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    Our lives depend on seeds. Trump’s cuts put our vast reserves at risk | Thor Hanson

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    From 1862 until 1923, US senators and members of Congress provided vast numbers of seeds to constituents. At its peak, the congressional seed distribution program delivered over 60m seed packets directly to farmers and market gardeners every year, helping introduce new varieties of everything from wheat and corn to oats, soybeans, flowers and vegetables. A century later, far fewer Americans till the soil for a living, but seeds remain central to our lives.To understand the importance of seeds, try to imagine a morning without them. It would begin naked on a bare mattress, with no cozy sheets or pajamas, and there would be no fluffy towel to wrap up in after your shower. All of those things come from the seeds of the cotton plant. Stumbling wet into the kitchen, you would find no coffee, and no toast or bagel to go with it. There would be no eggs, no bacon, no cereal, no milk. All of those staples come from seeds or from livestock raised on seed crops. And if you thought you might console yourself with a chocolate bar, you can forget it. Cocoa powder, and the cocoa butter that makes it melt in your mouth, are both derived from seeds.Maintaining the seed diversity and abundance we rely on requires constant development of new varieties to combat disease, increase production and adapt to changing conditions. Seed advances are particularly urgent now, as farmers confront the fickle weather of a warming planet while working to meet a projected 50-60% rise in global food demand by 2050. Although elected officials no longer send out seeds through the mail, federal support for these efforts remains vital.In the era of Doge, that support has been flipped on its head.The US Department of Agriculture employs many plant breeders directly and funds many more through grants and partnerships, but the crown jewel of its seed program resides in a bunker-like building in Fort Collins, Colorado. The national seed bank houses more than 2bn carefully preserved specimens in a facility designed to withstand floods, fires, earthquakes, power outages and tornadoes. With over 620,000 varieties from nearly 17,000 different species, it is one of the world’s largest seed collections and a major supplier to the global seed vault in Svalbard, Norway.It is also at risk.While words like “vault” and “bank” imply simply turning the key and walking away, managing a seed collection demands constant activity. Even in cold storage, the specimens steadily degrade and must be tested regularly to make sure they’re still viable. When germination rates drop for any particular sample, those seeds must be planted and grown to maturity – in the right conditions – to produce a fresh supply. That activity takes place at over 20 research stations in locations (and climates) as diverse as North Dakota, Texas, California, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.Known officially as the US National Plant Germplasm System, the seed bank and its network of regional facilities recently lost 10% of their workforce in the Doge firings, including farm managers, research scientists, lab technicians, IT specialists, orchardists and more. Some have since been rehired, at least temporarily, but the program remains in turmoil. Projects interrupted or suspended range from germination trials to seed regeneration, research lending and many longterm breeding programs, weakening the entire enterprise.Plants don’t wait on politics. Any seed varieties lost now will simply be unavailable to improve crops and address challenges in the future. The importance of a robust and diverse seed bank cannot be overstated. To combat the invasive Russian wheat aphid, for example, plant breeders screened over 54,000 wheat and barley samples to find a handful of precious strains with natural resistance.It’s time for Congress to return to the seed business. Without its intervention, backed by the courts, additional firings appear imminent. Undermining the nation’s seed security undermines its food security and embodies the definition of reckless: “utterly unconcerned about consequences”.For those in the seed world, that attitude is hard to fathom. After all, planting a seed is always about what comes next, a conscious act of forethought and optimism. In other words, an act of hope.

    Thor Hanson is a biologist and author whose books include The Triumph of Seeds and Close to Home. More

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      Black farmers face setbacks over Trump budget cuts: ‘We are in survival mode’

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      For the last several weeks, Jocelyn Germany has been asking herself “is it safe for us to exist” as Black farmers?, since US Department of Agriculture cuts have put her work in jeopardy.Germany is the farmer advocate of Farm School NYC (FSNYC), an urban agriculture education center focused on food sovereignty and social, economic and racial justice. About 85% of Farm School NYC’s funding comes from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).The center was in the process of launching a New York City-wide pilot initiative focused on food justice, crop management and urban farming advocacy. But National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) $300,000 community food projects grant that would have funded it was terminated, effective immediately. Forced to scramble, FSNYC scaled down the programming and adopted a sliding scale for tuition.The cuts affected other plans, including public courses on food stewardship. Funding that would have allowed the center to distribute mini grants and grow community capacity has also been paused. FSNYC recently discussed cutting some of its own employee benefits to free up resources for the now affected programming. “Our main goal is to keep Farm School in operation,” Germany said.The impact of USDA cuts has rippled through farming and agriculture communities, which are mobilizing to stanch the damage. Farm School NYC is part of the Black Farmer Fund, a consortium of Bipoc-led/owned farms and entities that work on agricultural policy and strengthening local food systems throughout the north-east. The group was founded to share resources in an already difficult funding environment; rather than compete with each other, they collaborate on joint fundraising and programming.Now, they share an estimated $1.2m gap due to defunding. For Farm School NYC and Black Farmers United – New York State (BFU-NYS), the USDA’s termination or freezing of National Institute of Food and Agriculture grants and Natural Resources Conservation Service contracts put programs and salaries at risk.“We are in survival mode,” Germany said. Over the past year, Farm School NYC began taking baby steps to transition some of its funding away from government dollars, but “the sudden defunding was not the way we wanted to do it”, added Germany.Made up of growers, advocates and food educators, BFU-NYS just became an independent organization after being a fiscally sponsored project under Farm School NYC. It lost a five-year, $660,000 contract with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service agency. The contract was to fund three annual statewide “Bridging Land, Agriculture, and Communities” conferences, with the inaugural one planned for April.About a week after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Black Farmers United got an email explaining that because their work fell under diversity, equity and inclusion programming, the USDA would end their contract. This year’s conference was canceled, but BFU-NYS plans to host one in 2026 with or without government funding. The organization is seeking private donors to make that happen.The abrupt withdrawal of funding has left the organization holding the bag for an event that was just around the corner – and all its costs. “We have done the background work, got participating partners, submitted deposits and signed contracts,” said Dr Kuturie Rouse, BFU-NYS’s executive director of development.The organization is now unable to reimburse full-time staff for extra time spent coordinating the conference or recoup the cost of supplies. On top of that, BFU-NYS must pay vendors and other collaborators despite no longer having the USDA money or this year’s conference itself. “The organization is already at a loss,” Rouse said.BFU-NYS also lost its Green Futures program. The program helps young adults battle food insecurity, establish community gardens and pursue agriculture as a career. Last year, it launched a pilot program with a South Bronx middle school where students grew watermelon, callaloo, lettuce and other fruits and vegetables. The students then gave that food to their school cafeteria to feed the student body. BFU-NHYS now hopes to partner with other local schools to continue and grow the initiative.Aside from the loss of money and programming, Rouse said that the mental health of BFU-NYS staff had taken a hit. After the inauguration, staff were bombarded with racist emails and social media comments. “It was hate mail just because of our name and who we support and sponsor.” He clarified that while “Black” is on the organization’s name and it focuses on communities of color, it is a nondiscriminatory organization that “work[s] with any and everyone”.And, at this extremely critical and stressful time, mental health support from another ecosystem partner will not happen. The Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC) supports climate stewardship and regenerative farming. It also serves as an incubator for several regional land projects. Christine Hutchinson, a founding board member of the land trust, shared that a $200,000 collaborative program focused on farmers’ mental health from Maine to Delaware was now on hold indefinitely. NEFOC is one of several organizations that contributed to it. “People are really rocked,” Hutchinson said.It’s been difficult for Monti Lawson, the founder of the Catalyst Collaborative Farm, to see so much funding halted because he encouraged many farmers and other partners to take advantage of these USDA programs. The farm, which invites queer and Bipoc people to the land to farm and organize, offers many free, donation-based or sliding-scale events – all possible due to previous funding. “For government and even philanthropy, QTBipoc was a very sexy word,” Lawson said.Lawson has been connecting with past funders and community members. “In this particular moment, there are so many people who are reaching out, trying to be comforted, trying to be connected to others,” Lawson said.The land trust’s Hutchinson pointed out that the impact of defunding will vary. “A larger farm in a different place has access to resources that our farmers just don’t have access to,” Hutchinson said. Farmers from Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust are already starting with lower levels of federal support, and their capacity to replace those funds will probably be much lower. Meanwhile, farming organizations are trying to document what is happening as funding evaporates. The Hudson Valley Young Farmers Coalition, of which Lawson is a part, is collecting New York-based farmer testimonials to track the impact of cuts. The National Young Farmers Coalition is doing the same across the country.On the ground, though, the Black Farming Fund members and other agricultural organizations are trying to secure funding and their futures. In mid-February, Farm School NYC launched an emergency fundraiser to meet its severe funding gap, support its scholarship fund, launch revamped courses and pay farmer facilitators. Thus far, it has raised $750.The precarity of federal funding has the consortium’s members looking elsewhere for funding. Farm School NYC has been assembling advocacy toolkits and helping facilitate contact with legislators. BFU-NYS recently launched a mobilization strategy that includes prioritizes funding from state and local government. Rouse noted that one of the non-profit’s biggest supporters is New York State representative Khaleel Anderson, who chairs the state’s food and farming nutrition policy taskforce. Through Anderson’s support, BFU-NYS has had its own line item in the New York state budget for the past three years. Right now, Anderson is pushing for Black Farmers United to get increased support. BFU also wants to tap into New York City council discretionary dollars to fund local initiatives such as its Green Futures program and social responsibility grants from businesses that remain committed to diversity and inclusion.Some advocates believe that now is the time for those with power and privilege to march on the streets and that QTBipoc, immigrant and food justice communities – often on the frontlines – should take a step back.One of the first things longtime food justice advocate Karen Washington did was put out a call on her LinkedIn, asking her network to donate to cover the funding gap. Washington is co-founder of Rise & Root Farm in Orange county, New York.“There are foundations, hedge funds, venture capital groups, and Wall Street executives who can write a check in an instant without losing a cent.” In an interview, she asked: “Where are the people that voted for this? Where is the outrage?” More

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      in US Politics

      Why I quit my homestead dream just as farmer tradwives became mainstream

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      Our homesteading experiment began before tradwives, before Donald Trump, before Covid-19. It was the summer of 2015 when we were all sure no one would vote for a former reality TV star. I was 25 years old and desperate for a security blanket, working a sales job and looking for excuses not to return to college.My husband, Patrick, and I had talked about farming since our first date. We wanted goats. At his 2-acre property in a quiet suburb of Portland, Maine, we kept a few chickens and a scrawny vegetable garden.One morning, Patrick texted me: “I found the place. You’re going to love it. It’s uber cute.”Ninety-three acres in midcoast Maine, with an abandoned farmhouse and huge barn. Overgrown fields, alders encroaching across a pool of fetid swamp water to scratch against the door, no floor in the kitchen, and a single pipe gravity-feeding spring water from the mountain side. A three-hole outhouse was the extent of the plumbing.It was perfect.View image in fullscreen“What’s your end goal, man?” asked Patrick’s old college roommate. “What are you imagining in five years? Her barefoot and pregnant in the garden?”It was 2015 and you could still buy a piece of rural heaven for less than a small fortune – if you were willing to put in some sweat equity. We put a deposit down on some goats and signed our mortgage.Back-to-the-land wasn’t a political statement then. Sure, your urban friends would think you’d lost it, but not in an anti-vax, don’t-tread-on-me way. I had no desire to be barefoot, nor pregnant. But we were still in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, and building a life together from scratch had its romantic draw.I told myself I was sucking the marrow out of life, as Henry David Thoreau had once done. I even wore a T-shirt that said “Resistance is Fertile”. I thought of homesteading as an overtly political – even rebellious – act.Homesteading was in my blood. My mother had gone back-to-the-land with her first husband in the early 1970s, inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing, hippie icons who taught a generation to “live simply and sanely in a troubled world” with their book, Living the Good Life (1954). Scott Nearing was an outspoken pacifist, communist and protester. He and his wife, Helen, ate raw foods, tended their own land and railed against capitalism long before there were TikTok trends on the subject.Before my mother moved to Maine, she went to her grandparents to share the news of her move. They had grown up on a hardscrabble Missouri farm during the dust bowl. They had moved to town for a reliable job and to give their deaf daughter, my grandmother, the opportunity to study.When my mother told Daddy Kays, as she knew him, about her plans to go rural, he was horrified. Why do you want to do that? he asked. Why would anyone choose to go back to subsistence living? Why did my mother insist on denying what my great grandfather saw as progress?My mother left her homestead in the late 1980s. She moved to town to provide a better education for her young daughters, to seek more stable employment, and to leave a Sisyphean list of chores. By this time, many homesteaders were joining her in shifting back to a less isolated existence.The few who remained largely credited not a deeper sense of political motivation, but a strong community. Where homesteaders had gathered in groups, they seemed to remain. The Nearings had cultivated a following of interns and volunteers who showed up each year and had gradually settled around their homestead in Harborside, Maine. To this day, that area remains a haven for self-sufficient living.It could never be said that Patrick and I did things halfway. For two years, we showered outside in the negative temperatures and biting winds of a Maine winter. We preserved our harvests, bottle fed baby goats, raised pigs and chickens and geese and sheep. Patrick rebuilt our entire home from the studs. Fields were cleared and hayed to feed our animals. All of our equipment came from barters, trades and Craigslist. For what we couldn’t find a good deal on, we made do. Our lives revolved around the movement of firewood, without which we would freeze in winter.View image in fullscreenI wrote a book on our lifestyle – So You Want to Be a Modern Homesteader? – and shared our journey on social media. Through this outreach we connected with others making a similar leap, a community that was tiny and fringe before the interest in rural living sparked during the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. We greeted each other, in person and online, with the excitement of people into some shared niche hobby. We troubleshot problems, speculated on livestock choices and traded sourdough starters.Even before terms such as “tradwife” became popular, I noticed remarkable consistency in our homesteading friends. When a couple would show up at our farm to buy a goat or lamb, they’d bundle out of their unblemished Volvos with a snot-nosed toddler swaddled in one car seat in the back, the other car seat occupied by a sleeping infant. The mother would have kind, slightly confused eyes and an instant attraction to animals. The men were bearded, in lumberjack plaid.It got to the point I would joke that I could not tell my friends’ husbands apart, so uniform was their charcoal facial hair. The men always knew what they were doing: brimming with the self confidence of someone who recently read Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, possessed of at least one scheme to provide for his family while living off the land.After five years, our routine was set. The farmhouse had electricity and running water. We’d cleared the fields and put in a farm pond. Every spring we welcomed a new batch of goat kids and lambs that we sold, we milked our goats and sheared our sheep. We turned over our land sustainably using pigs, and we collected dozens upon dozens of eggs every day from the chickens, ducks and geese.View image in fullscreenWe were also very tired. We fell into bed every night exhausted, and woke up and did it again. There was little time for hobbies outside of running the farm, and less for intimacy. There was no time for travel – even going down the coast to see our parents had to be planned and limited to a few hours out of the day. When we did have time to sit together, we bickered about chores and finances strained by hungry animals. The addition of an indoor shower did little to remove the grime that stuck in our emotions.Faced with exhaustion and burnout, for a few years we tried to downsize, to reverse out of our headlong rush into self-sufficiency. To make time for occasional date nights and rest, we tried to sell a few animals here and there, but the chores still piled up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen in late 2019, Patrick’s son died unexpectedly. In the onslaught of grief, we had to manage feeding dozens of animals and moving firewood in for the winter. Have you ever had to make sure that a funeral would be over in time for evening chores?Soon after, Covid arrived. Within the online homesteading community, jokes made the rounds about how well positioned for a pandemic we were: we did not need supply chains or contact with the outside world to thrive. And yet there is a difference between choosing to stay at home on the farm and having to, particularly when the farm is wrapped in a thick cloak of sorrow.By the end of the first year of the pandemic, we were ready to get off the farm. And then our entire flock of more than a hundred birds succumbed to bird flu, which at the time was a new avian disaster. Our abundant flock of friends and entertainers disappeared overnight, culled in the wake of a burgeoning pandemic.Community can save a homestead from failing under this kind of stress. But as we tended to our tragedies, the community around us had shifted.People had started making careers out of being influencers and content creators. The homesteading world was no less full of social media personalities than the rest of the internet. And when Covid lockdowns hit in 2020, anyone who was online talking about self-sufficiency had an opportunity. Those of us who had shared our homesteading journeys since we first shot up on Instagram’s algorithm in 2013 were getting phone calls from places including the New York Times asking us about our lifestyle. Our follower counts had exploded. We – the fringes, the freaks – were the popular kids now.Leaning in to the popularity of from-scratch living was a recipe for success. Hannah Neeleman’s Ballerina Farm, once home to rough-and-ready farm life and now curated to a perfect prairie-wife aesthetic, has 10 million followers. All of my other contacts who leaned into the buzz around self-sufficiency in 2020-2021 now have hundreds of thousands of followers.Unfortunately for my pocketbook, I was wrapped up in several blankets worth of troubles at that time, forgetting to reply to emails and sometimes forgetting to just get out of bed.Not all of my friends went full “tradwife”. Some simply began to prothetize more about organic methods, no till gardens, and permaculture practices. They DIYed themselves crazy. How many of them had outside help to manage a menagerie of animals and a list of home improvement projects? Far more than ever mentioned help.Thoreau had brought his laundry into town for his mother. Now, today’s homestead influencers have perfected promoting a from scratch lifestyle while utilizing invisible helping hands at every turn.A less welcoming community grew around these very online homesteaders. When a follower would realize my political views swung left, they’d pepper my pictures with comments about how they’d thought they liked me until they found out I was a radical lefty. Several new homesteading festivals have sprung up around the country, including the popular Homesteaders of America Conference, which draws almost 10,000 homesteaders annually and welcomes speakers such as Joel Salatin, an outspoken libertarian linked to possible roles in the Trump administration and Nick Freitas, a far-right state delegate from Virginia who has referred to the Affordable Care Act as a “cancer”.View image in fullscreenFor those reasons, the embrace of traditional living gave me pause. In between the grief and the daily grind, my community – online and in real life – was becoming more hostile. There were subjects that could not be talked about, loud unfollows when opinions became known, and a lifestyle that had been fun and alternative was warped by ugly exclusion.It felt as if a curtain had been pulled back from my lifestyle choice. I had enjoyed the connection to my food and the land through sustainable living, but I had never thought of my lifestyle as a step backwards in time. I had laughed at the idea I might someday be barefoot and pregnant in the garden. But, with a never ending list of homestead to-dos, I was as tied to the wood stove and the milking routine as an 1800s woman before me.The happiest “homesteaders” I know continue to thrive in semi-urban environments, with neighbors who stop by to check on the ducks if they want a break from the farm. Most of them are minimally online, disengaged from the performative fetishization of the lifestyle. They keep one foot in the garden, and one on the pavement of society.Today, Patrick and I keep a few goats and a garden in the backyard. We have the ability to leave the farm now and then for a trip, and we’re in the process of moving closer to family and culture. We are taking steps to ensure that our hard work is preserved, working with a land conservation group to keep the property in farmland long after we are gone.We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress. Today, I run, I read, I write, I take the time to walk in nature and sit and converse with my husband.Today, I am able to slow down and live. More

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      in US Politics

      US weather forecasts save lives and money. Trump’s cuts put us all at risk

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      Across the United States, from rural communities to coastal cities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) is an integral part of our daily lives, safeguarding communities and fostering economic vitality.Whether it is tracking the path of hurricanes, managing our nation’s fisheries, providing critical information to air traffic controllers and airlines, or helping farmers plan for weather extremes, Noaa’s science, services and products have a significant impact on every American.Having served as the deputy administrator of Noaa and before that its general counsel, I have witnessed first-hand the indispensable role this agency plays. The Trump administration’s proposed draconian, reckless and, in many cases, unlawful budget and personnel cuts to the agency should alarm us all.These cuts will do little to achieve their stated goal of reducing the size and cost of government. They instead jeopardize the safety, economic prosperity and overall wellbeing of our nation.I should add that the administration’s assault on science is not limited to my former agency. Government-wide cuts are sparking outrage and demonstrations across the country.Each year, Noaa’s National Weather Service (NWS) issues more than 1.5m forecasts and 50,000 weather warnings. By providing critical lead time ahead of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and severe storms, Noaa’s forecasts save billions of dollars in economic losses annually and thousands of lives.Noaa’s continuing efforts to improve the accuracy of hurricane track forecasts have reduced the area of uncertainty for coastal evacuations, helping local governments, businesses and families avoid unnecessary costs. A recent study estimated that improvements in forecasting have resulted in an annual per-hurricane cost reduction of $5bn.In the aviation industry, Noaa forecasts and data-monitoring systems help ensure safe and efficient operations. Accurate weather information is essential for planning flight routes, avoiding severe weather and ensuring safe takeoffs and landings. Noaa also tracks weather in space, including solar flares and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt or interfere with technologies essential to safe air travel: satellite communications, GPS navigation and aircraft communication systems.The importance of Noaa’s work extends beyond public safety and economic savings to a range of private-sector applications. Private weather providers such as AccuWeather and the Weather Channel depend on Noaa’s open data to offer localized forecasts, while insurance companies use it to assess risk and set policy rates.The US commercial seafood industry supports roughly 1.7m jobs and generates more than $300bn annually in total sales. Noaa’s fisheries management, research and inspection programs are critical to sustaining these jobs, preserving ecosystems, ensuring robust seafood supplies, and guaranteeing that safe seafood is sold throughout the United States.Additionally, saltwater recreational fishing is a significant economic driver in coastal communities, supporting tens of thousands of jobs and contributing billions annually to local economies. All of this is reliant on well-managed fisheries and healthy marine habitats.Moreover, Noaa marine sanctuaries protect critical habitats, support biodiversity and provide opportunities for research, education and tourism, contributing billions of dollars to local economies. For instance, the Florida Keys national marine sanctuary, one of 18 in the US, is estimated to contribute $4bn annually to Florida’s economy and supports 43,000 jobs.Farmers and ranchers depend on Noaa’s seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts to make decisions about planting, harvesting, irrigation and risk management. A single drought or flood forecast can mean the difference between profitable harvests and financial ruin.Similarly, the US Department of Transportation reports that more than $5.4tn of commerce crosses US ports annually. Noaa’s nautical charts, tide tables and navigation services are essential for keeping these ports and waterways running safely and efficiently, thereby supporting global trade and local jobs.Furthermore, urban planners and emergency managers at all levels rely on Noaa’s climate data and long-range forecasts and projections to design roads, bridges and flood defenses capable of withstanding rising sea levels and stronger storms. By ensuring that infrastructure investments are based on accurate, up-to-date data, billions of dollars in future repair and disaster costs can be avoided.From safeguarding families in the path of severe storms to supporting the economic health of fishing towns and agricultural communities, Noaa’s programs are indispensable. Efforts by the Trump administration to hobble the agency through budget and wholesale staff reductions are not only misguided but also dangerous. If President Trump and his administration are serious about making America great, they will recognize that funding Noaa is an investment that saves lives, guides critical industries, strengthens our economy and reinforces our nation’s global leadership in innovation and science.

      Terry Garcia served as the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and as deputy administrator of Noaa. He also served as its general counsel More

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      in US Politics

      Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

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      It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.Redmond and her resplendent bovine sisters, wintering in a Shaker-style barn in upstate New York, appear unaware of the cultural-political storm gathering around them – an issue that is focusing minds far from farmyard aromas of mud and straw.The production and state-restricted distribution of raw milk, considered by some to boost health and by ­others to be a major risk to it, has become a perplexing political touchstone on what is termed the “Woo-to-Q pipeline”, along which yoga, wellness and new age spirituality adherents can drift into QAnon conspiracy beliefs.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to run the US Department of Health, is an advocate. He has made unpasteurised milk part of his Make America Healthy Again movement and recently tweeted that government regulations on raw milk were part of a wider “war on public health”.View image in fullscreenRepublican congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has posted “Raw Milk does a body good”. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that “raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as salmonella, E coli, listeria, campylobacter and others that cause foodborne illness”.Last week, the US Department of Agriculture issued an order to broaden tests for H5N1 – bird flu – in milk at dairy processing ­facilities, over fears that the virus could become the next Covid-19 if it spreads through US dairy herds and jumps to humans. Since March, more than 700 dairy herds across the US have tested ­positive for bird flu, mostly in California. But the new testing strategy does not cover farms that directly process and sell their own raw milk.At the same time, another dairy product has become the subject of conspiracy theories after misinformation spread about the use of Bovaer in cow feed in the UK. Arla Foods, the Danish-Swedish company behind Lurpak, announced trials of the additive, designed to cut cow methane emissions, at 30 of its farms. Some social media users raised concerns over the additive’s safety and threatened a boycott, despite Bovaer being approved by regulators.In the US, raw milk is seen as anti-government by the right, anti-corporate by the left, and amid the fracturing political delineations, lies a middle ground unmoved by either ideology.“Food production has always been political,” says Churchtown Dairy owner and land reclamation pioneer, Abby Rockefeller.Churchtown manager Eric Vinson laments raw milk has been lumped in with QAnon and wellness communities. “There’s an idea around that ­people who want to take ownership of their health have started to become conspiratorial,” he says. “It’s unfortunate. Raw milk may be a political issue but it’s not a right-left issue.”Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, and Wyoming have passed laws or changed rules to allow the sale at farms or shops since 2020. In New York, sales are legal at farms with permits, although supplies are smuggled into the city marked “for cats and dogs”. There is no suggestion Churchtown is involved in that.Amish communities abandoned a non-political stance in the national elections in November and voted Republican, in part over the raw milk issue. An Amish organic farm was raided by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in January.There are also the health-aware “farmers’ market mums”, who say they are looking to raw milk for an immunity boost, and who harbour latent anger over the government pandemic response and vaccine mandates.View image in fullscreenRachel, a Manhattan mother of a three-year-old, who declined to be fully identified, citing potential social judgment, said: “After Covid, more of us started thinking about our bodies and health because of scepticism around doctors, hospitals and a corrupted health care system.” But like many people, she said, she felt she’d been “caught in the middle” of a political battle.Sales of raw milk are up between 21% and 65% compared with a year ago, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ. Mark McAfee, California raw milk advocate and owner of Raw Farm USA in Fresno, says production and supply across the state is growing at 50% a year. But the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods people can consume. Experts say they are “horrified” by a trend they consider a roll-back of Louis Pasteur’s 19th-century invention of pasteurisation.Vinson disagrees with the idea that raw milk is “inherently dangerous” and argues, because conventional dairies rely on pasteurisation, “they don’t have to worry about sanitation around the milking practices – they can cut corners”. “You have to be more careful producing raw milk but it brings a higher price,” he adds.View image in fullscreenSince the pandemic, visitors to Churchtown have increased.Earlier this month, McAfee’s Raw Farm was hit by a notice from the California Department of Health warning that H5 virus, better known as bird flu, had been detected in a batch of cream-top whole raw milk.It’s not yet known if the virus can be transmitted to people who consume infected milk but the CDC officials warn that people who drink raw milk could theoretically become infected.Back at Churchtown Dairy, Vinson is tending the herd. A huge Jersey cow shadows her four-day old calf. At weekends, he offers tours of the barn to raw milk-curious visitors. “One of my main jobs is informing the public about farming and agricultural issues,” he says. That includes being receptive to changes. “It is important to say we don’t know everything and keep an eye open.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the EU-Mercosur trade deal: another farmer flashpoint approaches | Letters

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      Anticipating the strong protectionist winds that will blow from Donald Trump’s White House, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been responding by making her own economic weather. Last week, Ms von der Leyen flew to Montevideo, 5,000 miles south of Washington DC, to controversially conclude negotiations in one of the biggest free trade agreements in history. Twenty-five years in the making, the Mercosur trade deal opens up trade between the EU and a Latin American bloc of partners comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.In theory, the agreement promises a more open market of 700 million people for products ranging from Argentine beef to German cars. For European manufacturers, it would eliminate tariffs on a majority of goods. As Mr Trump threatens to impose heavy tariffs on Chinese and European exports, here was evidence, asserted Ms von der Leyen, “that openness and cooperation are the true engines of progress and prosperity”.This sunny analysis does not, however, tell the whole story. From an economic perspective, the Mercosur deal makes sense for Europe, offering an alternative market in the event of US tariffs and amid the continuing Chinese slowdown. It also deepens European connections with the global south, at a time when Beijing is doing the same in systematic fashion. But the political realities are treacherous: opposing Mercosur is a common cause celebre among European farmers, who fear being undercut by Latin American producers who are not subject to the same environmental standards.At the end of a year in which farmers’ protests have made headlines across the continent, and far-right parties have exploited rural resentment to attack the EU’s green transition, this is territory to be navigated with extreme care. The deal has yet to be ratified, and EU member states are split. Germany, desperate to shore up its export industry, is strongly in favour. France, whose farmers famously carry immense political clout, is implacably opposed. Serious reservations have been expressed by the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Italy and Ireland.Less than a month after officially beginning her second term in office, Ms von der Leyen is taking a risk by pushing ahead at pace when such divisions exist. Approval of the trade part of the overall deal may be subject to a qualified majority vote, meaning that France would not be able to exercise its veto. That would be grist to Marine Le Pen’s mill, given that, in one recent poll, almost two-thirds of French citizens said they no longer had confidence in the EU. Meanwhile, the prospect of a disunited European front – with France and Germany at loggerheads – as Mr Trump enters the White House, is not an uplifting one.In the quarter of a century since the Mercosur negotiations began, the negative impacts of globalisation on particular European regions and economic sectors have driven a backlash that has benefited the far right. Trade deals are about politics as well as economics. To avoid the fallout of this deal overshadowing the economic gains, Brussels should make it a priority that losers from it are adequately compensated. Bypassing a necessary battle for hearts and minds, as the EU confronts new geopolitical challenges without and the rise of Eurosceptic nationalism within, is not a viable option.

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      Raw milk CEO whose products have been recalled may lead US raw milk policy

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      Mark McAfee, a California raw milk producer whose products have been recalled several times recently due to bird flu contamination, said he has been approached by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s team to guide the upcoming administration on raw milk policy.McAfee, whose dairy products were recalled after state officials detected bird flu virus in milk samples, said that the transition team for Kennedy, the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, asked him to apply for a position advising on raw milk policy and standards development. The idea, he told the Guardian, would be to create a “raw milk ordinance”, mirroring the existing federal “standard milk ordinance”.Kennedy is a notable fan of raw, or unpasteurized, milk, including McAfee’s products. If confirmed, he has said, he would work to remove restrictions on raw milk, which the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have so far advised against consuming.Kennedy’s team did not respond immediately to the Guardian’s request for comment.If McAfee, whose farm is the largest producer of raw milk in the US, were to gain a role in the upcoming administration, it would be in line with the upcoming administration’s broader edict to put industry heads in roles regulating the very products they sell.Trump has also appointed oil executive Chris Wright for secretary of energy, and Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary.McAfee’s Raw Farm in Fresno supplies raw milk and milk products to grocery stories across California, and has the unique distinction of supplying the kefir used in the smoothies at Los Angeles’s celebrity-approved Erewhon market.Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate when he ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, interviewed McAfee for a documentary about raw milk released earlier this year. She told McAfee that Kennedy was a fan, and drinks his milk when he is home in Malibu. In a post on X in October, Kennedy said that with Trump in office, the FDA’s “war on public health” would end, as would its “aggressive suppression” of raw milk.Raw milk, which is not heated to kill harmful pathogens, has been linked to the outbreak of bacterial infections including a strain of E coli that can cause kidney failure. McAfee’s farm has also been involved in several lawsuits stemming from a salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 171 people in California last year.The federal government does not regulate the sale of raw milk – states do – but the FDA prohibits the interstate sale of unpasteurized milk for human consumption. In 2008, McAfee’s company pleaded guilty to putting “pet food” stickers on its raw milk in order to illegally sell it across state lines for human consumption.McAfee and other proponents of raw milk have claimed that it has more beneficial enzymes and diverse probiotics than pasteurized milk. The current FDA and researchers have countered that milk is not, in fact, a significant source of probiotics in the first place, and that the bacteria found in raw milk – which come through infected udder tissues, or the dairy environment including soil and cow manure), and milking equipment – are not the kinds that benefit our digestive systems.But the consumption of raw milk has come under particular scrutiny this year amid a bird flu, or H5N1, outbreak, which included the first documented human cases of the virus. No known cases of bird flu virus have been confirmed in people who drank raw milk, although there are three cases in North America where the source has not been identified. Contact with raw milk and the handling of raw milk, however, has been associated with infections – especially among dairy workers.Research suggests that milk carries huge amounts of viral particles. “The most infectious thing from the cows is the milk,” said Meghan Davis, a molecular epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University studying environmental health. In some cases, cows that tested negative for H5N1 in their respiratory tracts were found to be carrying the virus in their milk.Consuming raw milk amid the bird flu outbreak, Davis said, is inherently risky. While most people who have been infected with bird flu have reported mild illnesses, people with compromised or suppressed immune systems could experience more severe symptoms. And as more people are infected, the virus is more likely to mutate and develop more infectious or severe strains that could affect the broader population.“The impact of another pandemic would be awful,” said Davis. “Especially of a pandemic that really affects our food-producing animals as well as people.”Cats who have drunk infected raw milk have exhibited severe neurological symptoms and died.Still, McAfee vehemently denies that raw milk could be implicated in any such risks.“This is the newest platform for the FDA to attack us,” McAfee said. “There are no reported illnesses in the United States regarding [bird flu] and raw milk. Zero. But yet they say the sky is falling.”Like other proponents of raw milk, he has suggested that milk from infected cows boosts immunity to bird flu by passing on antibodies. Antibodies to H5N1, however, have not been found in raw milk products, and cow antibodies would not confer immunity to humans.This week, Raw Farm voluntarily recalled all milk and cream products made between 9 and 27 November after tests found bird flu virus in retail samples and dairy storage and bottling sites. The California department of food and agriculture also quarantined the farm and suspended the distribution of Raw Farm product produced on or after 27 November. More

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      Farmer styles need an illustrative update | Brief letters

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      The illustration published with John Harris’s column (1 December) showed a “typical” farmer hoping for a break in the (economic) clouds. Did he have to be from 1960s central casting? Flat cap, neckerchief, green wellies and chewing on straw? Leaning on a spade in an obviously ploughed field? Surely the Guardian doesn’t share the government’s archaic view of farmers.Ian StewartBrackley, Northamptonshire Simon Jenkins lauds that “thing of wonder”, the US constitution, which has “held the union together … for two and a half centuries” (Biden pardons his son, Trump will absolve his criminal allies. America shouldn’t stand for this, 2 December). Has the small matter of the civil war – southern secession, four years of armed conflict, over 600,000 dead and a divisive legacy – slipped his mind?Alan KnightEmeritus professor of history, Oxford University In his confession (‘Phantom gnome snatcher’ of Formby admits prank almost 50 years on, 26 November), the perpetrator said “I hope the statutes of limitations have passed on this one”. Did he mean statues?Joanna RimmerNewcastle upon Tyne Surely we need a “Middle-class woman of a certain age” mug from the Guardian, to sit proudly alongside a “Tofu-eating wokerati” one (As a middle-class woman of a certain age, all I can say is: ‘Thank you, Gregg Wallace’, 2 December)?Gabe CrispShoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex Was Gregg Wallace not “in a good headspace” when making his Instagram comments (Report, 2 December) because he couldn’t find one large enough to accommodate his ego?Paul McGilchrist Cromer, Norfolk More

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      Joe Biden signals he has no interest in signing US-UK trade agreement

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      Ministers have given up on signing a trade agreement with the US before the next election, after the Biden administration signalled it had no interest in agreeing one.British officials had been hoping to agree a “foundational trade partnership” before both countries head to the polls in the next 12 months, having already decided not to pursue a full-blown free trade agreement.However, sources briefed on the talks say they are no longer taking place, thanks to reluctance among senior Democrats to open US markets to more foreign-made goods. The story was first revealed by Politico.A British government spokesperson said: “The UK and US are rapidly expanding cooperation on a range of vital economic and trade issues building on the Atlantic declaration announced earlier this year.” Multiple sources, however, confirmed the foundational trade partnership was no longer on the table.Vote Leave campaigners said giving the UK the freedom to sign bilateral trade agreements with other countries would be one of the biggest benefits of Brexit, with a US trade deal often held up as the biggest prize of all.Talks over a free trade agreement stalled early on, however, thanks in part to resistance from Democratic members of Congress and concerns in the UK about opening up UK markets to chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.Earlier this year, the Guardian saw documents outlining how Washington and London could instead coordinate over a partnership covering digital trade, labour protections and agriculture. The deal would not have included lower barriers for service companies, meaning it fell short of a fully fledged free trade deal, but could have paved the way for one in the future.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSources say the deal was always likely to prove difficult to finalise, in part because the US still wanted greater access for their agricultural products. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said at a food security summit earlier this year that he would not allow either chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-injected beef into the UK.It also became clear in recent weeks that the Biden administration had no interest in signing any kind of a deal before the election, given how Donald Trump had weaponised international trade agreements during his first run for president.A spokesperson for Ron Wyden, the Democratic chair of the Senate finance committee, told Politico: “It is Senator Wyden’s view that the United States and United Kingdom should not make announcements until a deal that benefits Americans is achievable.” More