Ben Lilliston

Dairy Together Calls For Growth Management in Farm Bill - National Family Farm Coalition Today’s post is a reprint courtesy of our coalition partner Dairy Together and was written by Erin Thompson for the Wisconsin Farmers Union. Dairy farmers have been struggling through boom and bust pr...

NFFC is proud to be part of Dairy Together - a coalition led by Wisconsin Farmers Union that envisions a viable #dairy economy. Erin Thompson of WFU wrote about the necessity for growth management.

Read all about it on our blog!
nffc.net/blog/

#FarmBill

Routinely at the top of US farmers' lists of concerns is healthcare. This story does a nice job connecting the stress of not having healthcare to how farmers manage their operation and respond to climate change.

I spoke with meatpacking plant workers and a small meat processing operator about the chilling effect of Operation Metro Surge and other immigration restrictions on Minnesota's meatpacking towns.

two purchases of LHX stock from Mullin. each between 15-50 thousand. One on may 13 2025 and another on February 13 2025

Conflicts of interest are already cropping up in Marywayne Mullin's bid to become the next DHS Secretary—he's invested tens of thousands of dollars in a company that agreed to a $62 million settlement last year to resolve claims that it knowingly misled the government about pricing in its contracts.

House Ag Committee Advances Farm Bill Package After Debates Over Solar, Pesticides, Prop 12 The House Agriculture Committee early Thursday morning voted 34-17 to advance its farm bill package after debates over a broad range of issues on Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Seven Democrats joined ...

The farm economy is facing high/rising costs, below-cost prices for farmers, loss of export markets, excess corporate power, attacks on farm/food workforce, climate disruption. House Ag Cmte decides not to seriously address any of these issues: let's just run it back. www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...

House Farm Bill clears committee with controversial pesticide and livestock provisions intact After days of debate and disagreements, the House Committee on Agriculture on Thursday passed its version of the 2026 Farm Bill, which includes controversial provisions critics say will hamper the abi...

The House Committee on Agriculture passed its version of the 2026 Farm Bill.

Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at @foodandwater.bsky.social, called its pesticide provisions “clear handouts to industry.”
www.thenewlede.org/2026/03/hous...

Feeling the Effects of 260,000 Federal Jobs Lost

The massive downsizing of staff at USDA is already affecting farmers - particularly those in cost-share programs.

“It delayed a lot of payments because there just simply weren’t people in the office to help the farmers apply for and process these applications.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/c...

ICE Surge in Minnesota Hits Meatpacking Towns Operation Metro Surge expanded beyond the Twin Cities metro and chilled economic activity in rural Minnesota meatpacking towns with large immigrant communities.

Impact of ICE Surge will reverberate in rural communities and throughout the food system for awhile open.substack.com/pub/foodandp...

Will be interesting to see the details on this. Time to insert a competition title to the Farm Bill? - www.rrfn.com/2026/03/04/s...

Fertilizer Prices Have 'Significant' Rise After Attack on Iran - Farm Policy News As a result of the attack on Iran, nitrogen fertilizer at the port of New Orleans has seen an increase in price this week. Urea prices for barges in New Orleans traded $520/ton to $550/ton on Monday, ...

1/ Today's Farm Policy News Summary covers how #fertilizer #prices have risen this week after the attack on #Iran. "Urea prices for barges in New Orleans traded $520/ton to $550/ton on Monday, up from an average of $475/ton last week."

farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2026/03/fert...

Luis and his Mom in Florida de Jalisco in Shakopee.

Thank you to @stephenrodrick.bsky.social at Rolling Stone for telling the human story of ICE in Shakopee with such compassion, integrity, and care.

archive.is/BBvVQ

Close to 650 federal agents remain in Minnesota weeks after border czar announced end of operation There are still more than quadruple the 150 agents Tom Homan said there would be in the state by the end of last week.

“Were we not surprised to find that the Trump administration lied? Absolutely not. It’s not just that we weren’t surprised. It’s exactly what we expected.” www.startribune.com/close-to-650...

Syngenta says it will stop making pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease Company will halt production of controversial paraquat weed killer by end of June as it faces thousands of lawsuits

“It also means that the voices of the Parkinson’s community, the voices of those who’ve been highlighting the toxic effects of this weed killer … are being heard and they’re having an impact,” he said. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

China’s high-rise hog farms go international Livestock producers tout benefits of rearing pigs in multistorey buildings

China bought Smithfield to better understand & adopt the factory farm system of hog production. Now, they are looking to export their high rise factory hog farms to other countries - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Minnesota’s new Climate Action Framework: A welcome path forward for climate action As the federal government throws climate progress in reverse, Minnesota builds a model for state-led climate action across sectors — revealing a big opportunity for a transition to sustainable agricul...

NEW: As the federal government throws climate progress in reverse, Minnesota’s new Climate Action Framework offers a path forward for climate action — but the framework also includes some flawed policies that reinforce polluting agriculture systems. www.iatp.org/minnesotas-n...

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to back Bayer again, aided by officials who came from Bayer’s law firms The Trump administration yesterday urged the Supreme Court to side with the German pesticide company Bayer in a high-stakes legal case.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to back Bayer again, aided by officials who came from Bayer’s law firms
Via @usrighttoknow.bsky.social @stacymalkan.bsky.social
usrtk.org/pesticides/t...

At the Annual Meat Conference in Maryland, organizers remind attendees not to break antitrust laws.

The meat industry has faced a number of class action lawsuits alleging anti-competitive conduct and the Trump administration recently opened a new investigation into the big four meatpackers.

Attack on Iran Could Disrupt Global Fertilizer Markets - Farm Policy News A prolonged military conflict in the Middle East could potentially upend key commodity markets due to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important trade routes. America’s ...

2/2 "America’s crop growers could see fresh #price spikes for inputs like #fertilizer while battling a multi-year downturn in profitability, experts warned ahead of the attack."

farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2026/03/atta...

Opinion | The Big Problem With Tariffs Isn’t the Rates. It’s the Corruption.

The corruption, the lobbying power, the loopholes & exemptions - all part of the Trump Admin tariff game. A game tilted toward the billionaire class and powerful and away from small businesses. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...

ICE surged in Minnesota to arrest criminals. Many of them were already in jail. An analysis of the Trump administration’s “worst of the worst” list shows about half of the immigrants detained were not taken off the streets.

Great reporting, documenting again the blatant falsehoods about what DHS/ICE were doing in MN. www.startribune.com/ice-surged-i...

Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains underexplored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance chang...

"Hotspots of accelerating abundance decline were located in regions with high-intensity agriculture (high cropland area, fertilizer use, or pesticide use)."

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Comunidades indígenas ocuparon oficinas de Cargill en Santarém Brasil para frenar el dragado de ríos amazónicos. El dragado amenaza al río Tapajós para beneficio del agronegocio a costa de la selva y pueblos indígenas www.swissinfo.ch/spa/ind%C3%A...

Inside the upheaval at the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office Nearly half its lawyers have left since President Trump’s return, leading to dismissed criminal cases, stalled fraud prosecutions and a rare contempt citation against a Justice Department attorney.

Devastating look at US Attorney's office in MN, from political influence, to unsubstantiated claims to massive loss of capacity. How the rot from DC filters out. www.startribune.com/inside-the-u...

Judge summons Minnesota U.S. Attorney to court, threatens DHS with contempt for 'unlawful conduct' U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Bryan says government officials have not complied with multiple court orders requiring them to return valuable property to people freed from immigration detention.

A federal judge in St. Paul on Thursday ordered Minnesota's top federal law enforcement official to appear in court and explain why immigration authorities failed to return the belongings of more than two dozen people they arrested and detained illegally. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

E&E News: Iowa moves to protect agribusiness from climate liability Each chamber of the Legislature has advanced proposals that would provide legal protections for farmers and ethanol producers.

Agribusiness following fossil fuel industry's lead in seeking climate liability shields. Here in Iowa. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

Survey finds raids impacted California farm production A new statewide survey has shed light on the impact during the past year of immigration enforcement on farms and farmworkers in California.

“When 60% of our people don’t come to work and we have orders placed, we get behind, and we can’t catch up. Our fruit has to get harvested or it gets thrown away.” www.ivpressonline.com/business/sur...

@earthjustice.org @iatp.bsky.social

Beef processors under fire as prices soar | Food and Environment Reporting Network On 21 November, at the end of the first shift at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, all workers were called to the lunchroom and told they no longer had jobs.

Good reporting on how the big 4 meat companies share info to manage production to set a price ceiling for ranchers and higher prices for consumers thefern.org/2026/02/big-...

Government penalizes businesses over 6 deaths at Colorado dairy Federal workplace safety regulators have penalized three businesses over their failure to protect six Colorado dairy workers who were killed by exposure to highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas after a ma...

"The hazards of confined spaces on farms and dairies are a well-known and persistent cause of death in agriculture across the U.S. — often from exposure to odorless and colorless noxious gases, or due to asphyxiation in closed spaces where oxygen has been depleted" apnews.com/article/colo...

Tracing Bayer’s ties to power in Trump’s Washington From lobby firms to top officials, a look at how Bayer built access and secured favors from Trump's Washington.

Bayer has secured a string of favors from the Trump administration. What's going on? We looked at the German pesticide and pharmaceutical giant, its lobby firms and their ties to power players in Trump's Washington. Here's what we found: usrtk.org/pesticides/t...