The Daily Dirt — Morning Edition

Morning, desk. The last 24 hours have stacked more pressure on farmworkers and ranchers while the regulatory machinery keeps grinding toward tighter foreign-farmland rules and looser pesticide oversight.

On Labor: The House Judiciary Committee killed momentum on Thompson’s bipartisan H-2A expansion bill—the one that’d have opened dairy and year-round livestock to visa workers. Chair Jim Jordan’s refusal to include it in the immigration package leaves agriculture’s labor shortage answer unanswered and the wage-cut fallout from July 1’s DOL rule still biting. Combined with Medicaid work requirements kicking in next January, the regulatory environment for farmworkers is tightening from all angles.

On Debt: Cattle markets continue their collapse. Live cattle futures are at their lowest since March, and packers just recorded the steepest weekly cash-price drop in several years—down $8 to $13 week-over-week. That’s rancher crisis arithmetic, especially for operations already drowning in record-high farm debt.

On Contamination: EPA’s “forever chemical” pesticide blitz keeps rolling. Three new PFAS pesticides approved June 30–July 1 bring the Trump EPA’s five-pesticide pace roughly five times faster than the Obama administration’s one-in-four-years rate. The approvals are already rocking farm policy—national corn growers celebrated them while climate and health advocates sounded alarms.

What to Watch: AFIDA comment period closes August 10 on USDA’s proposed rule to tighten foreign-farmland reporting and enforcement. Wheat markets will key off how long the Black Sea export slowdown holds. And keep your eye on state-level farmworker wage-theft challenges—attorneys general have signaled they’ll continue pressing while congressional reform stalls.

—Save US Farms Desk