend! And getting to see some of the performers was unreal. @farmaid.org

One last reminder to come visit us from @ewgofficial.bsky.social at our booth at the Farm Aid 40 HOMEGROWN Village this Saturday! We will be talking about decoding meat and dairy food labels, and big ag's impact on the environment, climate and public health. @farmaid.org #FarmAid40

Trump should be getting rid of tariffs instead of potentially making taxpayers, who are also struggling in this economy, pay billions of dollars in another farm bailout. Subsidies mostly go to largest farms, so aid would not help struggling small farms. farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/09/usda...

Good explainer piece in @nytimes.com about the clash between MAHA and the GOP on pesticides. Is it a clash that most of us predicted in January? Yes. But it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/c...

I got to be a contributor on a new report from the McKnight Foundation that was released yesterday. It's a first of its kind look at the sources of nitrous oxide emissions and how farmers, policymakers and fertilizer manufacturers can lead the way in reducing emissions. www.mcknight.org/n2oaction/

If anyone is coming to Farm Aid 40 in Minneapolis next week, come visit us! Me and my @ewgofficial.bsky.social colleagues will be hosting an activation in the Homegrown Village to talk about food labels, and the environmental and climate harms from big ag. www.farmaid.org/festival/the...

Me in a new @civileats.com story by @megwilcox.bsky.social: “Crop insurance is getting more expensive because of climate change, [yet] spending more money on climate resilience practices could lower [those] costs... We’re spending money for the wrong things." civileats.com/2025/09/10/a...

Taxpayers foot 63% of crop insurance payouts & climate change is driving up costs. Far less funding goes to conservation practices which could help lower those costs. @anneschech.bsky.social @ewg-official.bsky.social @nsac-sustainableag.bsky.social @civileats.com civileats.com/2025/09/10/a...

Extremely hypocritical that GOP members of Congress from Minnesota, who voted to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from SNAP in the OBBBA, sent a letter to Gov Walz claiming that his administration has "weakened" the program. GOP cutting $ = weakening program. finstad.house.gov/2025/9/finst...

Statement from @ewgofficial.bsky.social about the MAHA report released today. "The report acknowledges “confidence” in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “robust” pesticide review process, with zero words about banning the use of harmful pesticides." www.ewg.org/news-insight...

New farm income forecast. Keep those numbers in mind when politicians, trade associations, Farm Bureau et al. cry the blues. Some livestock sectors are killing it, others are doing fine, and grain - well, it's cyclical and US "policy" on trade & immigration is an own goal.

Farm income is significantly higher than in 2024, and yet NY Times posts a story today with a headline saying that farmers are struggling... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/b...

USDA forecasts net farm income to be 37.2% higher in 2025 than in 2024, and that doesn't even include the increases in #farmsubsidies that were included in the reconciliation budget bill. farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/09/usda...

Pretty sure that for most Americans, our "confidence in the future" is waning, not just for farmers... "Farmer Sentiment Weakens As Producer Confidence In The Future Wanes" ag.purdue.edu/commercialag...

Crop diversification in the Midwest, even just incorporating something like oats in a corn/soy rotation, can have significant environmental and climate benefits. But can't have a big footprint unless the big companies (General Mills, Quaker) start buying the oats. www.thegazette.com/article/midw...

Vegetable prices have gone up while availability has gone down in the last year. Doesn't sound like a MAHA win to me. www.foodpolitics.com/2025/08/eat-...

I of course have a lot of thoughts about Midwest state fairs. But seeing this in the swine barn of the Minnesota state fair got me particularly riled up. By no stretch of the imagination does pork production lead to "cleaner soil, air, and rivers," given the extreme pollution caused by swine manure.

So hard to see this happen again and again, especially so close to home, and right before my own district's schools begin next week.

A helpful list with descriptions of the USDA programs that have had funding cut, from @grist.org. grist.org/food-and-agr...

New report from CBO about greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Not good that "CBO projects that... GHG emissions from agriculture will increase by about a quarter of a percent each year" through 2055, while emissions from other sectors go down. www.cbo.gov/publication/...

Extremely important research from @profsecchi.bsky.social on how USDA's definition of a farmer is misleading. The ag industry uses the bad definition to confuse the public. I have talked to many journalists in my time at EWG about needing to be skeptical of the definition.

The Great Lakes region faces growing demand from large water users like data centers, agriculture, and critical minerals mining. The demand may become unsustainable if we don’t take serious planning, policy, and regulatory actions. More about the problem and solutions: greatlakes.org/2025/08/grea...

Just last week @ewgofficial.bsky.social updated our PFAS in drinking water map with UCMR5 data. It shows that 172 million people across the country have PFAS in their drinking water. This analysis hits home, since my city's water system is on the map. www.ewg.org/interactive-...

Not only will Trump, RFK, and MAHA not push for stricter pesticide rules — they plan to reauthorize dicamba, one of the most volatile and destructive herbicides in use. Dicamba caused so much damage, it led to a farmer shooting his neighbor. arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

New from Farmdoc: Taxpayers are spending $billions on crop insurance for farmers to grow cotton in a state with worsening drought (TX). "Using groundwater from an overdrawn aquifer to irrigate crops that can’t survive the heat is a dangerous waste." farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/08/the-...