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The meat industry’s war on wildlife

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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

A coyote in the El Capitan meadow area at sunrise in Yosemite National Park. | Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Your taxes fund an obscure government program that kills millions of wild animals to benefit Big Ag. A red fox killed with a cyanide bomb. A gray wolf gunned down from an airplane. A jackrabbit caught in a neck snare. These are just a few of the 1.45 million animals poisoned, shot, and trapped last year by the euphemistically named Wildlife Services, a little-known but particularly brutal program of the US Department of Agriculture. The program kills wildlife for many reasons, including poisoning birds to prevent them from striking airplanes and destroying beavers that sneak onto golf courses. But one of the primary purposes of the mostly taxpayer-funded $286 million program is to serve as the meat and dairy industries’ on-call pest control service. “We were the hired gun of the livestock industry,” said Carter Niemeyer, who worked in Wildlife Services and related programs from 1975 to 2006. Niemeyer specialized in killing and trapping predators like coyotes and wolves that were suspected of killing farmed cattle and sheep. Wildlife Services has also killed hundreds of endangered gray wolves, threatened grizzly bears, and highly endangered Mexican gray wolves, often at the behest of the livestock industry and enabled by exemptions from the Endangered Species Act. The top three species Wildlife Services killed in 2023 were European starlings, feral pigs, and coyotes, according to data released last month. How these animals were targeted — from shooting coyotes to poisoning birds — has prompted Congress to fund nonlethal initiatives within the program and conservation groups to call for sweeping changes to how Wildlife Services operates. The USDA didn’t respond to several questions sent via email. “God was our only witness out there,” Niemeyer said about agents killing animals in the field. “You just hope that everybody makes [choices] morally and ethically acceptable and as humane as possible.” To Wildlife Services’ credit, the vast majority of its work entails nonlethally scaring animals off. Controversy, though, has dogged the program for decades, as critics like Niemeyer and other former employees say much of its predator killing is unnecessary, imprecise, and inhumane. Conservation groups say it’s ecologically destructive, as such predators are crucial to ecosystem health and biodiversity. Predator hysteria, explained Adrian Treves, an environmental science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the origins of today’s rampant predator killing can be found in America’s early European settlers, who brought with them the mentality that wolves were “superpredators,” posing a dangerous threat to humans. “We’ve been fed this story that the eradication of wolves was necessary for livestock production,” he said. Today, Wildlife Services’ most controversial work is its killings of coyotes and other predators for the supposed threat they pose to American ranchers and the food supply. But according to a USDA estimate, predation accounted for just 4.7 percent of cattle mortality in 2015. Conservation groups say that figure is exaggerated because it’s based on self-reported data from ranchers and shoddy methodology. According to an analysis of USDA data by the Humane Society of the United States, predation accounts for only 0.3 percent of cattle mortality. (Disclosure: I worked at the Humane Society of the United States from 2012 to 2017 on unrelated agricultural issues.) The Humane Society points to several flaws in the USDA data, including the fact that ranchers reported livestock predation from grizzly bears in six states that don’t have any grizzly bears. In the Northern Rocky Mountains region, the rate of livestock predation reported by ranchers was 27 times higher than data provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which had actually confirmed livestock deaths by predators. “When I first went to work, there was just sort of this acceptance that if a rancher called and he said he had a coyote problem, we assumed that [he] had a coyote problem,” Niemeyer said. “We didn’t question it. I didn’t see a lot of meticulous necropsy work done” to investigate the cause of death. The numbers reported to the USDA by ranchers, he now believes, are “exaggerated and embellished.” USDA-APHIS A coyote caught in a foothold trap. The USDA financially compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves and some other species, which can create an incentive to attribute farm animal deaths to predators. Robert Gosnell, a former director of New Mexico’s USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service who administered the state’s Wildlife Services program, told the Intercept in 2022 that the agency’s field inspectors had been ordered to report livestock deaths as “wolf kills” for ranchers. “My guys in the field were going and rubber-stamping anything those people asked them to,” Gosnell said. Niemeyer is not opposed to killing individual coyotes or wolves suspected of killing a particular cow or sheep. But much of Wildlife Services’ predator control, he said (and another former employee has alleged), is done preventively in an attempt to reduce coyote populations. “Every coyote is suspected of potentially being a killer,” Niemeyer said, which he characterizes as coyote or wolf “hysteria.” Last year, 68,000 coyotes were taken down by a variety of means, including ingestion of Compound 1080, a poison that causes acute pain in the form of heart blockage, respiratory failure, hallucinations, and convulsions. Thousands more animals are killed as collateral damage. Last year, over 2,000 were killed unintentionally, a consequence of setting out untold numbers of traps and baited cyanide bombs. These devices have also injured a small number of humans and, between 2000 and 2012, killed more than 1,100 dogs. Some employees have died on the job, and there have even been allegations of orders within the agency to cover up unintentional kills of pets and a federally protected golden eagle. USDA-APHIS A hawk caught in a trap. An irrational bias against predators has made it hard for Americans, and its regulators, to recognize predators’ many ecological and social benefits. One study in Wisconsin, for example, found that wild wolf populations keep deer away from roadways, which in turn reduces costly, and sometimes deadly, car crashes. And killing predators may, counterintuitively, lead to more livestock deaths, Treves said. Some predator species that experience mass killing events may compensate by having more babies at younger ages. That could partly explain why, when wolf killings increased in some Western states, livestock predation went up, too. And when you wipe out some animals, others may fill the void. Coyotes significantly expanded their range in the 1900s after America’s centuries-long wolf extermination campaign. Finally, Treves said, killing suspected predators from one ranch may simply drive the remaining population into neighboring ranches. One study he co-authored on wolf kills in Michigan found “a three times elevation of risk to livestock on neighboring properties after a farm received lethal control of wolves from Wildlife Services.” Agricultural sprawl and the war on “invasive” species Wildlife Services represents yet another example of the USDA’s seeming indifference to animal welfare, but it also highlights a little-known fact of human-wildlife conflict: Most of it stems from agriculture. Almost half of the contiguous United States is now used for meat, dairy, and egg production — most of it cattle-grazing — which has crowded out wildlife and reduced biodiversity. And whenever wild animals end up on farmland that was once their habitat, they run the risk of being poisoned, shot, or trapped by Wildlife Services. That’s true for animals that find their way onto fruit, vegetable, and nut orchards for a snack, too. But Wildlife Services’ primary goal is to protect the interests of livestock producers, USDA public affairs specialist Tanya Espinosa told me in an email — yet another subsidy for an already highly subsidized industry. While much of the criticism lobbed at Wildlife Services pertains to its treatment of charismatic megafauna like coyotes, bears, and wolves, little attention is paid to the European starling, Wildlife Services’ most targeted species. Starlings accounted for a little over half of all animals killed by Wildlife Services, at 814,310 birds. Starlings, which are targeted because they like to feast on grain at dairy farms and cattle feedlots, are mostly mass-poisoned with DRC-1339, also known as Starlicide, which destroys their heart and kidney function, slowly and excruciatingly killing them over the course of three to 80 hours. It’s not uncommon for towns across the US to suddenly find thousands of starlings dropping dead out of trees or raining from the sky. Despite these deaths, starlings receive little sympathy — even from bird enthusiasts — given its status as an “invasive” species, a term often invoked to justify excluding a species from moral consideration, according to Australian ecologist Arian Wallach. Here too, as with predators, we may be in need of a reframe, or at least a broadening of our often one-track conversation about nonnative species like feral pigs and starlings. “In no way does the starling imagine itself as an invasive species — that is a human construction,” said Natalie Hofmeister, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Michigan and author of the forthcoming book Citizen Starling. Rethinking mass killing Despite Wildlife Services’ high kill counts, it has expanded its use of nonlethal methods in recent years, including guard dogs, electric fencing, audio/visual deterrents, bird repellent research, and fladry — tying flags along fences, which can scare off some predator species. “The last three years have shown a little bit of a turning of the tide for Wildlife Services,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director of the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s been more focus on preventing conflicts versus the Band-Aid of killing animals.” Matt Moyer/Getty Images A range rider in Montana hangs fladry — long red flags attached to fencing — to scare away livestock predators. Treves agrees, but is skeptical there will be meaningful change. Most importantly, he wants to see Wildlife Services experimentally test its lethal methods to see if they actually prevent livestock predation. “I am cynical,” he said. “I am frustrated that this is 20 years of arguing with this agency that’s entrenched, stubborn, and will not listen to the people who disagree with them.” There are no easy answers here. While much of Wildlife Services’ work is ecologically ruinous and unjustifiably cruel, wild animals do inflict real damage on our food supply. Better management on the part of farmers and ranchers and further USDA investment into nonlethal methods could help. Even better would be to rethink the USDA’s — and the meat industry’s — license to wage war on wildlife. A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Your taxes fund an obscure government program that kills millions of wild animals to benefit Big Ag.

A red fox killed with a cyanide bomb. A gray wolf gunned down from an airplane. A jackrabbit caught in a neck snare. These are just a few of the 1.45 million animals poisoned, shot, and trapped last year by the euphemistically named Wildlife Services, a little-known but particularly brutal program of the US Department of Agriculture.

The program kills wildlife for many reasons, including poisoning birds to prevent them from striking airplanes and destroying beavers that sneak onto golf courses. But one of the primary purposes of the mostly taxpayer-funded $286 million program is to serve as the meat and dairy industries’ on-call pest control service.

“We were the hired gun of the livestock industry,” said Carter Niemeyer, who worked in Wildlife Services and related programs from 1975 to 2006. Niemeyer specialized in killing and trapping predators like coyotes and wolves that were suspected of killing farmed cattle and sheep.

Wildlife Services has also killed hundreds of endangered gray wolves, threatened grizzly bears, and highly endangered Mexican gray wolves, often at the behest of the livestock industry and enabled by exemptions from the Endangered Species Act.

The top three species Wildlife Services killed in 2023 were European starlings, feral pigs, and coyotes, according to data released last month. How these animals were targeted — from shooting coyotes to poisoning birds — has prompted Congress to fund nonlethal initiatives within the program and conservation groups to call for sweeping changes to how Wildlife Services operates. The USDA didn’t respond to several questions sent via email.

“God was our only witness out there,” Niemeyer said about agents killing animals in the field. “You just hope that everybody makes [choices] morally and ethically acceptable and as humane as possible.”

To Wildlife Services’ credit, the vast majority of its work entails nonlethally scaring animals off. Controversy, though, has dogged the program for decades, as critics like Niemeyer and other former employees say much of its predator killing is unnecessary, imprecise, and inhumane. Conservation groups say it’s ecologically destructive, as such predators are crucial to ecosystem health and biodiversity.

Predator hysteria, explained

Adrian Treves, an environmental science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the origins of today’s rampant predator killing can be found in America’s early European settlers, who brought with them the mentality that wolves were “superpredators,” posing a dangerous threat to humans. “We’ve been fed this story that the eradication of wolves was necessary for livestock production,” he said.

Today, Wildlife Services’ most controversial work is its killings of coyotes and other predators for the supposed threat they pose to American ranchers and the food supply. But according to a USDA estimate, predation accounted for just 4.7 percent of cattle mortality in 2015. Conservation groups say that figure is exaggerated because it’s based on self-reported data from ranchers and shoddy methodology.

According to an analysis of USDA data by the Humane Society of the United States, predation accounts for only 0.3 percent of cattle mortality. (Disclosure: I worked at the Humane Society of the United States from 2012 to 2017 on unrelated agricultural issues.)

The Humane Society points to several flaws in the USDA data, including the fact that ranchers reported livestock predation from grizzly bears in six states that don’t have any grizzly bears. In the Northern Rocky Mountains region, the rate of livestock predation reported by ranchers was 27 times higher than data provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which had actually confirmed livestock deaths by predators.

“When I first went to work, there was just sort of this acceptance that if a rancher called and he said he had a coyote problem, we assumed that [he] had a coyote problem,” Niemeyer said. “We didn’t question it. I didn’t see a lot of meticulous necropsy work done” to investigate the cause of death. The numbers reported to the USDA by ranchers, he now believes, are “exaggerated and embellished.”

The USDA financially compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves and some other species, which can create an incentive to attribute farm animal deaths to predators. Robert Gosnell, a former director of New Mexico’s USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service who administered the state’s Wildlife Services program, told the Intercept in 2022 that the agency’s field inspectors had been ordered to report livestock deaths as “wolf kills” for ranchers. “My guys in the field were going and rubber-stamping anything those people asked them to,” Gosnell said.

Niemeyer is not opposed to killing individual coyotes or wolves suspected of killing a particular cow or sheep. But much of Wildlife Services’ predator control, he said (and another former employee has alleged), is done preventively in an attempt to reduce coyote populations.

“Every coyote is suspected of potentially being a killer,” Niemeyer said, which he characterizes as coyote or wolf “hysteria.”

Last year, 68,000 coyotes were taken down by a variety of means, including ingestion of Compound 1080, a poison that causes acute pain in the form of heart blockage, respiratory failure, hallucinations, and convulsions.

Thousands more animals are killed as collateral damage. Last year, over 2,000 were killed unintentionally, a consequence of setting out untold numbers of traps and baited cyanide bombs. These devices have also injured a small number of humans and, between 2000 and 2012, killed more than 1,100 dogs.

Some employees have died on the job, and there have even been allegations of orders within the agency to cover up unintentional kills of pets and a federally protected golden eagle.

A hawk on grassy ground with its wings spread and mouth open because its foot is caught in a snare. — A hawk caught in a trap.

An irrational bias against predators has made it hard for Americans, and its regulators, to recognize predators’ many ecological and social benefits. One study in Wisconsin, for example, found that wild wolf populations keep deer away from roadways, which in turn reduces costly, and sometimes deadly, car crashes.

And killing predators may, counterintuitively, lead to more livestock deaths, Treves said.

Some predator species that experience mass killing events may compensate by having more babies at younger ages. That could partly explain why, when wolf killings increased in some Western states, livestock predation went up, too. And when you wipe out some animals, others may fill the void. Coyotes significantly expanded their range in the 1900s after America’s centuries-long wolf extermination campaign.

Finally, Treves said, killing suspected predators from one ranch may simply drive the remaining population into neighboring ranches. One study he co-authored on wolf kills in Michigan found “a three times elevation of risk to livestock on neighboring properties after a farm received lethal control of wolves from Wildlife Services.”

Agricultural sprawl and the war on “invasive” species

Wildlife Services represents yet another example of the USDA’s seeming indifference to animal welfare, but it also highlights a little-known fact of human-wildlife conflict: Most of it stems from agriculture.

Almost half of the contiguous United States is now used for meat, dairy, and egg production — most of it cattle-grazing — which has crowded out wildlife and reduced biodiversity. And whenever wild animals end up on farmland that was once their habitat, they run the risk of being poisoned, shot, or trapped by Wildlife Services.

That’s true for animals that find their way onto fruit, vegetable, and nut orchards for a snack, too. But Wildlife Services’ primary goal is to protect the interests of livestock producers, USDA public affairs specialist Tanya Espinosa told me in an email — yet another subsidy for an already highly subsidized industry.

While much of the criticism lobbed at Wildlife Services pertains to its treatment of charismatic megafauna like coyotes, bears, and wolves, little attention is paid to the European starling, Wildlife Services’ most targeted species. Starlings accounted for a little over half of all animals killed by Wildlife Services, at 814,310 birds.

Starlings, which are targeted because they like to feast on grain at dairy farms and cattle feedlots, are mostly mass-poisoned with DRC-1339, also known as Starlicide, which destroys their heart and kidney function, slowly and excruciatingly killing them over the course of three to 80 hours. It’s not uncommon for towns across the US to suddenly find thousands of starlings dropping dead out of trees or raining from the sky.

Despite these deaths, starlings receive little sympathy — even from bird enthusiasts — given its status as an “invasive” species, a term often invoked to justify excluding a species from moral consideration, according to Australian ecologist Arian Wallach.

Here too, as with predators, we may be in need of a reframe, or at least a broadening of our often one-track conversation about nonnative species like feral pigs and starlings.

“In no way does the starling imagine itself as an invasive species — that is a human construction,” said Natalie Hofmeister, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Michigan and author of the forthcoming book Citizen Starling.

Rethinking mass killing

Despite Wildlife Services’ high kill counts, it has expanded its use of nonlethal methods in recent years, including guard dogs, electric fencing, audio/visual deterrents, bird repellent research, and fladry — tying flags along fences, which can scare off some predator species.

“The last three years have shown a little bit of a turning of the tide for Wildlife Services,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director of the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s been more focus on preventing conflicts versus the Band-Aid of killing animals.”

A range rider in Montana hangs fladry — long red flags attached to fencing — to scare away livestock predators.

Treves agrees, but is skeptical there will be meaningful change. Most importantly, he wants to see Wildlife Services experimentally test its lethal methods to see if they actually prevent livestock predation.

“I am cynical,” he said. “I am frustrated that this is 20 years of arguing with this agency that’s entrenched, stubborn, and will not listen to the people who disagree with them.”

There are no easy answers here. While much of Wildlife Services’ work is ecologically ruinous and unjustifiably cruel, wild animals do inflict real damage on our food supply. Better management on the part of farmers and ranchers and further USDA investment into nonlethal methods could help. Even better would be to rethink the USDA’s — and the meat industry’s — license to wage war on wildlife.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Read the full story here.

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Bob Rucho, a Republican picked to sit on the state elections board after lawmakers shifted control from Stein to the Republican state auditor, said the changes would fix problems created by Democrats. “Republicans are very proud of what’s been accomplished,” Rucho said. Shifting authority over the elections board, he argued, would “reestablish a level of confidence in the electoral process” that Democrats had lost. ProPublica recently chronicled the nearly 10-year push to take over the board, which sets rules and settles disputes in elections in the closely divided swing state. Decisions made by the board’s new leadership — particularly on the locations and numbers of early voting sites — could affect outcomes in the 2026 midterms. Below, we examine how other power transfers driven by North Carolina’s Republican legislature are reshaping everything from the regulations that protect residents’ drinking water to the rates they pay for electricity to the culture of their state university system. Related “Biblical justice for all”: How North Carolina’s chief justice transformed his state Environmental Management Commission What it is: The Environmental Management Commission adopts rules that protect the state’s air and water, such as those that regulate industries discharging potentially carcinogenic chemicals in rivers. Power transfer: In October 2023, Republican legislators passed a law shifting the power to appoint the majority of the commission’s members from the governor to themselves and the state’s commissioner of agriculture, who is a Republican. What’s happened since: The new Republican-led commission has stymied several efforts by the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to regulate a potentially harmful chemical, 1,4-dioxane, in drinking water. Advocates for businesses, including the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, had criticized some regulations and urged the commission to intervene. “Clean water is worth the cost, but regulators should not arbitrarily establish a level that is low for the sake of being low,” the chamber said in a press release. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has pressed the state to regulate the chemical, has said the commission’s rulings are “crippling the state’s ability to protect its waterways, drinking water sources, and communities from harmful pollution.” Utilities Commission What it is: The North Carolina Utilities Commission regulates the rates and services of the state’s public utilities, which include providers of electricity, natural gas, water and telephone service. The commission also oversees movers, brokers, ferryboats and wastewater. Power transfer: In June 2025, a trial court sided with the General Assembly in allowing a law passed in 2024 to take effect, removing the governor’s power to appoint a majority of the commission’s members and transferring that power to legislative leaders and the state treasurer, who is a Republican. What’s happened since: The state’s primary utility, Duke Energy, has backed off from some plans to rely more on clean energy and retire coal-fired power plants. In November, the company said it would seek the commission’s approval to raise rates by 15%. In response to a new resource plan the company filed in October, the executive director of NC WARN, a climate and environmental justice nonprofit, said in a statement that Duke’s actions would cause “power bills to double or triple over time” and increase carbon emissions. The state’s governor and attorney general, both Democrats, have said they oppose the rate hike. Garrett Poorman, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, said that the company is “focused on keeping costs as low as possible while meeting growing energy needs across our footprint” and that the company had recently lowered its forecasted costs. The commission will decide whether to approve the proposed rate hikes in 2026. University of North Carolina System What it is: The University of North Carolina System encompasses 17 institutions and more than 250,000 students, including at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, considered one of best in the nation. Power transfer: Though the legislature has traditionally appointed the majority of the trustees for individual schools, the governor also made a share of these appointments. In 2016, the legislature passed a law that eliminated the governor’s ability to make university trustee appointments. In 2023, changes inserted into the state budget bill gave the legislature power to appoint all of the members of the state board that oversees community colleges and most of those colleges’ trustees. The governor had previously chosen some board members and trustees. What’s happened since: The system has created a center for conservative thought, repealed racial equity initiatives, suspended a left-leaning professor, gutted a civil rights center led by a professor long critical of Republican lawmakers and appointed politically connected Republicans to the boards. Republicans say the moves are reversing the system’s long-term leftward drift. “Ultimately, the board stays in for a while, and you change administrators, and then start to moderate the culture of the UNC schools,” said David Lewis, a former Republican House member who helped drive the changes to the university system. Democrats, including former Gov. Roy Cooper, have criticized the board changes as partisan meddling. “These actions will ultimately hurt our state’s economy and reputation,” Cooper said in a 2023 press release. Read more about this topic Democrats sound alarm on Trump administration’s attacks on voting rights “Still angry”: Voters say they won’t forget that the North Carolina GOP tried to trash their ballots “We will bring this home”: North Carolina Democrats confident they’ll defeat GOP election denial The post GOP lawmakers’ power transfers are reshaping North Carolina appeared first on Salon.com.

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Our Biggest Farming Stories of 2025

Trump’s tariffs created more headaches for farmers, particularly soybean producers, who saw their biggest buyer—China—walk away during the trade fight as their costs for fertilizer and other materials increased. Farming groups also protested when the Trump administration announced it would import 80,000 metric tons of beef from Argentina, about four times the regular quota. We […] The post Our Biggest Farming Stories of 2025 appeared first on Civil Eats.

When we started Civil Eats, we sought to report on farming from a different perspective, focusing on underrepresented voices and issues. This year, most American farmers faced significant challenges, and we strove to tell their stories. Federal budget cuts were a major disruption, impacting USDA grants that helped farmers build soil health, increase biodiversity, generate renewable energy, and sell their crops to local schools and food banks, among other projects. Trump’s tariffs created more headaches for farmers, particularly soybean producers, who saw their biggest buyer—China—walk away during the trade fight as their costs for fertilizer and other materials increased. Farming groups also protested when the Trump administration announced it would import 80,000 metric tons of beef from Argentina, about four times the regular quota. We also identified as many solutions as we could in this turbulent year by highlighting farmers’ extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness, from finding sustainable ways to grow food to fighting corporate consolidation to opening their own meat-processing cooperative. Here are our biggest farming stories of 2025, in chronological order. Farmers Need Help to Survive. A New Crop of Farm Advocates Is on the Way. Farmers with expertise in law and finance have long guided the farming community through tough situations, but their numbers have been dropping. Now, thanks to federally funded training, farm advocates are coming back. California Decides What ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ Means. Sort of. A new definition for an old way of farming may help California soil, but it won’t mean organic. Butterbee Farm, in Maryland, has received several federal grants that have been crucial for the farm’s survival. (Photo credit: L.A. Birdie Photography) Trump’s Funding Freeze Creates Chaos and Financial Distress for Farmers Efforts to transition farms to regenerative agriculture are stalled, and the path forward is unclear. How Trump’s Tariffs Will Affect Farmers and Food Prices Economists say tariffs will likely lead to higher food prices, while farmers are worried about fertilizer imports and their export markets. USDA Continues to Roll Out Deeper Cuts to Farm Grants: A List In addition to the end of two local food programs that support schools and food banks sourcing from small farms, more cuts are likely. USDA Prioritizes Economic Relief for Commodity Farmers The agency announced it will roll out economic relief payments to growers of corn, soybeans, oilseeds, and other row crops. Will Local Food Survive Trump’s USDA? Less than two months in, Trump’s USDA is bulldozing efforts that help small farms and food producers sell healthy food directly to schools, food banks, and their local communities. USDA Unfreezes Energy Funds for Farmers, but Demands They Align on DEI USDA is requesting farmers make changes to their projects so that they align with directives on energy production and DEI, a task experts say may not be legal or possible. Ranchers herd cattle across open range in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico, where conservation initiatives help restore grasslands and protect water resources. (Photo courtesy Ariel Greenwood) Trump Announces Higher Tariffs on Major Food and Agricultural Trade Partners The president says the tariffs will boost American manufacturing and make the country wealthy, but many expect farmers to suffer losses and food prices to rise. USDA Introduces Policy Agenda Focused on Small Farms Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rolls out a 10-point plan that includes environmental deregulation and utilizing healthy food programs that have recently lost funding. USDA Drops Rules Requiring Farmers to Record Their Use of the Most Toxic Pesticides Pesticide watchdog groups say the regulations should be strengthened, not thrown out. Conservation Work on Farms and Ranches Could Take a Hit as USDA Cuts Staff Close to 2,400 employees of the Natural Resources Conservation Service have accepted an offer to resign, leaving fewer hands to protect rural landscapes. USDA Cancels Additional Grants Funding Land Access and Training for Young Farmers The future of other awards in the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program remains unclear. House Bill Would Halt Assessment of PFAS Risk on Farms The bill also strengthens EPA authority around pesticide labeling, which could prevent states from adopting their own versions of labels. Should Regenerative Farmers Pin Hopes on RFK Jr.’s MAHA? While the Make America Health Again movement supports alternative farming, few of Trump’s policies promote healthy agricultural landscapes. A leaked version of the second MAHA Commission Report underscores these concerns. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024, introduces Willie Nelson at Farm Aid’s 40th anniversary this year, in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo credit: Lisa Held) At 40, Farm Aid Is Still About Music. It’s Also a Movement. Willie Nelson launched the music festival in 1985 as a fundraiser to save family farms. With corporate consolidation a continuing threat to farms, it’s now a platform for populist organizing, too. Agriculture Secretary Confirms US Plan to Buy Beef from Argentina Brooke Rollins on Tuesday defended a Trump administration plan that has ignited criticism from farm groups and some Republicans. For Farmers, the Government Shutdown Adds More Challenges With no access to local ag-related offices, critical loans, or disaster assistance, farmers are facing even more stressors. Farmers Struggle With Tariffs, Despite China Deal to Buy US Soybeans While the Supreme Court considers Trump’s tariffs, the farm economy falters. This Farmer-Owned Meat Processing Co-op in Tennessee Changes the Game A Q&A with Lexy Close of the Appalachian Producers Cooperative, who says the new facility has dramatically decreased processing wait times and could revive the area’s local meat economy. Farmers Face Prospect of Skyrocketing Healthcare Premiums More than a quarter of U.S. farmers rely on the Affordable Care Act, but Biden-era tax credits expire at the end of the year. After 150 Years, California’s Sugar Beet Industry Comes to an End The Imperial Valley might be the best place in the world to grow beets. What went wrong? Trump Farmer Bailout Primarily Benefits Commodity Farms Of the $12 billion the administration will send to farmers, $11 billion is reserved for ranchers and major row crop farmers. The post Our Biggest Farming Stories of 2025 appeared first on Civil Eats.

Agriculture

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