Tracking the Trump administration's actions on food and agriculture
Small farms are scrambling to survive in the face of grant cancellations and funding freezes, hunger and nutrition policies are front and center, and more.
As most of you know, I put Peeled’s regular publishing schedule on hold when I took a full-time job as a staff reporter at Civil Eats.
That does not mean I haven’t been reporting and writing. In fact, I’ve been more active than ever, and my output recently went into overdrive.
In January, President Trump promised to completely upend the way the federal government functioned. Based on the speed with which he was planning to move, my team decided that, while still important, our usual in-depth feature stories were not going to be enough. I wanted to keep careful tabs on what was happening in D.C. related to food and agriculture so that we’d be able to track and understand the impacts later.
So, we decided to meet the moment with the launch of Civil Eats’ Food Policy Tracker.
It’s a new part of the website with short, almost-daily updates on the most important actions the federal goverment is taking that will impact how we produce, distribute, and consume food.
For now, if you want to follow along throughout the week, your best bet is to sign up for Civil Eats’ weekly newsletter, where we compile the newest entries. (We’ll be launching a separate newsletter for the Tracker alone soon—stay tuned!) Or you can follow me and Civil Eats on social media. I’ll include all those links below for easy reference.
You can also use the Tracker to catch up on what’s happening related to the issue that’s most important to you. For instance, you can sort to only see updates from an individual agency, Congress, or the White House. Or you can sort by a topic, like farmers, climate and environment, or nutrition.
As you might imagine, even when filtering out all of the actions on Ukraine, education, and clean energy rollbacks to focus on a (somewhat) narrow lane like food and agriculture, there’s a lot happening. I’m doing my best to stay on top of it all, and as I report throughout the week, the impacts are already coming into focus.
What’s happening on the ground?
Over the past month, for example, I began hearing from farmers about how funding freezes and grant cancellations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were threatening the season ahead and—in some cases—their livelihoods. Not to mention the future of climate-resilient agriculture, altogether. I published these two stories so far, with more to come:
Trump’s funding freeze creates chaos and financial distress for farmers
Farmers say Climate-Smart Commodities projects are crumbling
When I began talking to groups working on racial justice efforts in the food system about how their work might be impacted by cuts to what Trump deems “DEI programs,” I thought they’d be devastated. What I found was more nuanced:
And I’ve begun to report on some of the early manifestations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, with plenty more to come:
Bans on soda and candy in SNAP are back on the table, and they’re still controversial
Stay connected…
So, for now, while Peeled’s original reporting remains on hiatus, I hope you’ll follow my work at Civil Eats.
Subscribe to the Civil Eats newsletter, here.
Follow on Bluesky: @civileats.com, @lisaelaineh.bsky.social
Follow on Instagram: @CivilEats, @lisaelaineh
Thanks for your work Lisa, forever grateful for your reporting.