The loss of topsoil on American farms is threatening the country’s food supply and demands a new commitment to conservation, Trump administration officials said Tuesday.
At a policy roundtable at the Capitol, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted farm conservation as a key part of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and pointed to the recently enacted tax cut and spending law as a big step in keeping the country’s best farmland from eroding away.
“Our farms today are in crisis,” Kennedy said, pointing to challenges from extreme weather to rising operational costs hitting farmers. Farms typically lose money seven out of every 10 years, he said — and farm economists say conservation practices often suffer when farmers are pinched.
Cutting back on conservation would spell trouble for agriculture — and in turn Americans’ health — Kennedy said, as agronomists fear the country could lose much of its productive topsoil in the coming decades to flood, drought and practices that kill off microbes that make the ground favorable for crops.
