How Trump, Vance Changed Food, Agriculture, Health, Climate

Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg

After the Trump-Vance Administration took office last year, we published a list documenting steps taken by the President, his Cabinet, and other federal policymakers in the first 100 days that changed the landscape of food, agriculture, health, and climate. 

Now, with an updated list, we’re taking stock of what has occurred since then—continuing to monitor how food and agriculture systems are being reshaped in real time.

To mark the first 100 days of the Trump-Vance Administration, Food Tank documented how their actions have shaped food, agriculture, health, and climate systems. Read that HERE. One year later, we’re taking stock of what has changed since.

Q2 2025

May 2025

• May 2, 2025: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and detains 14 farmworkers from a farm in Western New York.

• May 3, 2025: At least 15,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees have taken the Trump-Vance Administration’s offers to resign, according to a briefing from the agency.

• May 12, 2025: The USDA rescinds decades-old regulations that required farmers to record their use of pesticides known to pose the highest risk to human health.

• May 14, 2025: The House Agriculture Committee voted 29-25, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as US$300 billion in food aid spending, shifting costs to the states.

• May 14, 2025: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announces plans to rescind several key protections intended to keep perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, out of drinking water, about a year after the Biden-Harris administration finalized the first-ever national standards.

• May 15, 2025: EPA approves the first permit allowing an industrial-scale fish farm to begin operating in federal waters.

• May 19, 2025: Rollins announces the Small Family Farms Policy Agenda, a set of policy proposals she says are aimed at improving the viability and longevity of smaller-scale family farms.

• May 22, 2025: The Trump-Vance Administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission releases a new MAHA report identifying the key contributors to rising rates of chronic disease among American children. According to the report, ultra-processed foods, exposure to environmental chemicals, lack of physical activity, and the overuse of medications and vaccines are among the primary drivers.

• May 27, 2025: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announces a plan to increase funding for US$14.5 million in reimbursements to states for meat and poultry inspection programs.

• May 28, 2025: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cancels funding for a trial testing the safety and efficacy of a vaccine to protect Americans from bird flu, should the virus begin circulating in humans.

• May 29, 2025: The White House acknowledges errors in the MAHA Assessment report, including citations to studies that do not actually exist.

June 2025

• June 2, 2025: The U.S. Department of the Interior proposes reversing an order issued by President Joe Biden in December that banned oil and gas drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

• June 9, 2025: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces that the agency will get rid of all members sitting on a key U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and reconstitute the committee.

• June 10, 2025: ICE arrests and detains 70 workers at Glenn Valley Foods, a meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska.

• June 12, 2025: President Donald Trump acknowledges on social media that his immigration policies are hurting the farming and hotel industries, making a rare concession that his crackdown is having ripple effects on the American workforce. “Changes are coming,” he says.

• June 12, 2025: The Senate Agriculture Committee releases its proposed text for the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” While the House plan proposed cuts of nearly US$300 billion in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) spending, the Senate’s plan would cut US$209 billion from the program. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a “vote for this bill is not a vote for farmers – it’s a vote to abandon them.” The Food Research and Action Center says the bill marks “a devastating reversal in the fight against hunger in America.”

• June 13, 2025: The Washington Post reports that there will be no policy changes underway to exempt farm, hotel and other leisure workers from Trump’s immigration crackdown.

• June 12, 2025: Trump pulls the U.S. federal government from an agreement brokered by President Joe Biden with Washington, Oregon, and four Native American tribes to recover the salmon population in the Pacific Northwest, calling the plan “radical environmentalism”.

• June 17, 2025: Rollins announces that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will terminate over 145 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion focused awards, totaling US$148.6 million. Programs that will be terminated include: educating and engaging socially disadvantaged farmers on conservation practices, creating a new model for urban forestry to lead to environmental justice through more equitably distributed green spaces, and expanding equitable access to land, capital, and market opportunities for underserved producers.

• June 20, 2025: Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian appointed to oversee the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act as it moves through Congress, rules that Republicans can’t use the budget reconciliation process to impose a state cost-share for SNAP, negating a major source of spending cuts for the legislation. She also says Republicans could not include a provision that would bar immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents from receiving SNAP benefits.

• June 25, 2025: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) will no longer enforce a 2024 rule that expanded protections for guest workers who come to the U.S. to work on farms through the H-2A program. According to DOL, “The decision provides much-needed clarity for American farmers navigating the H-2A program, while also aligning with President Trump’s ongoing commitment to strictly enforcing U.S. immigration laws.”

Q3 2025

July 2025

• July 1, 2025: Senate passes the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act with SNAP cuts intact. The bill is now headed to the House, where it’s still unclear if Republicans have the votes to pass it.

• July 10, 2025: The USDA will no longer employ the race- and sex-based “socially disadvantaged” designation to provide increased benefits in USDA programs. Rollins says: “We are taking this aggressive, unprecedented action to eliminate discrimination in any form at USDA.”

• July 10, 2025: ICE arrests and detains 361 workers during farm raids in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California.

• July 12, 2025: A Mexican farmworker dies from injuries sustained during a federal immigration raid on July 10.

• July 15, 2025: USDA terminates the Regional Food Business Centers (RFBC) program, which provided funding for organizations to build support for local and regional farm and food businesses.

• July 24, 2025: Rollins announces that the USDA will close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. The plan could undermine research on pests, blight, and crop genetics crucial to American farms, according to lawmakers, a farm group, and staff of the facility.

August 2025

• August 11, 2025: The U.S. Congressional Budget Office releases a report confirming that reductions to SNAP will significantly shrink access to food assistance, disproportionately harming children, older adults, people with disabilities, and working families. The report projects that millions will see reduced benefits or lose access to SNAP entirely.

• August 12, 2025: The USDA notifies union leaders representing the Food Safety and Inspection Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that the agency plans to end contracts for thousands of employees.

• August 19, 2025: The USDA announces it will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects. The announcement describes that prime farmland has been displaced by solar farms and the new investment guardrails are meant to keep farmland affordable, but data from the agency show that a very small amount of rural land is used for solar and wind projects and that most continues in agricultural production even after the projects are installed.

• August 26, 2025: Trump revokes an executive order, issued by President Joe Biden, that tasked the USDA and Federal Trade Commission with curbing consolidation across the food system to improve fairness and competition for farmers and consumers.

• August 28, 2025: Kennedy and Trump fire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez over disagreements on vaccination policy. Four other officials quit in frustration over vaccine policy and Kennedy’s leadership.

• August 29, 2025: The Trump-Vance Administration suspends an annual charity drive that resulted in federal employees donating about US$70 million a year to nonprofit organizations, including US$5 million to food and agriculture initiatives.

September 2025

• September 2, 2025: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces that the agency is abandoning a plan to regulate water pollution from the country’s slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities.

• September 4, 2025: In one of the largest workplace raids in New York, ICE arrests and detains 57 people from Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a nutrition bar manufacturer.

• September 9, 2025: The Trump-Vance Administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission releases its Strategy Report, outlining the federal government’s approach to reducing childhood chronic disease. The 20-page document confirms earlier leaks that the administration will avoid imposing new restrictions on pesticides or ultra-processed foods.

• September 20, 2025: The USDA announces the termination of future Household Food Security Reports, calling the study “redundant, costly, and politicized.”

• September 25, 2025: Rollins announces new efforts to investigate market conditions that have led to high input prices for farmers, shortly after the USDA quietly cancelled partnerships that helped states tackle anticompetitive markets in agriculture.

• September 30, 2025: The Trump-Vance Administration is canceling US$72 million for USAID’s Feed the Future Innovation Labs by using a controversial loophole to cancel federal funding at the end of the fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2025.

Q4 2025

October 2025

• October 1, 2025: The U.S. federal government shuts down, following a failure by Congress to pass appropriations bills for the new fiscal year. Federal agencies will be governed by their respective Lapse of Funding plans until the government reopens.

• According to the USDA Lapse of Funding Plan, approximately 42,000 agency employees will be furloughed. 67 percent of employees at the Farm Service Agency will be furloughed. The Farm Service Agency will stop processing farm loans and commodity payments, and it will stop implementing disaster assistance programs. 96 percent of the Natural Resources Conservation Service will be furloughed, effectively freezing conservation programs. The National Organic Program will cease operations, leaving certifiers without oversight or support. The Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, and National Institute for Food and Agriculture are each losing more than 90 percent of their staff and ceasing all program operations. Core operations related to nutrition programs, including SNAP, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and school meals will continue but funding for those programs could start to become an issue depending on how long the shutdown lasts.

• According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plan, the agency will retain about 86 percent of staff. Routine inspections will be suspended and the agency will instead focus on “for-cause” inspections, or those tied to foodborne illness outbreaks, recalls, or consumer complaints.

• According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s shutdown plan, the agency will retain about 11 percent of its total workforce. The agency will stop conducting and publishing research “unless necessary for exempted or excepted activities.”

• October 2, 2025: A news release posted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security adjusts the H-2A paperwork process to speed up applications with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

• DHS says the changes are part of a larger collaborative effort with the DOL to streamline the program “in light of an urgent demand for an authorized agricultural labor force and requests from the regulated community and members of Congress to make the H-2A program easier to use and more efficient for U.S. agricultural producers.”

• October 2, 2025: The DOL publishes rules altering the way H-2A wage rates are calculated, effectively lowering wages for labor across the board. United Farm Workers calculated that the change will reduce wages by US$5 to US$7 per hour in some states, leading to US$2.46 billion less paid to H-2A workers annually.

• October 2, 2025: The DOL warns in an obscure document that the Trump-Vance Administration’s immigration crackdown is threatening “the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”

• October 7, 2025: Civil Eats reports on industry ties within Trump’s food and agricultural leadership. Many of the president’s top officials at the USDA, EPA, HHS, and FDA have connections to chemical, agribusiness, or fossil fuel interests.

• October 10, 2025: According to a letter obtained by Politico, SNAP is running out of funds. Ronald Ward, the USDA’s acting associate administrator for the program, instructed regional and state SNAP directors to delay sending next month’s funds to electronic benefit transfer vendors responsible for delivering benefits to participants: “We understand that several States would normally begin sending November benefit issuance files to their electronic benefit transfer (EBT) vendors soon,” Ward writes. “Considering the operational issues and constraints that exist in automated systems, and in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are forced to direct States to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to State EBT vendors until further notice.”

• October 16, 2025: NPR reports that at least 27 states have turned over data (including their names, dates of birth, home addresses, Social Security numbers, and benefits amounts) about millions of food stamp recipients to the USDA, which framed the data demand as necessary to accomplish the Trump-Vance Administration’s goal of identifying and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

• October 16, 2025: Rollins says SNAP will run out of funds in two weeks because of the partial government shutdown, potentially leaving nearly 42 million people without monthly benefits.

• October 20, 2025: Politico reports on six food and agriculture programs experiencing delays or funding concerns as a result of the shutdown: SNAP, school meals, WIC, H-2A processing, farm aid, and Farm Service Agency offices.

• October 22, 2025: Trump announces plans to increase the volume of beef imports from Argentina, raising concerns among American cattle-producing farmers and ranchers.

• October 31, 2025: Two federal judges order the Trump-Vance Administration to use emergency funds to keep SNAP running.

November 2025

• November 1, 2025: Nearly 42 million Americans lose their food stamp benefits as Congress fails to reopen the government. Politico reports that the Trump-Vance Administration says they don’t have the authority to use emergency money for SNAP or have enough funds to support the estimated US$9 billion for November benefits. Even if they comply with the court order to fund benefits, it could still take days or weeks to disburse partial funds.

• November 3, 2025: NPR reports that the Trump-Vance Administration will restart SNAP benefits, but only at 50 percent of normal payments and the payments will be delayed. The Trump-Vance Administration says it will use money from a US$5 billion Agriculture Department contingency fund. Officials say that depleting the fund means “no funds will remain for new SNAP applicants certified in November, disaster assistance, or as a cushion against the potential catastrophic consequences of shutting down SNAP entirely.”

• November 8, 2025: The USDA directs states to “immediately undo” any steps that have been taken to send out full food aid benefits to low-income Americans, following a U.S. Supreme Court order temporarily halting a lower court order requiring those payments.

• November 10, 2025: Retrieved from the USDA website on Nov. 10: “Senate Democrats have voted 14 times against reopening the government. This compromises not only SNAP, but farm programs, food inspection, animal and plant disease protection, rural development, and protecting federal lands. Senate Democrats are withholding services to the American people in exchange for healthcare for illegals, gender mutilation, and other unknown “leverage” points.”

• November 12, 2025: The U.S. federal government shutdown ends after Congress signs a funding package for 2026. Lasting 43 days, the shutdown was the longest in U.S. history. Roughly 670,000 federal employees were furloughed, and 730,000 worked without pay.

• November 13, 2025: The U.S. Department of the Interior reverses an order issued by President Joe Biden in December 2024 that banned oil and gas drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

• November 14, 2025: Trump rolls back tariffs on more than 200 food products, including such staples as coffee, beef, bananas and orange juice, in the face of growing angst among American consumers about the high cost of groceries.

• November 21, 2025: According to an annual FDA report, sales of antibiotics for farm animals climbed 16 percent in 2024, the “biggest increase we’ve ever seen,” according to Steve Roach, director of the Safe and Healthy Food Program at Food Animal Concerns Trust.

December 2025

• December 1, 2025: The FDA announces “the deployment of agentic AI capabilities for all agency employees” for tasks including meeting management, pre-market reviews, review validation, post-market surveillance, inspections, and compliance and administrative functions.

• December 6, 2025: Trump issues an executive order directing the U.S. Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission to investigate food-related industries and determine whether anti-competitive behavior exists in food supply chains.

• December 10, 2025: The USDA announces a US$700 million Regenerative Pilot Program.

• December 10, 2025: Rollins approves SNAP Food Restriction Waivers in six states, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Hawai’i.

• December 17, 2025: The USDA’s Office of the Inspector General releases a report finding that the agency lost nearly one-fifth of its workforce in the first half of 2025: more than 20,000 employees left the agency out of more than 110,000, including 15,114 who accepted a voluntary resignation program.

January 2026

• January 1, 2026: SNAP waivers go into effect in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia, bringing the total number of states with approved waivers to 18.

• January 7, 2026: The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services release the Dietary Guidelines for 2025 to 2030, recommending a reduction in highly processed foods with added sugar and excess sodium and endorsing whole, nutrient-dense foods and products like whole milk, butter, and red meat.

• January 14, 2026: The American Federation of Government Employees announces that the Department of Health and Human Services is reinstating National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) employees laid off in 2025, but does not specify how many will return to their jobs. Almost 900 of NIOSH’s 1,000 employees were laid off last year.

• January 14, 2026: Trump signs the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law. The legislation modifies current regulations, which require milk to be fat-free or low-fat, to permit schools to offer students whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free organic or nonorganic milk.

• January 15, 2026: Rollins publishes an op-ed in The Hill promoting the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. She writes, “Eating healthy can cost as little as $3.00 per meal.”

• January 19, 2026: The USDA launches Lender Lens on the Rural Data Gateway, making Rural Development’s entire commercial guaranteed loan portfolio available to the public, guaranteed borrowers, and commercial lending stakeholders.

• January 22, 2026: The USDA launches an online portal for reporting foreign-owned agricultural land transactions. They say the portal is part of a broader effort to “strengthen enforcement and protect American farmland” as the agency continues its implementation of the National Farm Security Action Plan.

• January 30, 2026: Rollins shares that around 1.75 million fewer people are participating in SNAP since the start of the Trump-Vance Administration.

February 2026

• February 2, 2026: Trump announces plans to lower tariffs on goods from India from 25 percent to 18 percent after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to stop buying oil from Russia.

• February 4, 2026: The USDA announces that it is assuming operation of the foreign food aid program Food for Peace, formerly operated by USAID. Humanitarian aid experts say the program has been used flexibly to respond to different emergency settings, but it may become a way to offload surplus U.S.-grown food commodities.

• February 6, 2026: The FDA publishes a letter to the food industry announcing that the agency will scale back artificial food dye labeling enforcement.

• February 6, 2026: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reapproves dicamba, a pesticide that has raised concern over its tendency to drift and destroy nearby crops, for use on genetically modified soybeans and cotton.

• February 6, 2026: Trump issues a proclamation opening a marine protected area off the northeastern U.S. to commercial fishing. The 4,913-square-mile area was the only U.S. marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

• February 6, 2026: Trump releases an Executive Order, calling for higher volumes of imported beef from Argentina to lower prices for eaters.

• February 11, 2026: The USDA announces the Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework, a plan to protect, preserve, and partner with American agriculture, while “ending onerous regulations and the weaponization of government against American farmers and ranchers. It formalizes USDA’s ongoing efforts to eliminate systemic agricultural lawfare,” according to the agency.

• February 12, 2026: The FDA publishes final guidance which advises, but does not require, drug companies to set “duration limits” for livestock antibiotics in animal feed.

• February 13, 2026: The USDA issues final Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) payments totaling more than US$1.89 billion. Eligible applicants who applied for ELRP 2023 and 2024 Flood and Wildfire assistance will receive 100 percent of their eligible payment in a single lump sum.

• February 13, 2026: The USDA announces US$1 billion in assistance for farmers of specialty crops and sugar, commodities not covered through the previously announced Farmer Bridge Assistance program.

• February 13, 2026: Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee release a draft farm bill package. The draft is scheduled to be reviewed and revised the week of February 23, 2026.

• February 13, 2026: USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden announces on social media that the Department of Justice will stop defending farm programs that benefit socially disadvantaged producers.

• February 17, 2026: The USDA announces proposed updated regulations that would speed up line speeds at poultry and pork production facilities.

• February 18, 2026: Trump issues an Executive Order directing the Secretary of Agriculture to ensure “a continued and adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides.”

• February 20, 2026: Trump announces new tariffs under the Trade Act of 1974, and increases the tariff rate to 15 percent.

• February 20, 2026: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency repeals a 2024 rule that imposed limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the primary source of the mercury that accumulates in fish.

March 2026

• March 3, 2026: Trump-Vance Administration lawyers submit an amicus brief in favor of Monsanto to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that the Court should rule in favor of Bayer in a case that could prevent individuals from suing pesticide companies over claims their products cause cancer and other illnesses.

• March 4, 2026: The USDA approves SNAP waivers in four states: Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, and Wyoming.

• March 4, 2026: The U.S. House Agriculture Committee votes to advance a 2026 Farm Bill. To be adopted, the legislation must still pass a vote in the full House of Representatives before going to the Senate.

• March 6, 2026: U.S. officials release a video of an explosion on social media, capturing the destruction of what they said was a drug trafficker’s training camp in rural Ecuador. A subsequent New York Times investigation indicates that the military strike appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound.

• March 10, 2026: During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, lawmakers and witnesses including American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, multiple senators from both parties, and farm advocacy group Farm Action warn of how the war in Iran, and its impact on fertilizer markets, could affect farmers.

• March 18, 2026: Rollins and Kennedy publish the joint opinion piece, “We’re bringing families more healthy foods in a SNAP.”

• March 23, 2026: USDA issues termination notices for 49 of the 50 projects under the Increasing Land, Capital, And Market Access (ILCMA) Program.

• March 27, 2026: Speaking at a White House event celebrating farmers, Trump promises to bolster small-business loan guarantees for farmers, who have been hit hard by his tariffs and rising prices from the war in Iran, and announces a final EPA rule raising the minimum amount of renewable fuels that must be blended into the U.S. fuel supply. Biofuels like ethanol, biodiesel, and renewable diesel are largely made with corn and soybean oil, meaning this rule could boost demand for those crops.

• March 30, 2026: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sends a memo to hospitals requesting they align meals with the updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans by phasing out ultra-processed food and high-sugar foods in favor of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed proteins.

• March 31, 2026: The USDA suspends all grants under the Rural Energy for America Program to comply with an Executive Order issued in July 2025.

Q2 2026

April 2026

• April 1, 2026: The FDA approves Foundayo, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist in tablet form. The approval was issued 50 days after filing, marking the fastest new molecular entity approval since 2002.

• April 3, 2026: The Trump-Vance Administration releases its proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, which begins on October 1, 2026. The proposal includes a 19 percent cut in the USDA budget.

• April 7, 2026: The USDA finalizes regulations that overhaul how the National Environmental Policy Act is implemented, including by reducing and removing procedural requirements, removing climate change and environmental justice considerations, and eliminating opportunities for public comment.

• April 8, 2026: The Trump-Vance Administration nominates Luke Lindberg, Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs at the USDA, for Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). United Nations officials subsequently announce that Secretary-General António Guterres will not appoint a new Executive Director to WFP before he steps down.

• April 10, 2026: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration removes workplace inspection goals related to heat-related hazards, both indoors and outdoors, that may lead to serious illnesses, injuries, or death.

• April 15, 2026: Rollins announces the creation of the new USDA Office of Seafood.

• April 22, 2026: The U.S. House Appropriations Committee releases the Fiscal Year 2027 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill. It cuts the overall funding level by US$1.1 billion compared to 2026.

• April 23, 2026: The USDA announces reorganizations of the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area, aiming to streamline functions and improve operational efficiency. As part of the reorganizations, a substantial portion of the agencies’ workforces will be relocated and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center will be decommissioned.

• April 30, 2026: The House of Representatives votes to pass the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026. The Farm Bill now advances to the Senate.

Is there an update you want to see included that isn’t on the list? Email Danielle at danielle@foodtank.com.

(Danielle Nierenberg is the President of Food Tank and can be reached at danielle@foodtank.com)