The Aggregate Aggregation V11
Agroecology in the News (Week of April 28, 2025)
Welcome back to The Aggregate Aggregation, our weekly roundup of news and publications that caught our eyes over the last week or so. You can read Volume 10 here.
As the bounty of the late Spring harvest continues to nourish us, the connection between food and nutrition is more top of mind than ever. Our HHS and USDA Secretaries seem to be feeling the same way, which we explore in this week’s Digging Deep. In other news, read about the new Executive Administration’s first 100 days, UFW’s call to boycott a west coast mushroom farm, and tiny needles protecting vegetables.
Let’s make it a conversation! Please share your reflections - we’d love to continue the discussion in the comments.
Digging Deep
We’ve been keeping an eye on the ever-evolving relationship between Health and Human Services (HHA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) through the lens of statements made and actions taken by each Executive Agency’s lead Secretaries: RFK Jr. and Brooke Rollins, respectively. A relationship between the country’s top health and agriculture departments seems to make sense - what could be more closely linked than what we eat and how we grow it?
But this, historically, has been a hard connection for industry and policy to make. As reported by Helena Bottemiller Evich of Food Fix: “Having covered both nutrition and also agriculture throughout my career, I’ve always found it so strange that the nutrition world and ag world have almost no overlap.” She goes on to mention that nutrition and agriculture are often in completely different schools or colleges within the same university system. This was the case at my graduate alma mater, Cornell University, which houses nutrition under the College of Human Ecology and agriculture under the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (nutrition evidently falling outside the realm of life sciences).
Bottemiller Evich continues: “It’s fascinating to watch the blurring of jurisdictional lines here. Normally, Cabinet secretaries stay very much in their own lanes and are careful not to step into others’ turf, whether out of deference or simply to avoid unnecessary conflict. But we continue to see Kennedy veer into USDA territory – on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, on sugar, on school meals, etc. – and Rollins continues to signal, at least publicly, that she’s fine with it.”
RFK Jr. and Rollins seem cozier than ever this week with a joint PR trip planned in Texas. We’ll continue to look out for any indication that this relationship could result in meaningful policy changes that improve the American ag system’s ability to deliver meaningfully on a promise to feed a healthier public - including ensuring food access and affordability for all.
Should agriculture and nutrition policy be intimately linked? How do you see these two issues as being connected? Please leave us a comment!
Surface Level
🥣More from the world of nutrition
RFK Jr. isn’t staying in his lane. Trump is thrilled. (Politico). “Guided largely by his own longstanding fixations on food, wellness and environmental “toxins,” Kennedy is leading a campaign to ban soda and other unhealthy items from the food stamp program, at one point vowing to approve restriction requests sent to “my agency” even though it falls under the USDA’s jurisdiction… Kennedy’s involvement across jurisdictions has also created some messaging headaches. Last month, he derided the prospect of vaccinating poultry against the bird flu, contradicting a plan USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins had just rolled out that included funding for vaccine development.”
We Need To Talk About Food Dyes (Consumed). “Getting dyes out of our food is a good thing. According to the Wall Street Journal, 13 percent of products on store shelves contain artificial dyes. But even if Kennedy were to make sure Froot Loops were colored with beet or carrot juice, it won’t be enough to move the needle on obesity and chronic disease.”
No More Food Dye in Froot Loops? Not So Fast. (New York Times). “On Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy, who has long criticized artificial dyes used in Froot Loops and other processed foods as part of a larger food system that he says contributes to chronic disease and poor health, announced that he had reached “an understanding” with major food manufacturers to remove commonly used petroleum-based food colorings from their products by 2026. The meaning of “an understanding” remains unclear.”
🇺🇸Takes on the Trump Administration’s first 100 days
Op-ed: Trump’s Disastrous First 100 Days for Food, Farming, and Fairness (Civil Eats). “To understand the scale and implications of these actions, recall where we stood before Trump returned to office. After more than a century of agricultural policy dominated by corporate consolidation and environmental degradation, there were signs of transformation. Advocates, scientists, and farmers were successfully pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support a fairer and more ecologically sound food system… The Trump administration’s so-called return to “free markets” is not just a rollback to the pre-Biden status quo; it’s an aggressive acceleration toward even deeper consolidation, climate vulnerability, and racial inequity.”
The First 100 Days: How Trump and Vance Have Changed Food, Agriculture, Health, and Climate (Food Tank). A month-by-month list of all executive actions taken related to these topics.
🌽More recent federal policy changes in agriculture…
USDA to Issue $1.3 Billion to Specialty Crop Producers Through Second Marketing Assistance Program Payment (USDA press release). “U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins today announced a second round of payments coming this week for specialty crop producers through the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops (MASC) program, providing up to $1.3 billion in additional program assistance. U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) already delivered just under $900 million in first round payments to eligible producers.”
Agroforestry Projects Across US Now Stymied by Federal Cuts (Civil Eats). “Farming with trees at scale could buffer the impact of climate change. That work faces new obstacles as the USDA slashes funding.”
🌲… and the environment
Ahead of the Summer Driving Season, EPA Allows for Nationwide Year-Round E15 (EPA). “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today is issuing an emergency fuel waiver allowing the sale of E15 gasoline — gasoline blended with 15% ethanol — nationwide during the summer driving season. By doing so, EPA will keep E15 on the market giving consumers more options across the nation. This is consistent with President Trump’s Executive Order Declaring a National Energy Emergency…”
Administrator Zeldin Announces Major EPA Actions to Combat PFAS Contamination (Morning Ag Clips). “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin outlined upcoming agency action to address Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). In this suite of actions, Administrator Zeldin announced a long list that included in part the designation of an agency lead for PFAS, the creation of effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for certain PFAS to stop these forever chemicals from entering drinking water systems, and initiatives to engage with Congress and industry to establish a clear liability framework that ensures the polluter pays and passive receivers are protected.”
E.P.A. Says It Will Tackle ‘Forever Chemicals.’ Details Are Sparse. (New York Times). “Environmental groups said the E.P.A.’s plans lacked specifics, including whether the agency intended to defend the Biden-era drinking water standards in court. Among the only hints on what the Trump administration might do was a mention of the need to address ‘compliance challenges.’... The E.P.A. has also been cutting research grants to scientists studying how to prevent PFAS from accumulating in crops and the food chain.”
🔄Everything else that caught our eyes
These Farm Workers Are Calling for a Boycott—Until Their Union Is Recognized (Food Tank). “Farm workers in Sunnyside, Washington and labor union United Farm Workers (UFW) are calling for a boycott of Windmill Farms’ mushrooms due to the farm’s failure to recognize the union. Workers point to unrealistic harvest quotas, union-busting, and mistreatment of workers as additional reasons for the boycott, UFW’s first since 2005.”
Farmers are making bank harvesting a new crop: Solar energy (Grist). “According to a new study, this practice of agrisolar has been quite lucrative for farmers in California’s Central Valley over the last 25 years — and for the environment. Researchers looked at producers who had idled land and installed solar, using the electricity to run equipment like water pumps and selling the excess power to utilities.”
Gene-Edited Pigs Approved for US Market (Morning Ag Clips). “The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a gene-editing technology that makes pigs resistant to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) for the US food supply chain. This landmark approval for animal genetics company Genus, following years of development, helps meet the challenge of a disease that is endemic to most pig-producing regions.”
Will the Vegetables of the Future Be Fortified Using Tiny Needles? (Morning Ag Clips). “When farmers apply pesticides to their crops, 30 to 50 percent of the chemicals end up in the air or soil instead of on the plants. Now, a team of researchers from MIT and Singapore has developed a much more precise way to deliver substances to plants: tiny needles made of silk.”
What did we miss? Drop a link to your favorite story of the week (or month, or year) in the comments. Tell us why it resonated with you!
What we’re reading
A list of sources the editors at The Aggregate check regularly for our agroecology+ news.
Well - I certainly think the decision-makers on agriculture and nutrition should be talking to each other! But these two....well, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. RFK Jr's recent rants on environmental toxins and finding the "cause" of autism (yikes) make him seem to me like a hugely unlikely friend to a USDA that allows (in a regulated way), a huge variety of toxins. If it all results in fruit loops that are colored with natural food dyes...then..yay? But, maybe we need to change the rest of the ingredients in fruit loops too. :0