The Aggregate Aggregation V2
Agroecology in the News (Week of February 9, 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 1 here.
In this issue, Digging Deep explores how we can feel we’re making a difference, even against problems as overwhelming as the rapid spread of bird flu. Surface Level covers a range of topics, including lots from the agriculture policy space, a look at open lawsuits against the manufacturers of herbicides and chemical sprays, and more.
Let’s make it a conversation! Please share your reflections - we’d love to continue the discussion in the comments.
Digging Deep 🐓
This week’s Digging Deep is for the birds. National agriculture news has increasingly featured updates on bird flu, or HPAI, which has been decimating wild bird populations and spreading to American poultry, dairy cattle, and people. States like New York are taking action to mitigate the spread, action like mandating temporary closures of live bird markets. Inflation continues to rise, and the cost of eggs is up a significant amount above and beyond inflation (+15.2%) largely due to HPAI.
It can be difficult to grapple with the barrage of seemingly enormous challenges facing us. As we continue in Surface Level, below, the uncertainty created by the current presidential transition is creating a storm of problems for farmers; chemical companies are organizing to insulate themselves from reckoning with the human health impacts of their products; and the climate crisis is continuing to worsen. Despair is an option, but action, even on just one issue, can be a salve for these overwhelming times.
So, is there anything we can do, personally, now, about bird flu? Maybe not directly, but all of us can participate in the annual “Great Backyard Bird Count” happening today, February 14, through Monday, February 17. HPAI has devastated wild bird communities, and the Great Backyard Bird Count is a citizen science project that helps researchers better understand global bird populations ahead of migration season. Anyone can participate, anywhere in the world, and it takes as little as 15 minutes! New to birding? Check out the Merlin app (free!), which you can use to count your birds this weekend. And here’s a podcast episode from the Royal Horticultural Society about the love of birds and their role in our agroecosystems to listen to while you count.
Are you focused on solving any big challenges at the moment? We’d love to hear what’s on your mind and how you’re committing to action. Tell us in the comments!
Surface Level
This week, we’re highlighting the impact of Trump’s first 3 weeks on farming communities, the ongoing battles raging against herbicide manufacturers, the disconnect between Trump’s food policy agenda and “America first,” and a smattering of other topics ranging from honeybee colony collapse to PFAS.
⚖️Trump’s agenda sends shockwaves through farming communities.
A federal pause on Inflation Reduction Act spending, grants, and more has spread to the USDA, leaving farmers suddenly on the hook for unexpected costs related to conservation programs, business expansion, and access to international markets. Farmers are considering taking out additional loans to ride out the delay, and many are vowing never to work with the federal government again. The impacts to the future of farming in America could be devastating.
Trump’s Funding Freezes Bruise a Core Constituency: Farmers (New York Times). The funding freezes and uncertainty that have characterized the start of Trump’s second term have “left farmers and businesses in rural America reeling.” Payments for reimbursable contracts from the USDA have been paused, leaving farmers on the hook for up to tens of thousands of dollars each for projects they’ve already completed. The federal pause on international aid may impact the hundreds of American farmers who grow commodity crops for such programs, and cuts in research spending contracts to land grant universities may delay or end research that could benefit farmers and rural communities.
Farmers on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds (Washington Post). “Farmers report missing millions of dollars of funding they were promised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, despite promises from the Trump administration that a federal funding freeze would not apply to projects directly benefiting individuals.”
Trump’s Funding Freeze Creates Chaos and Financial Distress for Farmers (Civil Eats). “The pause in Climate-Smart Commodities grants is having particularly wide-reaching impacts, since the investment was so large, the program was just getting off the ground, and thousands of farms—from small dairies in the Northeast to large commodity grain operations in the Midwest—are involved.”
White House Failed to Comply With Court Order, Judge Rules (New York Times). “A federal judge said on Monday that the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.” This comes after Trump fired 17 inspectors general, including at the USDA, a group meant to “provide an internal, independent check on executive branch waste, fraud and abuse.”
The Trump administration is withholding funds for farmers — despite court orders (Politico). “Federal agencies are telling farmers that they can’t make payments promised in signed contracts, creating new economic hardships ahead of a planting season likely to bear the marks of Trump administration policies. ‘I might lose my farm because of the government,’ Skylar Holden, a Missouri farmer with a conservation contract, said.”
In related news, Brooke Rollins was confirmed as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture this Thursday. “Rollins, who was a domestic policy chief during Trump’s first term in the White House, will be responsible for nearly 100,000 department employees and a budget of more than $200 billion. She’ll also lead USDA’s nutrition, rural developments, farm safety net and trade programs, as well as the federal response to the bird flu outbreak.” The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition released a statement urging the new Secretary “to relieve and reverse the pain and confusion being felt by farmers and communities nationwide from the federal funding freeze.”
Despite Cuts to DEI Initiatives, Food and Farm Advocates Say They Will Continue to Fight for Racial Justice (Civil Eats). The move “puts into question the future of the USDA’s many grant programs that focus on supporting and feeding underserved farmers and communities. (Most of those programs are authorized and funded by Congress, but Trump has already defied laws meant to maintain checks and balances on other fronts.”
👩🌾Paraquat and Parkinson’s, RoundUp and cancer
Is There Enough Evidence of Health Risks for the EPA to Ban Paraquat? (Civil Eats). “Farmers use the herbicide paraquat, often sold under the brand name Gramoxone, to clear fields before planting. One of the most popular herbicides in the U.S., paraquat is cheap and effective, able to rapidly kill grasses and perennial weeds, but a growing body of research has connected it to Parkinson’s disease, thyroid cancer, and harm to birds, amphibians, reptiles, and plants. The mounting research, however, has so far failed to convince federal and state regulators to ban its use in the U.S. It is illegal in more than 70 countries, including the European Union, as well as the U.K. and China, where it is manufactured.”
Bill shielding pesticide manufacturers from cancer lawsuits advances in Senate (Des Moines Register). “Lawmakers in a subcommittee Wednesday advanced Senate Study Bill 1051 2-1, which would protect pesticide manufacturers from litigation if they have ‘sufficient warning’ product labels that comply with federal regulations. The Senate passed the highly contested bill last year but it stalled in the House.”
Bayer Backs Broadened Effort to Shield Popular Weedkiller From Claims It Failed to Warn of Cancer (Morning Ag Clips). “A renewed and expanded effort from chemical giant Bayer to shield itself from lawsuits that claim its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer brought dozens of protesters to the Iowa Capitol building Monday begging lawmakers to reject it. The legislation, pending in Iowa and at least seven other states, would protect pesticide companies from claims they failed to warn that their product causes cancer if the product label otherwise complies with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations.”
EPA Places Nearly 200 Employees on Leave in Response to Trump DEI Order (Civil Eats). “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.”
🥕Are “MAHA” and “America First” compatible?
RFK Jr. Promised To Clean Up The Food Supply: Can He Do It? (Consumed Substack). “Trump has promised to let RFK ‘go wild’ on health. So it’s now time to ask: What does RFK have the power to do? And will he be able to make good on his promises?”
What an ‘America First’ Diet Would Really Look Like (The Atlantic). “Implicit in that idea—and the reality of an actual trade war—is the assumption that the U.S. can make up for any lost imports on its own.”
🔄Everything else that caught our eyes
Global Warming Has Accelerated. Why? What Are the Consequences? (Newsletter from Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions from Columbia University): A “plain language summary of the three principal conclusions” of a recently published paper of a similar name.
Severe and Sudden Losses of Managed Honey Bees Across the Nation (Morning Ag Clips): “As commercial beekeepers in the USA inspect their bees after winter, to transport over 90% of the nation’s managed honey bees to pollinate California almonds, they are discovering alarming colony losses. The symptoms of loss are reminiscent of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) conditions which occurred in 2007 -2008 when bees suddenly disappeared from their colonies.”
RELATED: Native Bee Populations Can Bounce Back After Honey Bees Move Out (Morning Ag Clips).
Op-Ed: Follow the Money: Waste handlers profit from trucking away PFAS-contaminated sludge (Morning Ag Clips).
Limiting Lawn Management Benefits Soil Ecosystems (Morning Ag Clips): “A new study from Cornell AgriTech, published in the February issue of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, demonstrates that less-intense management of turfgrass results in greater abundance, richness and diversity of soil-dwelling organisms.”
More pain to come? Agrifoodtech investors brace for a tumultuous 2025 (AFN). “If 2024 was a year of market corrections and recalibration, 2025 could be a year of ‘chaos, ‘uncertainty, and ‘short-term decision making,’ predict agrifoodtech investors quizzed by AgFunderNews at the start of the year.”
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.