The opaque realm of federal food and agriculture policy impacts all of us, from the farmers who grow our food to the folks who help get it to our tables. Today, host Douglas Haynes welcomes investigative reporter, Lisa Held, back to the show. She says that food policy is important all the time because it is never just one thing. It affects everything from rural communities and the environment to hunger, wellbeing, and immigration.

Held works for Civil Eats, an award winning news site that is dedicated to critical thinking about the American food system They produce the Food Policy Tracker that documents changes made by the president, federal agencies, and Congress. Held has been recently reporting on the cuts to the American food system brought on by the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which makes huge investments in ICE but cuts programs like SNAP. Not only will people become ineligible for SNAP benefits due to changes to the program, but the bill puts in motion a shift of responsibility from the federal government to the states.

These cuts are pernicious because they compound over time and hurt the most vulnerable. And conservative politicians, like Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, defend cuts to common sense programs like local farm to school programs like those in Wisconsin we covered on this show in April. The federal government is also cutting funds to any program with a DEI component, and Black and Indigenous owned farms are being targeted. Held and Haynes also discuss cuts to conservation programs and RFK’s backtracking on pesticide regulation. 

Lisa Held is Civil Eats’ senior staff reporter and contributing editor. Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

Featured image of school bulletin board featuring a farm to school event via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). 

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