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Farmers Sue Trump USDA Over Deletion of 'Vital' Climate Information
"USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources," argued one attorney.
Feb 24, 2025
Climate defenders and farmers sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's unlawful purge of climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites."
The complaint was filed in the Southern District of New York by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY).
The case focuses on just one part of Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to purge the federal government and its resources of anyone or anything that doesn't align with his far-right agenda, including information about the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"USDA's irrational climate change purge doesn't just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over," Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. "USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources."
"The Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats."
Specifically, the groups accused the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act. As the complaint details, on January 30, "USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee sent an email ordering USDA staff to 'identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change' by 'no later than close of business' on Friday, January 31."
"Within hours, and without any public notice or explanation, USDA purged its websites of vital resources about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, and investment in clean energy projects in rural America, among many other subjects," the document states. "In doing so, it disabled access to numerous datasets, interactive tools, and essential information about USDA programs and policies."
EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger explained that "by wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods."
NOFA-NY board president Wes Gillingham emphasized that "farmers are on the frontlines of climate impacts, we have been reacting to extreme weather and making choices to protect our businesses and our food system for years. Climate change is not a hoax. Farmers, fishermen, and foresters know from experience, that we need every piece of science and intergenerational knowledge to adjust to this new reality."
Rebecca Riley, NRDC's managing director of food and agriculture, pointed out that "by removing climate information from the USDA's website, the Trump administration is not just making farming harder—it is undermining our ability to adapt and respond to the very challenges climate change presents."
The coalition asked the court to declare the purge unlawful and order the USDA to restore the webpages, to refrain from further implementing Rhee's directive, and to comply with its legal obligations regarding public notices.
“USDA's policies influence everything from the shape of our economy to the food we eat," said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. "USDA's sudden elimination of webpages that used to provide this information hurts all of us. Members of the public have a right to know how the department is implementing its priorities and administering its programs."
The New York Timesreported Monday that "the Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment." The suit is just one of dozens filed against the Trump administration since the inauguration last month.
Schechinger stressed that "this lawsuit isn't just about transparency—it's about holding those in power accountable for undermining the very information that helps protect the livelihoods of food producers, the food system, and our future."
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Climate Cost of Organic Meat Is Just as High as That of Conventionally Grown Animals: Study
"The prices are lying," said one of the study's researchers. "Climate costs are rising and we are all paying these costs."
Dec 22, 2020
Advocates for eco-friendly, plant-based diets hailed a study published last week that revealed the climate cost of organic meat production is as high as that of conventionally produced animal products.
"We expected organic farming to score better for animal-based products but, for greenhouse gas emissions, it actually doesn't make much difference."
--Maximilian Pieper, Technical University of Munich
The study, published on December 15 in Nature Communication andreported Wednesday in The Guardian, used the German government's climate damage cost baseline of $219 per tonne of CO2 and determined that in order to cover climate costs, the farm-direct price of beef must rise by $7.31 per kilogram, while the per kilo price of chicken must increase by $3.66. The price of conventionally raised meat would have to rise by 40% in stores, while organic meat would need to be about 25% more expensive. Conventional milk would be one-third higher, while the price of organic milk would rise by 20%.
The researchers analyzed animal agriculture in Germany and concluded that the climate costs of organic beef and lamb are similar to that of their conventionally produced counterparts. And while they found that organic pork has a slightly lower climate cost than conventional pig meat, for organic chicken it was somewhat higher.
The cost of plant-based foods, on the other hand, would remain nearly the same.
\u201c\ud83d\udc94\ud83c\udf0e 'The cost of the climate damage caused by organic meat production is just as high as that of conventionally farmed meat, according to research.' There's never been a better time to try a plant-based diet, join us this Veganuary https://t.co/wdXB6xsbj1\nhttps://t.co/X68saquozf\u201d— Veganuary (@Veganuary) 1608745674
"We expected organic farming to score better for animal-based products but, for greenhouse gas emissions, it actually doesn't make much difference," Maximilian Pieper of the Technical University of Munich, who led the study, toldThe Guardian. "But in certain other aspects, organic is certainly better than conventional farming."
University of Greifswald researcher Amelie Michalke, who also participated in the study, said that "the prices are lying."
"Climate costs are rising and we are all paying these costs," she said.
While animals emit greenhouse gases in their excrement--and in the case of cows and sheep, through belching and farting--the grain fed to conventionally raised livestock can also contribute to emissions, especially if it is grown on land which has been deforested in places like South America's Amazon rainforest.
Animals raised organically are often grass-fed. But they also grow at a slower rate and spend more time expelling greenhouse gases before they are slaughtered.
"The climate damage costs for meat are especially startling if you compare them to the other categories. The price increases required are... 68 times higher than for plant-based products."
--Pieper
All animals also need water to live, and separate research has shown that the global average water footprint--the total amount of water needed--to produce a pound of beef is nearly 1,800 gallons. For a pound of pork, it's 576 gallons. In stark contrast, a pound of soybeans needs only 216 gallons of water; for corn, just 108 gallons.
The new study's researchers said the results show a need for government policies that reflect the true cost of eating animals, including a meat tax. Revenues from such corrective measures could be used to help farmers adopt more eco-friendly practices, and to provide relief to poor families and people affected by the climate crisis.
However, instead of encouraging Americans to consume less meat, the U.S. government subsidizes animal agriculture by as much as $38 billion annually. Shoppers pay artificially low prices for animal products at the supermarket checkout counter, while their tax dollars fund an industry whose retail sales approach $250 billion per year.
As David Simon notes in his 2013 book Meatonomics, for every $1 of product sold by the animal agriculture industry, taxpayers pay $2 in hidden costs, and a $4 McDonald's Big Mac really costs society $11.
\u201cIf meat cost its actual price none of you leftist would be saying is classist to be vegan. \n\nIts already cheaper to be vegan but imagine how much cheaper it would be if meat included its cost to society and climate in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.\u201d— Andrew Velez \ud83c\udf31 (@Andrew Velez \ud83c\udf31) 1608130558
"The climate damage costs for meat are especially startling if you compare them to the other categories," Pieper told The Guardian. "The price increases required are 10 times higher than for dairy products and 68 times higher than for plant-based products."
"The big difference is the simple effect that when you have a field of plants and you eat them directly, then that's the end of the [emissions], basically," he added. "But for beef, for example, you need 42kg of feed to just produce one kg of beef. This huge inefficiency explains the gap."
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New Study Reveals Organic Diets Significantly Reduce Glyphosate Levels
"We all have the right to food that is free of toxic pesticides."
Aug 12, 2020
An environmental organization focused on achieving a healthier and more just world is celebrating the publication Tuesday of a groundbreaking study that found an organic diet radically decreases levels of the toxic herbicide glyphosate in the body.
The study--titled Organic Diet Intervention Significantly Reduces Urinary Glyphosate Levels in U.S. Children and Adults--was published in the journal Environmental Research and co-authored by Kendra Klein, a senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth.
In what FOE described as an unprecedented study to examine how an organic diet affects glyphosate intake, Klein and her co-authors looked at glyphosate levels in urine samples from four different families. The individuals studied spent six days on a non-organic diet and six days on an organic diet. In this time period, glyphosate levels in participants' bodies decreased an average of 70%.
"We all have the right to food that is free of toxic pesticides," said Klein, "but our federal regulatory system is broken and is not protecting us. We urgently need our elected leaders to make healthy organic food the norm for everyone by passing policies that support farmers to shift from pesticide-intensive to organic farming."
"The only way to dramatically reduce all Americans' exposure to this toxic weedkiller is for the Environmental Protection Agency to ban uses of the herbicide that lead to high levels in foods people eat." - Alex Tempkin, EWG
Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup, an herbicide used as on wheat, corn, soy, canola, cotton, oats, beans, and in gardening and landscaping. It was introduced in the 1990s and, since then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has allowed the dietary limit of residue exposure to glyphosate to be increased up to 300 times more than previous foods, despite previous research showing its harmful effects.
The chemical was flagged as a possible cause of cancer as early as the 1980s and was classified as a likely human carcinogen by the World Health Organization in 2015. Over time, it has been linked to human health conditions like kidney disease, hormone disruption, and shortened pregnancy. About 280 million pounds of glyphosate is sprayed annually in the U.S.
"The government has turned a blind eye for decades when it comes to monitoring glyphosate--failing to test for it on food and in our bodies," Klein and Anna Lappe, co-director of Real Food Media, wrote Tuesday in an op-ed for The Guardian.
A string of court cases in 2019 linked plaintiffs' cancer with exposure to the use of Roundup, leading to an $180 million payout in damages from Bayer, the company that now owns Roundup after merging with Monsanto in 2018. According to Friends of the Earth, Bayer negotiated another settlement of $10 billion in the summer of 2020 and still has 30,000 more similar cases pending.
In July, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released an analysis of lab testing that showed glyphosate in 90% of non-organic hummus and chickpea samples. Similar reports from the group found the chemical in popular breakfast cereals.
In animal studies, glyphosate has been shown to cause DNA damage, decreased sperm function, and fatty liver disease. It is also considered to be one of the causes of monarch butterfly and bee populations declining.
In a statement Wednesday about Klein's study, EWG Toxicologist Alexis Temkin noted that the "often-repeated claims by chemical agriculture and big food companies that there isn't much difference between conventional and organic foods is wildly inaccurate, and this study is further proof of it."
"The levels of toxic crop chemicals like glyphosate that contaminate a wide swath of conventional foods are a main pathway of exposure for most adults and children," said Temkin. "The only way to dramatically reduce all Americans' exposure to this toxic weedkiller is for the Environmental Protection Agency to ban uses of the herbicide that lead to high levels in foods people eat."
Another important aspect of the new study: Children have significantly higher levels of exposure to glyphosate--about five times higher than the average level in adults.
"Growing up with this kind of chemical in their body will harm them," Sharyle Patton, director of Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center and a study author, told Environmental Health News. "It's a tragedy."
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