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Friday, Jun 26
Save US Farms
The Daily Dirt · 2026-06-22-morning

The Daily Dirt — Morning Edition

Overnight June 21–22: Congress moves on regional food programs, New York dairy workers rally for overtime parity, paraquat stays legal despite an EU ban, and more.

The bottom line
  • A bipartisan Senate bill introduced June 18 — the American Food Supply Chain Resiliency Act — would restore USDA regional food programs gutted in 2024–2025, rebuilding infrastructure small and midsize farms need to plug into supply chains outside the commodity pipeline.
  • New York dairy workers rallied June 15 behind legislation to fight exploitation on state farms — seven years after the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act gave farmworkers organizing rights, the overtime threshold still sits at 60 hours/week vs. 40 for every other worker in the state.
  • Paraquat, an herbicide the European Union banned in 2007 due to links to Parkinson's disease and childhood leukemia, remains EPA-registered and widely applied on US row crops and orchards — with lawsuits mounting and state-level ban campaigns gaining ground.
  • AI data centers and utility-scale solar developments are competing with farming for Midwestern cropland, driving up lease rates and land prices in ways that favor absentee capital over working farmers trying to hold acreage.
  • New World Screwworm, a livestock parasite eradicated from the US decades ago, continues to generate alarm among cattle ranchers on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border as the fly moves northward through Central America.
  • An EWG analysis from June 2026 finds industrial livestock operations remain a major driver of the 17–36 foodborne illness outbreaks federal investigators track each week, with nearly 10 million cases of foodborne illness recorded in the most recent complete data year.

The window from the evening of June 21 into the early hours of June 22 was a busy stretch on the farm beat. Congress signaled a readiness to push back on federal cuts to local food infrastructure. Farmworkers in New York pressed for labor rights that other workers have held for decades. And a pair of stories on pesticides and parasites underscored that the physical conditions of farming — what gets sprayed, what crosses the border — remain as contested as the financial ones.

Congress vs. USDA on Regional Food

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) led a bipartisan group in introducing the American Food Supply Chain Resiliency Act on June 18. The bill targets the USDA programs — local food promotion grants, regional food business centers, farmers market investment — that were cut or curtailed in 2024 and 2025. These aren’t fringe programs: they’re the connective tissue that lets small diversified farms reach buyers outside the commodity pipeline. For operations that can’t scale to commodity size — which is most farms by count — they are the difference between a viable market and no market at all.

The bipartisan backing matters. Farm country doesn’t split cleanly on local food infrastructure, and constituent pressure appears to be landing with enough Republican members to make this viable in a farm bill markup. Whether it survives is a different question.

Dairy Workers in Albany

Seven years after New York enacted the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act — the first law in the state’s history extending organizing rights to agricultural workers — dairy workers are still clocking out under different overtime rules than everyone else. The Worker Justice Center of New York and farmworker organizers including Alianza Agricola have documented the conditions: long hours, employer-controlled housing, geographic isolation. On June 15, workers rallied behind new legislation to strengthen protections. The specific fight: closing the gap between the current 60-hour overtime threshold for farmworkers and the 40-hour standard that has applied to every other worker in New York for decades.

Paraquat Still Being Sprayed

The EU banned paraquat in 2007. The US hasn’t. The herbicide, linked to Parkinson’s disease in research reviewed by EWG and cited in a growing body of litigation, remains EPA-registered and widely applied on US row-crop fields and orchards. Farmworkers — who absorb the most direct exposure — bear the sharpest end of that regulatory gap.

What to Watch

  • Farm bill markup: The Senate Agriculture Committee’s version will set funding levels for regional food programs for the next five years. The Schiff bill’s bipartisan backing is a signal, not a guarantee.
  • NY farmworker overtime legislation: How far the current bill advances in Albany will test whether the state’s landmark 2019 protections are the floor or the ceiling.
  • Screwworm border situation: USDA suspended livestock imports from Mexico earlier this year. Cattle ranchers are watching whether the fly establishes a foothold north of the border — the economic stakes for the beef sector are significant.

— Save US Farms Desk

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