The Daily Dirt — Morning Edition
New USDA data on beginning farmers, Congress moves on pesticide protections, and the growing reliance on guestworkers reshape the landscape of U.S. agriculture.
- USDA data reveals 72% of beginning farmers rely on off-farm income—the structural barrier trapping new growers outside full-time agriculture and limiting the next generation's ability to resist consolidation.
- Bipartisan lawmakers introduced legislation to restore consumer lawsuit protections against pesticide makers after the Supreme Court's July ruling stripped decades of precedent, with Reps. Pingree and Massie leading the effort.
- The H-2A guestworker program has exploded from 50,000 workers in 2005 to nearly 400,000 by 2024, raising alarm about labor dependence and worker vulnerability as U.S. farms struggle to attract domestic farmworkers.
- Trump administration's proposed grant overhaul would allow political appointees to screen applications and terminate funding at any time—closing comment period yesterday with 95% of public submissions opposing the changes.
- EPA pesticide approvals continue despite concerns: nearly 20 million acres of U.S. farmland are now contaminated with PFAS, with 2.5 million pounds of PFAS-containing pesticides sprayed on California farmland annually.
- Foreign adversaries control at least 277,000 acres of agricultural land in the U.S., according to national security assessments—a risk that the USDA's new farmland reporting portal aims to monitor and curtail.
Good morning. Yesterday closed the comment period on the Trump administration’s grant overhaul proposal—with farm groups warning it could erode trust in USDA support. Meanwhile, new USDA data confirms what beginning farmers already know: you can’t survive on farming alone.
The part-time trap is hardening. Seventy-two percent of beginning farmers reported a primary occupation other than farming, and more than half worked off-farm for 200-plus days annually. The average beginning farmer is 47 and building a second career in agriculture after establishing themselves elsewhere. That structural barrier—land prices, input costs, commodity prices that don’t pencil—means the next generation of farmers can’t go full-time, limiting their ability to invest in soil health, experiment with regenerative practices, or resist consolidation.
Congress is fighting back on pesticides. Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan amendment to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to restore the right of consumers to sue pesticide makers for failure to warn of health risks. The move comes after the Supreme Court stripped decades of precedent limiting lawsuits—a win for Bayer and other chemical makers, a blow to agricultural communities exposed to contamination.
Guestworker dependence is at a breaking point. The H-2A program has grown from 50,000 workers in 2005 to nearly 400,000 by 2024, and farms keep pushing for expansion. But the program creates a captive labor market: workers live in employer-provided housing, can’t switch employers, and depend on farmers for legal status—a recipe for exploitation and wage suppression that keeps farmworker conditions dire even as farms claim they can’t find domestic labor.
PFAS keeps spreading. Nearly 20 million acres of U.S. farmland are contaminated with PFAS, the so-called “forever chemical.” The EPA continues approving herbicides that contain PFAS compounds, and California data shows 2.5 million pounds of PFAS-containing pesticides are sprayed on farm fields annually—heaviest on almonds, pistachios, wine grapes, and alfalfa. Farmers didn’t consent to this experiment; regulators approved it anyway.
What to watch: Congress will move on the Pingree-Massie pesticide amendment in the coming weeks. The OMB plans to finalize the grant overhaul by October 1. And starting August, the USDA’s new farmland reporting portal will require better disclosure of foreign agricultural land transactions—a first step toward monitoring the 277,000+ acres already controlled by foreign adversaries.
The structure of American agriculture is tightening around family farmers and new growers. Resist what you can; watch what’s coming.
—Save US Farms Desk
- Investigate Midwest — Beginning farmers part-time work data
- Investigate Midwest — Congress moves to restore pesticide protections
- Civil Eats — U.S. farms increasingly rely on guestworker programs
- Civil Eats — Grant overhaul proposal closes comment period
- Civil Eats — PFAS in pesticides and farmland contamination
- USDA Farm Service Agency — Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act