Hello from somewhere inbetween NJ and SF on the first leg of a long flight!
This newsletter is a day late because I wasted my Sunday writing time playing with adjusting my website and publicly-facing materials of the Trump (or should I say Musk?) Administration’s though-shalt-not-use terms - things like “equity,” “diversity,” “climate change,” etc. I didn’t end up making any of the changes. It’s funny - I’m very comfortable working across the political divide. I’ve been talking about conservation and stewardship instead of climate change in many rooms for my entire career, and frankly, I think that constraint has enabled the agtech companies that I’ve worked with to have had more actual climate impact that those that come in with an explicitly climate angle. But the social stuff is a lot more difficult for me to compromise on. Maybe it hits me harder because I’m [insert relevant Diverse Identity Politic traits here]. But I think it’s actually much simpler; I just believe that all people are people, all people deserve respect, and people who can help their fellow people should do so. I’ll continue to wrestle with this in my public writing and speaking, because I want to use the words that enable the broadest possible base to participate in improving our agrifood systems.
Food Policy Tracker from Civil Eats
TL;DR: In case you’re living under a rock, there is a LOT going on right now in US policy, from the federal to the local level. Lise Held at Civil Eats is trying to keep track of policy things in the food system for us.
My take: To Sarah Mock’s point (see #5) food ≠ ag, so I won’t be exclusively leaning on this as the source of news - I think AgriPulse is probably the best thing to follow for US ag policy tracking (but I’m open to other recs.) All that said, I’m grateful this food policy tracker exists and think that Civil Eats is doing a decent (if obviously progressively biased) job of reporting on some of the food-system-relevant stuff that’s happening. The deluge of bills and executive orders and laws and lawsuits moving through parts of our Federal and State system is overwhelming right now, but it’s important to pay attention and to stand up for what we belive in. I’ve been thinking about manageable and interesting ways to share some of the more relevant pieces of legal action, and you’ll see a few video messages from specific farmers about specific issues below (#2 and #3).
USDA funding freezes mean that it isn’t honoring its contracts and it’s going to drive American farmers out of business
TL;DR: Its a TikTok reel, do you really need a summary?
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserMy take: My company and my team rely upon federal funding for the work that we do to commercialize solutions for American farmers. I’m knocking on doors with philanthropists in my network and diversifying funding streams because I don’t want to stop this work, and I want to be able to pay all of my employees for the work that they’re doing. We’re lucky that we are already somewhat diversified. The thing is, even if all of our funding stops and we have to get new jobs, we can actually do that relatively easily. I don’t know Skyler, but so far as I can tell, Cattlemen Family Farms is a smallish calf-cow operation in Missouri. If Skylar sells his ranch, that’s it, he’s out of ranching. He’s not unique. For an administration that claims to bring back American production of critical goods and commodities, these haphazard funding freezes are counterproductive policy strategies causing real harm to family businesses and families across the country.
TL;DR:
This bill would completely outlaw affirmative action by AR public agencies. It would, of course, impact folks outside of agriculture.
My take: I’m sharing this particular bill with this particular American farmer because it is representative of similar bills moving through legislative processes around the country. It’s broader than ag, but let’s just zoom in on implicatinos for ag - we live in a country where the average farmer is in his 50s and we don’t have enough people getting into farming. Beginning farmers are pushing boulders up mountains to obtain land and financing, not to mention actually farming. This is especially true for Black farmers and women because of well-documented blatant discriminatino by our Farm Credit system and beyond. When I was in Oregon, we were a white women-run hedge fund managing farms. We had to hire a guy who was the son of a respected farm family in order to sell our berries to the packer nearest us. This was 2019. This is reality. Affirmative action in certain instances moves the scales slightly closer to balance.
Hallie Shoffner aka FarmerHallie farms 2,000 acres of rice, beans and corn in Arkansas down in the Mississippi Delta, and she does it phenomenally well. She’s also a vocal activist who isn’t afraid to stand up for what she believes in. She was Top Producer in 2024, is a founding farmer at Delta Harvest and is an active AgLaunch Network member. She relies on H2-A labor and treats her employees, some of whom I’ve met, very well. There’s way more I could say here about her and her operation because farming and the humans who do it are endlessly interesting, but I’d suggest giving her a follow on the socials and listening to her firsthand.New bird flu variant in cattle adds to concerns about federal response under Trump
TL; DR: Bird flu is mutating more and the variant that makes people sick is in cows. Also, we seem not to have a very good plan for managing it/no one knows whether the CDC is doing anything?
My take: People are really getting sick, and we have the technology to stop it. Why aren’t we organizing to fix it?
This is actually a problem that has persisted for decades - our biosecurity plans around animal-born diseases in this country are lacking, to be generous. I always struggle with investing in solutions that promise to better detect disease in name-that-animal, because the thing is, no individual player really wants to know. The USDA is in a very tough spot in managing these disease outbreaks - they essentially exist to serve American farmers. Telling American farmers to kill all their chickens/cows/[insert animal/crop here] is a tough sell, even in the name of safeguarding public health. We should all be pretty worried about this. Weirdly, this is one of those areas where I feel vaguely hopeful that completely breaking the government could make this problem…at least different?Also related to the bird flu issue - I’m so interested to see if Rollins actually creates a plan to reduce the price of eggs (as Sen Jack Reed (D-RI) demanded), assuming she gets voted through. I know that I said that I felt cautiously optimistic about the self-described “pathological optimist” 2 weeks ago, but the more she answers questions on immigration/labor (tbd if it’ll be a problem), climate change (not a problem), egg prices (a problem, and I-don’t-have-a-plan), the more my optimism is turning into pragmatic pessimism.
ICE action in Central Valley - know your rights and have a plan
TL;DR: Guidance from Bryan Little of Farm Employers Labor Service for dealing with Immigration Enforcement Agencies.
My take: My inbox is flooded with emails from regional Farm Bureau chiefs and ag organizations confirming ICE visits throughout agricultural regions of California over the past few weeks. This is one of many guidances offered. Farm operations are being forced to spend time that they don’t have trying to protect their workers from raids. Unfortunately, I think we’ll all have these guidance memos memorized before long, and it feels very much like we’re in a wait-and-see and brace-for-the-worst stance right now.The Food System and Farm System are Not the Same, by Sarah Mock
TL;DR:
The farm system is a shark, and the food system is a remora fish attached to its belly, eating the scraps that fall from its mouth. If you want to change the farm system, accept that you’ve got to go head to head with a shark. Stop trying to change it through the food system, there is no leverage there
My take: Thank goodness Sarah is back sharing thought-provoking ag essays! If you need a newsletter that’s not full-send-panic-re-US-government - this is for you. Sarah is one of the best thinkers and writers in all of ag and a good friend and advisor. She’s also one of my favorite people to respectfully argue with. I am so excited to read through her series of essays over the next several weeks (and email her back with a blend of highly specific push back/violent agreement.) This particular essay covers the reality that ag is complicated and while it is intertwined with food, food is not the best leverage point for provoking change. You’re welcome.
Where in the world is Connie?
2/16-2/20 - Brisbane, Australia - I’ll be leading a collaborative breakout Collaborative Solutions for Agtech Growth with Meg Lovegrove and Rob Hulme of AusAgritech at Evoke.
2/21-2/24 - Melbourne, Australia - Meetings, and some availability!
2/24-2/28 - Hobart+, Tasmania - I’ll be checking out some berry operations, some berry harvesting robots, and sneaking in some side meetings with folks in town for BerryWorld.
3 /10-3/13 - San Francisco, CA - I’ll be in SF for World Agritech, along with everyone else in agtech.
Thanks for reading - I know today’s letter was long. I’ll try to keep the next one snappier, but, no promises, because I think it’s really important to be paying attention to the barrage of changes hitting US agriculture right now. (We didn’t even cover tariffs and trade wars here! Maybe next week.)
Hang in there and stay informed!
Connie