Tag: farms

Soon after massive honeybee deaths, Trump moves to close the nation’s premier bee lab

Mark Welsch is no stranger to the difficulties of beekeeping.

The Omaha beekeeper has been caring for hives for the last nine years — and he understands that not every colony makes it through the cold winter months. But the winter of 2024-2025 was particularly brutal for him.

“I had 12 hives going into the winter,” Welsch said. “I lost nine of them.”

He wasn’t the only one. About 1.6 million colonies died across the U.S. between June 2024 and March 2025, according to surveys from bee research nonprofit Project Apis m.

The losses hit commercial beekeepers as well as backyard honey producers, with many losing 60% to 80% of their colonies.

“Last year there was a really swift and sudden cry for help from beekeepers,” said Danielle Downey, executive director of Project Apis m.

For decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has been the one to answer such cries for help — a place where beekeepers turn when major disasters happen. Six months after the massive die-off, scientists from the USDA facility identified a likely cause: viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites. But now, the Trump administration plans to close the research lab, leaving beekeepers to question the future of federal research.

‘A really deep history’

The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has been the site of major developments in food and farm research in its 100-plus-year history. The Thanksgiving turkey was developed at Beltsville, as well as the first methods used to keep butter cold and fresh. Researchers there linked trans fat consumption to increased cholesterol and uncovered the smallest known plant disease agent.

The facility opened in 1910 as the “Government Farm,” but the history of its bee research laboratory begins earlier. Federal honeybee research in the Washington, D.C. area started in 1891, and the lab was relocated multiple times before permanently landing at Beltsville in 1939.

“There’s a really deep history of that station for supporting U.S. agriculture that’s unique,” Downey said.

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Iran War Hikes Fertilizer Prices, Squeezing Farmers in Planting Season

Much of the economic focus during the war in Iran has been on oil and gas supplies, but the interruption of an essential byproduct, fertilizer, may soon affect farmers as planting season begins.

Fertilizer that farmers use in crop production is derived from natural gas or is processed using natural gas.

About 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer product passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has constricted, according to an April 1 report by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The United Nations reports that the rate of shipping through the strait has fallen to fewer than 10 ships daily from an average of more than 100.

Consequently, over the past month, prices rose sharply for five of the eight major fertilizer types, according to DTN, an agriculture data analytics firm. Prices for urea were up by 35 percent over the past month, jumping from $677 per ton to $826 per ton in the past week alone, and anhydrous ammonia and UAN32 fertilizers were both up by 20 percent over the previous month.

“The world is now learning just how important the Strait of Hormuz is,” Caleb Jasso, a policy expert at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Epoch Times. “A great deal of trade of all kinds goes through that choke point, including a very sizable portion of the fertilizer market for the world.”

Gulf States a Critical Source

The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that 36 percent of all global urea exports and about 29 percent of global ammonia exports are shipped through the strait, as well as 26 percent of diammonium phosphate fertilizer and 13 percent of monoammonium phosphate fertilizer.

“A large share of globally traded urea, ammonia, sulfur, and [liquefied natural gas-linked] feedstock moves through the Gulf, so the war’s effect is being felt primarily through shipping disruption, marine insurance costs, and vessel delays, rather than outright destruction of production facilities,” Peter Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

“The conflict is coming at nearly the worst possible time, the spring planting season, when Corn Belt growers are locking in nitrogen purchases for the highest-input crop in the U.S. agricultural system. If the bottleneck were to persist for several months, a likely outcome would include renewed food inflation pressure in the second half of the year, especially in protein-heavy and grain-based categories.”

Cyndie Shearing, American Farm Bureau Federation communications director, warned that “unless the delivery of critical farm inputs such as urea, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, and sulfur-based products is strategically prioritized, the U.S. risks a shortfall in crops.” She called the supply interruptions “a threat to [U.S.] food security—and by extension … national security.”

American farmers are struggling with shrinking margins and say that fertilizer prices were already rising before the Iran war started, with many blaming what they say is a “duopoly” in the fertilizer supply market.

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The New York Times Runs Sob Story About a WI Dairy Farmer Who Might Lose His ‘Undocumented’ Laborers

Democrats have made it very clear that one of the reasons they support unfettered illegal immigration is that they want to import a slave-labor class that they can pay cheaply and keep in deplorable working conditions. They prove this every time they argue that, sans illegals, we wouldn’t have anyone to clean our toilets or cut our grass and the price of our produce would go up because farmers would have to pay people a living wage to harvest crops (a lot of which is automated these days, anyway).

Now the New York Times is playing that card again, this time with Wisconsin, where a farm that made the choice to hire “undocumented workers” is worried deportations will hurt their business.

Here’s more:

That worker, who came from Mexico as a teenager, knew that a calf that was sick in the morning could be dead by evening. He knew this because he has worked in the dairy industry in Wisconsin for his entire adult life, and on this family farm for about 20 years. Now in his 40s, he has mastered the intricacies of milking, birthing and inseminating, and logging it all onto a computer. This February morning, he was passing down his knowledge to the 19-year-old grandson of the family who employs him.

“We’re a little bit behind today, so you can hear everybody’s kind of angry at us,” said Sullivan O’Harrow, the grandson, who motioned toward the bellowing calves as he walked beside the worker training him.

Immigrant workers are the lifeblood of the O’Harrow farm, a four-generation family enterprise with 1,600 cows in northeastern Wisconsin. But many of them will not travel to Mexico to see dying parents, or drive to nearby towns to visit siblings, or let journalists use their names in newspapers, because they are afraid of being swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

That they need to hide strikes the O’Harrow family as morally wrong, but also as potentially bad for the country: These workers oversee America’s milk. By one estimate, dairies that employ immigrant workers produce 79 percent of the nation’s milk supply and the price of milk would double without them.

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Labor group cancels Cesar Chavez events over ‘profoundly shocking’ new allegations

Cesar Chavez has been lauded by Mexican-Americans as an iconic labor leader who fought for farmworkers’ rights in the 1960s, but his legacy may be marred by growing allegations of “profoundly shocking” behavior.

Several celebrations of Cesar Chavez Day, which is observed March 31, have been canceled across the country by the United Farm Workers, an organization Chavez co-founded.

The union said in a letter Tuesday that the claims against Chavez were “incompatible” with the organization’s values.

“Some of the reports are family issues, and not our story to tell or our place to comment on,” the group said. “Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors. Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing. We have not received any direct reports, and we do not have any firsthand knowledge of these allegations.”

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Three Mexican Citizens charged with trafficking agricultural workers into servitude on farms in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida

Three Mexican citizens have been indicted on federal charges for allegedly running a human trafficking ring that lured agricultural workers from Mexico into forced labor on farms across Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

A 35-count indictment, unsealed Friday, alleges that Martha Zeferino Jose, 42; her son, Jeremy Zeferino Jose, 23; and her partner, Jose Rodriguez Munoz, used a farm labor contracting company to exploit the H-2A visa program for financial gain, according to the Department of Justice, or DOJ.

Federal prosecutors say the group recruited workers with promises of legitimate employment through their company, Las Princesas Corporation. Instead, the defendants allegedly charged the workers illegal recruitment fees, saddling them with debt before they even arrived in the U.S.

“These individuals have been indicted for luring vulnerable workers with promises of legitimate employment, only to then confiscate their identity documents and force them to labor in inhumane conditions,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said.

According to court documents, once the workers arrived, the defendants seized their passports and visas to prevent them from leaving. The workers were then allegedly forced to labor for long hours without adequate breaks or access to water while being housed in “crowded, unsanitary” residences that lacked heat, air conditioning, and hot water.

The indictment further alleges the following:

  • Climate of Fear: The defendants allegedly prohibited workers from leaving their residences alone or speaking to outsiders, threatening them with deportation if they complained.
  • Visa Fraud: Martha Zeferino Jose allegedly submitted fraudulent applications to the government, falsely certifying that she would comply with labor laws she intended to ignore.
  • Obstruction of Justice: When the Department of Labor began an investigation, the defendants allegedly returned confiscated documents just before investigators arrived and ordered workers to lie to federal agents.

U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina vowed to “find and eradicate any illegal immigration” and abuse of the system within the district.

The defendants face multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit forced labor and alien harboring for financial gain. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count of forced labor.

Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Labor Office of the Inspector General investigated the case.

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O’Keefe Media Group Goes Undercover: Cattle Ranchers and Insiders Expose How Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef Secretly Control America’s Beef Market

The O’Keefe Media Group went undercover at CattleCon in Nashville, Tennessee, and exposed how Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef secretly control America’s beef market.

In November, President Trump said cattle prices were falling while beef prices kept rising and launched an investigation into price manipulation.

Trump directed the DOJ to investigate the meat packing companies who are driving up the prices through illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.

The O’Keefe Media Group went undercover at CattleCon and ranchers spilled the beans on how the “Big Four” control the beef industry.

“Our team spoke directly with ranchers and industry partners, documenting firsthand how the “Big Four” dominate the market and impact pricing,” James O’Keefe said.

“Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef control most of the U.S. beef industry, raising serious questions about who really sets the price. So when you see higher prices at the grocery store, it’s worth asking why,” O’Keefe said.

“This may explain why your steak keeps costing more,” he said.

“They [Big Four] are buying like all the companies in the United States… so they don’t have competition,” one insider said.

“They [Big Four] can knock you out of this industry in two seconds,” another said.

“They [Big Four] closed all the markets — all the markets are theirs in Brazil and now in the U.S.”

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Here’s Why the US Is Losing Farms at an Alarming Rate

The United States lost about 15,000 farms last year as part of a disturbing trend that is reshaping the nation’s agricultural landscape.

The Agriculture Department’s latest Land in Farms report showed that the total number of farms in the U.S. fell to about 1.86 million in 2025, down from roughly 1.88 million in 2024. No state reported a net increase in farm operations.

Since 2018, the U.S. has lost over 150,000 farms, representing an eight percent decline that has affected states like Texas and Minnesota.

Smaller operations represent most of the losses. Farms with only $1,000 to $9,999 in yearly sales saw the steepest decline. Only farms that make over $1 million in sales grew.

There are a plethora of factors contributing to this trend. Rising costs, weaker prices, and structural change in the farm economy have figured into the decline, according to RFD-TV. Farmers are spending more for equipment, fuel, and fertilizer. Meanwhile commodity prices have dropped, creating what several economists describe as a crop-sector recession.

Farm bankruptcies and forced sales have increased, along with land prices and interests. This is making it harder for younger and smaller operations to start new farms or to expand existing ones.

If this trend continues, it could mean that U.S. agriculture appears more productive on paper, but less diverse and more vulnerable to changes in the industry. As larger farms continue to grow and smaller ones vanish, production will be concentrated in fewer hands and regions. This will increase the impact of extreme weather, disease outbreaks, or government policy changes on the industry.

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The Most Socialist System in America Is the One Feeding Us—and It’s Failing

merica loves to debate socialism. We argue about universal healthcare, guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness, and government dependency. We pride ourselves on our rugged independence and belief in free markets. We warn that socialism destroys innovation, freedom, and personal responsibility. But here’s the uncomfortable truth most Americans never stop to consider: the most centrally planned, government-dependent, subsidy-driven system in the United States isn’t medicine, housing, or energy—it’s food.

Our food system is not a free market. It is not capitalism in any recognizable form. It is a government-engineered economy propped up by taxpayer dollars at every stage, directed by regulation, shaped by corporate interests, and leaving both consumers and farmers dependent, unhealthy, and without real alternatives.

Each year, more than $40 billion of taxpayer money is used to subsidize commodity crops like corn, soy, wheat, and cotton. Crop insurance—also paid for largely by the public—is essentially another subsidy, and without it, most large commodity farms wouldn’t survive. But the subsidies don’t stop at growing. Once harvested, those subsidized crops become corn syrup, seed oils, stabilizers, livestock feed, artificial ingredients, ultraprocessed food additives, and ethanol—fuel grown on prime farmland and heavily subsidized again under the banner of environmental benefit.

Then the same Farm Bill that subsidizes growing and processing also subsidizes purchasing those foods through SNAP benefits. And when the predictable metabolic outcomes emerge—obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, autoimmune disorders—the government subsidizes the healthcare required to manage the consequences. So the loop looks like this: we subsidize growing the ingredients. We subsidize the industry turning those ingredients into processed food. We subsidize the public buying those products. And then we subsidize the medical care required to treat the disease that food causes. That isn’t a food economy. It is a taxpayer-funded dependency system.

People like to imagine that subsidies make farming cushy. Nothing could be further from reality. Even with subsidies, 85 percent of US farmers work a second job just to stay on their land and feed their families. They are subsidizing the food system with unpaid labor simply to keep feeding the country. I once watched a dairy farmer who had just won the lottery. When asked what he planned to do with the money, he shrugged and said, “I’ll keep farming until it runs out.”

He wasn’t joking—he was describing reality. Ask a farmer where they see themselves in five years and many go silent. Some get emotional. Some laugh because it’s safer than crying. I know that feeling: the pit in your stomach, the exhaustion, the prayer for a path forward.

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We’re Losing the Human Touch in Food

Food, which generally originates with a farmer, gardener, or orchardist, is fast losing its hands-on persona and increasingly gaining a mechanical, chemical platform.

Over the last decade, the United States has lost about 28,000 farms annually. While some of the loss is due to urbanization, most of the land remains farmland, either managed by other farmers or simply abandoned. While there are 1.3 million farmers over age 65, only 300,000 are 35 or younger. In 2022, the average American farmer was 58—years older than the average age in other vibrant economic sectors.

The American business landscape is largely anti-people. The current rush to artificial intelligence reflects how eagerly most businesses seek to eliminate people. The farming sector illustrates this trend better than most.

Between 1960 and 2019, the percentage of disposable personal income spent on food dropped from 17 percent to 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, health care spending rose from about 9 percent in 1980, to 18 percent today. Could the two possibly be related? One more data point: In the last 80 years, the farmgate share of the retail food dollar fell from around 40 percent to just 15.9 percent in 2023.

Farming is out of sight and out of mind for most people. Food appears on grocery store shelves. It’s treated as a pit stop between life’s more important activities. Fortunately, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is beginning to shine a spotlight on food, including revised and more truthful dietary guidelines.

For decades, American agriculture policy and practice have replaced farm labor with machines, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. This raises the question: Is food a living thing, or simply an inanimate pile of protoplasmic matter to be manipulated like wheel bearings or bottle caps?

As technological sophistication pulls our culture away from its biologically vibrant roots, it jeopardizes our functional microbiomes. Yes, that’s a packed sentence. You might need to reread it—slowly. The point is, our internal systems are more aligned with the ancient world than with Star Trek. Do we really want machines, chemicals, and drugs to be the medium in which our food is grown?

Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has long advocated for a healthy “eyes-to-acres” ratio. He suggests that when fewer people interact with the land and the growing of food, both land stewardship and food integrity suffer.

Per-person agricultural output—the number of people one farmer feeds—has increased dramatically over the past century. Cyrus McCormick’s invention of the reaper in the 1830s launched the agricultural industrial revolution, enabling farmers to produce far more than ever before. Replacing the scythe with the reaper was revolutionary.

While technology brought many agricultural efficiencies, without ecological ethics, it may have gone too far. The introduction of subtherapeutic antibiotics in chicken waterers enabled the rise of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). With feed augers, water pumps, and massive barns, individual farmer output soared. And along came super bugs, C. diff, MRSA, avian influenza, polluted water, and fecal-stench air in surrounding neighborhoods.

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Why are we paying Canadian dairy farmers who are producing more?

Every once in a while, someone inside a tightly protected system decides to say the quiet part out loud. That is what Joel Fox, a dairy farmer from the Trenton, Ontario area, did recently in the Ontario Farmer newspaper. In a candid open letter, Fox questioned why established dairy farmers like himself continue to receive increasingly large government payouts — even though the sector is not shrinking, but expanding. His piece, titled “We continue to privatize gains, socialize losses,” did not come from an economist or a critic of supply management. It came from someone who benefits from it. And yet his message was unmistakable: the numbers no longer add up.

Fox’s letter marks something we have not seen in years — a rare moment of internal dissent from a system that usually speaks with one voice. It is the first meaningful crack since the viral milk-dumping video by Ontario dairy farmer Jerry Huigen, who filmed himself being forced to dump thousands of litres of perfectly good milk because of quota rules. Huigen’s video exposed contradictions inside supply management, but the system quickly closed ranks. Until now. Fox has reopened a conversation that has been dormant for far too long.

In his letter, Fox admitted he would cash his latest $14,000 Dairy Direct Payment Program (DDPP) cheque, despite believing the program wastes taxpayer money. The DDPP was created to offset supposed losses from trade agreements like CETA, CPTPP, and CUSMA. These deals were expected to reduce Canada’s dairy market. But those “losses” are theoretical — based on models and assumptions about future erosion in market share. Meanwhile, domestic dairy demand has strengthened.

Which raises the obvious question: why are we compensating dairy farmers for producing less when they are, in fact, producing more?

This month, dairy farmers received another 1% quota increase, on top of several increases totalling 4% to 5% in recent years. Quota — the right to produce milk — only increases when more supply is needed. If trade deals had truly devastated the sector, quota would be falling, not rising. Instead, Canada’s population has grown by nearly six million since 2015, processors have expanded, and consumption remains stable. The market is expanding.

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