benlilliston.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

China has been diversifying its ag imports since the first Trump Admin's tariffs - with Brazil now their largest ag supplier. Already low farm commodity prices in the US may sink further soon. www.reuters.com/world/china/...

submitted 15 hours ago • 1 comment

We'll see how fruit/veg production is affected "Reclamation forecast it would be able to provide 75% of the summer water under contract with agricultural water districts in the northern part of the Central Valley and 35% in the southern part of the Central Valley" www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

submitted 16 hours ago • 0 comments

So many fundamental problems with DOGE - but the sheer incompetence is pretty stunning. "DOGE also claimed credit for canceling two different Coast Guard contracts that had ended during the George W. Bush administration." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

"Amid the crisis, Cal-Maine Foods last month reported $356mn in gross quarterly profits from a year prior, a fourfold increase." And some economists say that concentration doesn't = market power. Uh, hello? The dominant firms leap at any chance. www.ft.com/content/ef12...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Trump's #USDA decision to not meet its obligations under contracts w farmers is being felt all over the country. "If a farmer bought the seed to do cover crops this spring, she may be holding an empty bag, if you understand what I’m saying" www.detroitnews.com/story/news/l...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Good to see and necessary as Trump Admin denies climate change, but investors know better - news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Secretary Rollins addresses her first USDA Ag Forum, filled with USDA employees, virtually. See below for the top two questions the audience wants her to answer. The numbers keep going up.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Hearst TV talked to members at our fly-in! Patti Naylor, Iowa farmer, in response to Trump's tariffs: “What you're doing right now is just taking a hatchet to everything without really thinking about it. We need real discussions about what kind of changes we need in our agriculture." #agsky

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Neurotoxins for everyone!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Rubio terminated 5800 USAID contracts – more than 90% of its foreign aid programs – in defiance of the courts. Here’s a list of just some of the lifesaving awards that were terminated. Nearly all were Congressionally mandated. They’ve saved millions of lives. 🧵

submitted 4 days ago • 439 comments

The people implementing federal efficiency efforts “have no background in history or law about the government’s treaty and trust responsibility to Indian Country” www.startribune.com/tribal-leade...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

99% of IRA conservation spending still paused. Farmers who put $ up front for conservation projects in holding pattern. Breaking contracts not a great way start for Trump's USDA. www.agriculture.com/pie-charts-e...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Exclusive: The Nature Conservancy was told by @noaa.gov it had to use “Gulf of America” or lose its federal funding, according to a leaked email and memo sent to all staff this morning cc @heatmap.news heatmap.news/climate/natu...

submitted 4 days ago • 37 comments

“I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.” investigatemidwest.org/2025/02/25/m...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

"When we signed these contracts, we committed to what they contained and expected the government to honor its word. Farmers operate in a business that carries significant risk and need to have some certainty that a signed contract will be honored" iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/02/26/i...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

"It just became very clear early on that there was no interest in any of the work we were doing." minnesotareformer.com/2025/02/26/t...

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

wrote about the existential stakes in Greenpeace's ongoing court battle with the Dakota Access Pipeline operators, the future of free expression in this country, and the long shadow of the Standing Rock protests: slate.com/technology/2...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Eggs are exempt from mandatory Country of Origin Labeling requirements. mCOOL has been a bigger consumer issue for beef, mostly because we don't import many eggs. Will be interesting to see how this effort to import more fits with Trump's tariff threats. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/u...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

A larger portion of rural residents depend on both SNAP and Medicaid House Republicans Just Voted to Slash Health Care and Food Assistance to Cut Taxes for the Rich. open.substack.com/pub/thecockl...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

House Republicans tying themselves in knots on the Farm Bill - farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/02/lawm...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

My latest on @civileats.com today: The canceled Clark Group contract and other related cuts represent stitches being ripped out of the interconnected federal programs and infrastructure that hold it all together. civileats.com/2025/02/26/f...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

USDA's secrecy on job losses is calculated and brazen. "The exact size and scope of the job losses remain unclear, and the U.S.D.A. did not answer questions about the number of workers who had been terminated or reinstated" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/s...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I assume this means the Post will now be eagerly accepting pieces about Amazon's attempts to revoke the personal liberties Americans enjoy under our labor and antitrust laws.

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

Farm community in US getting alarmed over USDA research program closures and budget cuts. www.agalert.com/california-a...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

While the Trump Admin withholds essential information and cuts CDC staff, the escalating bird flu epidemic endangers U.S. farmworkers, food supplies & the general public. The CDC must resume communication about avian influenza to protect public health: biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

"You can’t have people spend this kind of money and then just pull the rug. I didn’t spend the money thinking maybe I’ll get it back. I spent the money because we had a signed contract." Illegal freezes on federal funding is causing havoc in rural America investigatemidwest.org/2025/02/24/c...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Trump has decimated the farm animal welfare research team at USDA, @greymoran.bsky.social reports exclusively for @sentientmedia.org. There is only team team member remaining, and the future of the lab is uncertain. sentientmedia.org/usda-farm-an...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

NEW: We joined 27 organizations in demanding the CDC release critical data about the spread of H5N1 bird flu: farmstand.org/cdc-urged-to...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

“Right now, because of climate change and because of what farmers are facing in terms of extreme weather events, we need every piece of available information we can get” Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/c...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

"Hector and Sabina, who met at a meatpacking plant in Windom, said they left Guatemala for America in search of a better life. More than half the population in Guatemala lives in poverty, and the country suffers from gangs, drug trafficking and violence" www.startribune.com/in-rural-min...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Ah, the Gilded Age. Massive fortunes accumulated on the backs of ruthlessly exploited workers. Financial chaos was the rule, not the exception—no fewer than eight banking crises between 1863 and 1913. www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/banki....

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Gregg is a former Marine and Forest Service ranger. He's saved the lives of hikers dangling off a cliff or going through cardiac arrest, and he's bravely fought forest fires to save small rural towns. 100% of his salary is paid by WA state. Elon fired him. Share his story.

submitted 8 days ago • 579 comments

Fracking is a proven cause of earthquakes. Fifteen recent earthquakes in five days, linked to fracking, are having serious implications for ranchers in British Columbia— including livestock stress, premature births and water shortages. thenarwhal.ca/bc-ranchers-...

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

Role of #ciimate change + finance in driving up coffee prices. "From Brazil to Nicaragua, margin calls have pushed some exporters into bankruptcy. Even those who survive are now inclined to guard their cash zealously, limiting their purchases of coffee" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/b...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

"When you picture federal employees, you might imagine bureaucrats in suits and ties in pristine DC offices..." But over 250k federal workers are in rural counties "in positions like park rangers, field biologists, or grazing managers, just to name a few." dailyyonder.com/federal-layo...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Those bird flu staff fired by USDA last week? They were rehired three days later. And actually, hundreds of workers fired in Trump and Musk’s rush to remake the US government have been rehired. w/ Tim Gardner, Tim Reid, and Valerie Volcovici: www.reuters.com/world/us/fir...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I just got off the phone w/ a farmer (& veteran) who received notice he owes $55,000 on a REAP grant for solar panels on his farm that was to be paid in full by USDA. Their bank loaned them the $ because USDA has always come through on their end. Not this time.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

New: DOGE's spending has been secret. No longer. My colleagues have uncovered it. www.propublica.org/article/doge...

submitted 11 days ago • 860 comments

Democratic state treasurers to SEC and Dept of Labor: don't interfere with investors' efforts to address systemic climate risks - they are “present-day financial realities affecting market valuations, insurance costs, supply chains and infrastructure resilience.” www.esgdive.com/news/dems-fi...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Many benefits of diversification, including healthy soil, greater climate resilience, less emissions linked to nitrogen fertilizer application, according to this ongoing research. Not much benefit for creating credits for carbon markets. www.agrinews-pubs.com/news/science...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

More reporting on Trump Admin's de-humanizing & reckless actions, including a Small Business Administrator who was fired, then brought back, then fired again. Appreciate the reporting & people telling their stories in the wake of Trump Admin secrecy on firings. www.startribune.com/minnesota-fe...

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Excellent piece by @marynmck.bsky.social - explaining the differences between contract chicken operations and independent dairies when it comes to responding to bird flu. Waiting for new Ag Sec's plan to handle this crisis. Bird Flu in Cows Is a Slow-Motion Disaster www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/o...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

“We were already hanging on by a thread. Now [Elon] Musk, Trump and DOGE are thinning us even further … This is huge for the Boundary Waters, recreation, [and] timber and fire management.” www.startribune.com/how-will-job...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

“How will we look in the eyes of dairy farmers, providing the whole milk for which you’ve advocated, and tell them that, to save the government $0, we have to cancel work that would have brought them more stability and more business?”

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Here’s my column for this week www.stormlake.com/stories/we-a...?

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

The EU’s Vision for Agriculture and Food, released today, has prepared some of the field for sowing, but there is still a long way to go for a fair and sustainable harvest. Our statement: www.iatp.org/eu-vision-ag...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: The Trump Administration’s reckless funding freezes and mass firings of USDA staff will be disastrous for farmers, public health, food safety and already-struggling rural economies. www.iatp.org/damaging-sho...

submitted 12 days ago • 4 comments