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agriculture
House GOP Wants to Stop a Ban That Would Keep Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Off Food Crops
"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said a lawyer at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Jul 15, 2025
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to block action that would protect farms from toxic "forever chemicals" found in fertilizers made from sewage sludge.
The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
According to the environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the act could cause agricultural losses and pose serious risks to public health.
For decades, the federal government encouraged farmers to spread municipal sewage onto their farmland, as it was a good source of nutrients and a preferable alternative to putting the sludge in landfills.
Nearly 20% of U.S. agricultural land is estimated to use this sludge, commonly known as "biosolids," in fertilizer, and 70 million acres of farmland may be contaminated.
These biosolids contain large amounts of PFAS, which are absorbed through the roots of plants and contaminate plant and animal products that end up on store shelves.
These chemicals are known to accumulate in the body for years without degrading and cause increased rates of cancer, decreased fertility, and developmental delays in children.
The EPA's January study found that the risks associated with PFAS in these sewage sludge-based fertilizers "exceed EPA's acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude." Even very small quantities of these chemicals, it found, could pose major risks.
The GOP bill, however, forbids the EPA from using any funding to "finalize, implement, administer, or enforce" that risk assessment.
"Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with the EPA. "If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster."
Republicans have faced pressure from chemical manufacturing groups to kill PFAS regulations. In 2023, a report from Food & Water Watch found that eight major companies, including Dow and DuPont, spent a combined $55.7 million to lobby against bills to rein in PFAS between 2019 and 2022. The American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, spent over $58.7 million during that same period.
The rule banning action on PFAS is part of a broader effort by Republicans to gut environmental regulations. The bill released Monday slashes EPA spending by over $2 billion, nearly 25%.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also weakened standards on PFAS in drinking water, which were adopted during the Biden administration.
"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais, who filed a lawsuit against the EPA last year for its slow rollout of PFAS regulations. "Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable."
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Trump Agriculture Chief Mocked for Suggesting Medicaid Recipients Could Replace Deported Farm Workers
"They're like cartoon villains," remarked Bloomberg political columnist Patricia Lopez.
Jul 08, 2025
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday drew instant jeers when she defended the mass deportation of immigrant farm laborers and suggested that they could be replaced by Americans who are currently enrolled in Medicaid.
While speaking in Washington, D.C., Rollins declared that there would be "no amnesty" for immigrant farm workers despite President Donald Trump saying just days ago that he was willing to let these workers stay at their jobs.
Instead, Rollins said that the mass deportations of farm laborers would "continue in a strategic way" and administration policy would be to "move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do fairly quickly."
The idea that there are 34 million "able-bodied adults" on Medicaid who can be easily relocated to work picking crops is pure fantasy. In the first place, an estimated 64% of American adults who receive Medicaid already work, and most of those adult recipients who don't have jobs are either primary caregivers, are attending school, or have an illness or disability that prevents them from working.
A report released earlier this year authored by Economic Policy Institute economist Hilary Wething also poked holes in the narrative that millions of "able-bodied adults without dependents" ("ABAWDs") were sponging off the system.
"While ABAWDs might not have documented disabilities that result in benefit receipt or have dependent children living at home full-time, they often experience health challenges and must take on some caregiving duties, each of which could provide a genuine barrier to finding steady work," stated the report. "We find that 21% reported having a disability that affects their ability to find and sustain work, suggesting that adults with genuine health barriers are being swept up in overly stringent work requirements... 13.8% of ABAWDs live with an adult over the age of 65 in their household, suggesting that many are potential caregivers in some form and likely have caregiving responsibilities beyond what is captured on paper."
Given this, many political observers were quick to ridicule Rollins for her proposal to replace immigrant farm workers with Medicaid recipients.
"They're like cartoon villains," commented Bloomberg politics and policy columnist Patricia Lopez on the social media platform X. "So send Medicaid recipients in as field hands? Also, what is meant by strategic mass deportations? Just Blue states?"
"We've gone from 'the USAID program analysts will make shoes' to 'people will pick strawberries to keep their healthcare,'" marveled Yahoo Finance reporter Jordan Weissmann on X.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council advocacy group, linked Rollins' statement to the recently passed budget megabill that added nationwide work requirements for many Medicaid recipients.
"The Trump admin's new talking point on the Big Beautiful Bill: we're going to deport all the farm laborers and make people on Medicaid work in the fields to earn their health insurance," he wrote on X.
Writing on Bluesky, NPR host Kai Rysdal appeared to liken the policy to the disastrous "Down to the Countryside" movement carried out in China under Mao Zedong that sent educated urban students out to work as farmhands despite a total lack of experience.
"So urban workers will be sent down to the countryside, then?" he wrote. "If only history could be our guide..."
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For June Dairy Month, Trump Should Celebrate the Canadian System, Not Denounce It
Trump’s plans don’t work for U.S. farmers. In fact, his intention to increase exports and enter the Canadian market fails both American farmers and our partner to the north.
Jun 29, 2025
Uncertainty is nothing new for farmers.
Freak weather changes and fluctuations in the market make planning for the future a gamble, never a sure thing. Dairy farmers have to deal with the additional issues of needing to keep their herds healthy and well-fed, as the price farmers receive in part depends on bacteria counts, and also the fat and protein content of the milk. If things weren’t hard enough, milk is a highly perishable product, which, unlike grains, cannot be stored and then sold when prices improve.
Giving farmers even more headaches these days is President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war. Specifically, farmers have to endure even more uncertainty than normal as prices for inputs like seed or fertilizer may rise with tariffs, while their export markets abroad are endangered. In this mix of the president’s ongoing trade spats, he's ridiculing Canada for protecting its dairy farmers with their supply management system, alleging that it harms U.S. farmers.
The moral of the story is that exports don’t keep farms in business, but instead allow larger operations to capture market share for themselves while driving out the smaller operations that have long defined U.S. dairy.
But here’s the reality—Trump’s plans don’t work for U.S. farmers. In fact, his intention to increase exports and enter the Canadian market fails both American farmers and our partner to the north.
Mexico has long been the main customer for our dairy exports and is regularly the No. 1 importer of all U.S. goods. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement as Mexico is a milk deficit country and meeting their domestic consumption needs requires imports. That’s how trade should work—when one country has stuff to sell that another country wants to buy, everyone wins.
With our neighbors to the north, the story is much different.
Canadians do not want our products forced into their market. Actually, Canadians want their system to stay as it is. It’s not difficult to see why. The Canadian supply management system ensures dairy farmers a fair price for their milk by tying domestic dairy production to consumption. Prices are negotiated in periodic meetings between farmers and processors to assure a baseline cost of production for producers and an adequate supply for domestic needs. Unlike the U.S. system, in which price controls were lifted for dairy in the 1980s, Canadian dairy farmers have a semblance of certainty year after year. U.S. dairy producers must fend for themselves, adopting a “get big or get out” mentality and increasing production whenever they can to maintain some kind of financial security. This push to constantly increase production leads to chronic overproduction and price volatility. Also unlike the U.S. system, Canadian farmers do not rely on tax-payer financed bailouts, or inadequate insurance payments that keep American farmers hanging on by a thread.
Furthermore, the production treadmill promoted by U.S. government policy has caused the loss of small farms and the hollowing out of rural communities. Trump continued this “get big or get out” mantra the first time he was in office, targeting Canadian dairy much like he is doing now. During the renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the Canadian market was slightly opened to U.S. dairy exports.
Despite the heralding of this change a “win” for farmers, it has proved to be anything but.
Specifically, even though exports to Canada have nearly doubled since 2018, U.S. farmers continue to exit the industry at alarming rates. While U.S. dairy operations numbered at about 34,000 operations in 2020, the year when the USMCA was officially passed, that number fell to just about 26,000 by 2023—a 25% decrease.
The moral of the story is that exports don’t keep farms in business, but instead allow larger operations to capture market share for themselves while driving out the smaller operations that have long defined U.S. dairy.
Particularly as we celebrate June Dairy Month, we should learn from the Canadian system instead of denouncing it. Granted, Canada’s supply management is not perfect—few government policies are. But their system provides for fair returns for farmers and certainty in a profession already marked by so many challenges. A similar production management system in the U.S. could ensure farmers a fair milk price thereby eliminating the need for taxpayer subsidies, while providing consumers with fairly priced, locally produced dairy. Let’s stop championing an economic vision for agriculture that has already been shown to be a failure.
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