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-...

No one who knows anything about US agriculture should be surprised that the MAHA report isn't proposing any pesticide regulations. The GOP has long supported agribusiness at the expense of farmers, the public, public health and the environment. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/w...

New @sentientmedia.org article mentions @ewgofficial.bsky.social's Tyson lawsuit. One of the Tyson execs who helped create the "climate-friendly" beef label is now the head of USDA's FSIS, which controls that label. Potential conflicts of interest. sentientmedia.org/former-tyson...

In today's @politico.com Morning Ag, MAHA architect Calley Means said “We are not going to win if the soybean farmers and the corn farmers are our enemy." Ag lobby is so powerful that even MAHA, with all the political power they currently have, can't seem to beat them on the pesticide issue.

💯 this is where we're heading. Many of us who think critically are skilled at studying the ideology of statistics, but we will need to rethink about how to extract meaningful information from the made-up stuff that's about to come. It won't be easy, and require new tools (certainly not "AI" lol).

We subsidize farmers to produce as much as possible, and when they do there's a glut and we have to subsidize the price drop. So dumb. And we've alienated some of our big customers.

Canadians and Americans are working together to stop the construction of two new mega-dairies in North Dakota. At the core of the fight? Clean water. @jesslsr.bsky.social shares how advocates and residents are fighting against factory farms.

Hundreds packed @drakeuniversity.bsky.social in Des Moines to demand action on Iowa’s polluted water. Scientists warn farm runoff is fueling a health crisis including one of the nation’s highest cancer rates. @polkcountyhealth.bsky.social www.thenewlede.org/2025/08/outr...

The farmers who voted for Trump are in the "actions have consequences" stage. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Ag folks often claim that farmers don't over apply fertilizer to crops because "fertilizer is expensive and farmers don't throw away money." But that is not what the data shows. According to Farmdoc, 68% of Midwest fields get more nitrogen fertilizer than what would maximize farmers' $ returns.

Interesting image showing the crops that are grown in the U.S. "Just six crops dominate U.S. cropland acres, occupying ~83% of total acreage. The most planted crops in the U.S. are corn, soybeans, hay, wheat, alfalfa, and cotton." sarahmock.substack.com/p/why-food-c...

New from @theswinerepublic.bsky.social. "When over-production is the goal, pollution is an inevitable consequence. We as citizens should not be asked to clean up after this... so multimillionaires and university faculty can become richer." riverraccoon.substack.com/p/ill-leave-...

Saw the news yesterday, and I still think it's crazy that none of the new USDA hubs are in California. Sure, let's have a hub in Utah, the state with the 37th largest ag sales, instead of California, with the number 1 largest ag sales. Clearly politically motivated. www.reuters.com/world/us/usd...

We're in the peak of blue green algae (cyanobacteria) season in the Upper Midwest, so keep an eye out when recreating in/near lakes. There are considerable health harms for humans and animals from cyanotoxins. www.mprnews.org/story/2025/0...

Dicamba is a highly volatile herbicide—known to drift miles, damaging crops, trees, and natural areas. Prairie Rivers Network has a decade of research showing widespread injury across Illinois. Last month, a soybean lobbyist joined EPA's Office of Chemical Safety. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/c...

Not good news, especially for people who care about their crops and other plants near fields sprayed with Dicamba. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I've been enjoying listening to episodes of the new podcast Canary in a Cornfield. A production from the Harkin Institute at @drakeuniversity.bsky.social that discusses the public health damages from agriculture. harkininstitute.drake.edu/canary-in-a-...

Minnesota state agencies have made progress on addressing nitrate in drinking water in the state's Southeast karst region since we contributed to and signed on to MCEA's 2023 EPA petition that asked for action. 1/2

"In short, no one in American agriculture should keep a straight face when claiming the nearly $70 billion Farm Bill will help rural America when the top 1% of farm program recipients garner 25% of all payments and the top 10% receive 70%." www.stormlake.com/stories/foll...

My new piece for EWG released today finds that 18.1 million crop and pasture acres in the 13-state Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area lie within flood plains, but federal farm policies aren’t doing enough to help farmers adapt to worsening climate threats. 1/3 www.ewg.org/research/usd...

Amazing that Bravo continued with the show The McBee Dynasty given that the head of the McBee farm committed over $3 million in crop insurance fraud not long ago. Curious if there will be any mention of it on the show, given that he's facing up to 30 years in prison. www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr...

The Administration found a way to make the childcare crisis even worse. "The deportations will eliminate half a million child care jobs." www.epi.org/publication/...

“There are huge institutional forces in our way. They have been in charge of agricultural policy for a long time." New Central Iowa Source Water Research Assessment shows considerable pollution of central Iowa's waterways due to agriculture. www.thenewlede.org/2025/07/iowa...

Milk may be a dietary staple across the world, but it’s environmental impact may be larger than you think.

My new piece for EWG about how the budget reconciliation bills will not help most farmers in Minnesota, even though it increases national #farmsubsidies by $billions. www.ewg.org/news-insight...