Since the Donald Trump administration took office in January 2025, farmers and the entire agricultural industry have been under siege. Alongside the administration’s cuts to critical grants, by mid-February the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had removed essential information from its main website and that of 18 subagencies, including the US Forest Service and the USDA Rural Development. Grants, technical resources, and interactive tools like the Climate Risk Viewer were also missing entirely. The Trump administration clearly targeted programs supported by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, as well as those related to regenerative agriculture, organic farming, and climate resilience.
Fortunately, a swift lawsuit quickly exposed the wrongdoing, and the missing content is now being restored. What happens next?
Layoffs and Lost Access to Funding
“The web page removals…significantly undermined an organization’s ability to trust USDA digital resources, to trust that they’re up to date, [and] that they’re accurate.”
In February, Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The lawsuit cited the violation of three separate federal laws: the Freedom of Information Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
All of these laws require adequate notice before changes can be made to official government websites. The laws also state the right of citizens to access key information and documents before they are removed.
“One harm that has come out of the web page removals is that it has significantly undermined an organization’s ability to trust USDA digital resources, to trust that they’re up to date, [and] that they’re accurate,” Jeffrey Stein, an associate attorney at Earthjustice, said in an interview with NPQ.
The organization’s technical advising team…had suddenly lost its ability to advise on specific practices and refer farmers to additional resources.
NOFA-NY, one of the leading plaintiffs in the case, said that the removal of USDA web pages immediately impacted organic farmers by undermining, among other things, their work as an organic certifier. NOFA-NY has the authority to label a food producer’s product as organic by verifying whether the producer meets the strict National Organic Program standards.
It also acts as a liaison between farmers and federal resources. However, the organization’s technical advising team, which works directly with farmers in the field, had suddenly lost its ability to advise on specific practices and refer farmers to additional resources. “Especially for [organic farmers] in meeting and maintaining farming practices through the National Resource Conservation Services (NRCS)—a lot of it was just gone,” said Marcie Craig, executive director of NOFA-NY, in an interview with NPQ.
While the organization worked to pick up the pieces, “it has really educated us on exactly how farmers are accessing and what resources they’re accessing,” said Craig. She made clear that these impacts hit not just organic farmers but farmers across the board, who no longer had access to the information they needed to make informed decisions related to climate change risks, such as wildfires, extreme heat, and floods.
It is clear that many of the [USDA’s] moving parts are no longer functioning.
What was most unclear after the removal of the USDA’s web pages was the availability of funding. Farmers could no longer apply for or access to funding programs. For example, with NRCS funding, farmers are expected to cover costs up front and receive reimbursement later, following an official USDA inspection. “With all of the layoffs happening, who’s going to do that?” asked Craig. Thus far, nearly 59,000 federal jobs have been lost since the start of the second Trump administration, NPR reported, including 15,000 positions at the USDA, according to DTN Progressive Farmer.
Some USDA employees in mission-critical positions were offered resignation packages with five months’ pay and benefits. But shortly after, the agency began scrambling to refill those key positions. Then, late last month, a California federal judge blocked the USDA, alongside other agencies, from continuing the firings and department restructurings. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins firmly stated that these layoffs were about “realigning and refocusing USDA around its original intended mission,” DTN Progressive Farmer reported, but it is clear that many of the agency’s moving parts are no longer functioning.
Critical Web Pages Return
In mid-May, the USDA reversed its decision and pledged to restore the critical web pages that it had removed in a letter to the US District Court. The reversal came as both a surprise and a relief to the plaintiffs and farmers across the country. “As of right now, the USDA has restored all of the web pages and interactive tools that were identified in our complaint,” said Stein.
On June 11, the plaintiffs—NOFA-NY, NRDC, EWG, and their legal team—provided an update regarding whether the USDA was restoring the missing web pages in a timely and accurate manner, as promised by the agency. The update also includes two critical requests to the court: for the government to provide a list of all the content that was removed, and an explanation for disclaimers on the restored web pages stating that the content is “under review and subject to change.” As of this writing, the plaintiffs have no information on what that review process actually entails.
Despite the victory, there is still much uncertainty with what lies ahead for farmers. “People are terrified,” said Wes Gillingham, a farmer and NOFA-NY board president. “They’re overwhelmed and terrified because there’s so many bad decisions coming from the administration, and it is scary as to the amount of power that he’s trying to hold with his greedy little hands.”
