Dan Blaustein-Rejto

Grassley: RFK better not listen to Calley Means and criticize pesticides!

RFK: Please. I’m just making his sister, Casey Means, America’s top public health messenger.

United is running ads with Oscar the Grouch, promising to turn trash into “sustainable aviation fuel.” But most SAF won’t be trash. It will be crops, and it will be a disaster. Running 25% of our planes on crops would use 40% of our cropland.

Billions of dollars go to agricultural innovation & development, but too few solutions ever reach the farmers who need them.

Our new report outlines how AIM for Scale could change that, identifying cost-effective innovations and convening orgs to scale them up. thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-...

For all their talk of making America healthier, MAHA’s leaders have proposed little to actually make healthy food more affordable.

Cutting tariffs, funding research, and modernizing regulations would all help make fruits & vegetables cheaper to produce and buy. t.co/47mdlFD06y

Cutting food tariffs in general, however, is still good. Food prices have been up since Trump levied additional tariffs.

But it shouldn't be one-sided. The U.S. should continue to pair tariff reductions with opening new markets for its own farmers.

Importing more Argentinian beef won’t change much—current imports are about equal to *a single day* of U.S. beef consumption.

China may have stopped buying U.S. soy but Congress and the White House are finding ways to use more of it for biofuel, at taxpayers' and drivers' expense.

My latest for @thebti.bsky.social: www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/burning-th...

New evidence that tariffs have increased prices of many foods, especially coffee. www.library.hbs.edu/working-know...

Biofuel Policy Is Failing Consumers and the Climate

$15 billion+ farmer bailout expected this week. They've certainly been hit hard by tariffs & trade disputes. But keep in mind the US is already planning to transfer billions more to farmers via increased biofuel blending mandates and tax credits. thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-...

Why Trump Must Act Now to Secure Global Agricultural Leadership

Reversing the productivity slowdown requires not just funding more agricultural R&D, but also directing it toward productivity-enhancing areas, supporting public-private R&D efforts, and streamlining regulations, as we also lay out in our policy roadmap thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-...

Key drivers of the agricultural productivity slowdown include:
- Low adoption of newer tools like drones
- Decades of underinvestment in public ag R&D
- A shift in R&D priorities away from productivity
- Regulatory bottlenecks stalling innovation

U.S. agricultural productivity has nearly flatlined, a new report shows, going from 2% annual growth in the 1980s to just 0.28%.

That slowdown adds pressure on farmers, food prices, and environmental sustainability. 🧵 t.co/gpROxZL1B6

Converting half of cropland to organic, as many in the MAHA movement wish to see, would require over 30 million more acres—nearly Iowa’s size.

New analysis shows how MAHA's vision for farming would raise costs, environmental impacts, and even health risks. t.co/sMrcoT2B82

Chart showing declining insecticide application rates as adoption of Bt corn and peppers increases. Figure 3-D from Dively, G. P., Venugopal, P. D., Bean, D., Whalen, J., Holmstrom, K., Kuhar, T. P., ... & Hutchison, W. D. (2018). Regional pest suppression associated with widespread Bt maize adoption benefits vegetable growers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(13), 3320-3325.

The leaked MAHA report nods at how precision farming can cut pesticide use. But it ignores one of the biggest opportunities: biotechnology. With research + regulatory reform, biotech crops (like Bt corn) could need far fewer pesticides. agfundernews.com/leaked-maha-...

AAAS figure showing proposed cuts to USDA research agencies from Trump budget and a mix of proposed cuts and increases from Congress.

New MAHA report says to back research on technologies to help farmers reduce pesticide use, NYTimes reports.

It's a great idea. Advances in precision ag, biopesticides & GMOs can cut pesticide use. But Trump & Congress need to stand behind agriculture R&D to make that happen, not cut its funding.

Breakthrough Institute unveils ‘policy roadmap for American agricultural dominance’ “Though the US has historically been a global leader in agricultural biotech, we are falling behind,” says The Breakthrough Institute.

Record ag trade deficits. Slowing productivity.

A new Breakthrough Institute roadmap outlines how to reverse the slide, as AgFunder News reports.

agfundernews.com/breakthrough...

Why Trump Must Act Now to Secure Global Agricultural Leadership

1️⃣ Streamline biotech regulations
2️⃣ Expand trade & market access for U.S. ag
3️⃣ Fund and modernize R&D including “moonshot” projects
4️⃣ Redirect ineffective subsidies such as for biofuels toward productivity-enhancing tech & programs

Read our full roadmap here: thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-...

High corn & soy yields have been making headlines. But what isn't reported is that U.S. agricultural productivity is actually *slowing*.

Our new roadmap outlines how to get back on course. 🧵

The U.S. is falling behind in agricultural innovation, spending half as much as China on R&D.

The result: slowing productivity growth and a record farm trade deficit.

Our new roadmap shows how America can innovate to lead in agriculture again.
🔗 buff.ly/1FOtkRl

Will Climate Change Really Take Away Our Breakfast? A Recent High-Profile Nature Paper Doesn’t Say What Its Authors Say it Does

“Climate change will take away our breakfast” might make headlines.

But the fine print in the paper says otherwise: global crop yields and output are still expected to rise to record highs, just less than they would without climate change.
www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/will-clima...

Agricultural Research Needs a Farmer-First Focus

The Farm Bill title with the biggest ROI? Research.

One of the most shortchanged? Also research.

We need more farmers & politicians to support R&D funding. But for that to happen, research must also do more to support farmers. New essay + report: thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-...

I've been hoping someone would write an article on this: can we actually grow more coffee in the US? When I lived in Corvallis, OR, a cafe was growing some...as in a single plant. But the prospects in Florida are much better

Is Mexican Coke Better? | The Food Lab, Drinks Edition Everyone in the know knows that sugar-sweetened Mexican Coke is superior to corn-syrup-sweetened American Coke, right? But is it possible, however unlikely, that somehow us cult of Mexican Coke lovers...

Mexican Coke, made with cane sugar, loses blind taste tests to American Coke, made with corn syrup.

If people *know* it's cane-sugar Coke, they say it tastes better.

www.seriouseats.com/coke-vs-mexi...

Still shocked that a senior official would endorse biodynamic farming. I don’t know a single serious ag or environmental expert who supports it. Some back organic or regenerative—I disagree with them, but at least there’s debate. But biodynamic? It's based on mysticism, not science.
t.co/4ZNJ5gv4rq

RFK Jr. today: “We need to give off-ramps to farmers so that they can transition to biodynamic agriculture..."

To be biodynamic you must stuff cow horns with manure and crystal dust, bury them, dig up & stir with water for 1 hour in alternating vortexes, all to align the farm with "cosmic forces."

Sustaining the Goose That Lays Golden Eggs: How to Continue Miraculous Biotech Advances The last three administrations have mandated updates and improvements to reduce unjustified regulatory burdens on biotech innovations, but only small steps have been taken where large ones are require...

From celiac-friendly wheat to disease-resistant pigs and drought-tolerant rice, biotech keeps delivering big advances, but only if we don’t block it with budget cuts and regulatory red tape. itif.org/publications...

Senate panel rejects Trump’s proposed cuts to agricultural research House spending committee has taken similar position on 2026 request

A key Senate spending committee has joined its House of Representatives counterpart in rejecting deep cuts that President Donald Trump’s administration proposed for research at the USDA for the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. scim.ag/3InyWcQ

Flyer for webinar July 30 at 1pm ET

How can we fix our food system and stop "eating the earth"? RSVP for this deep dive webinar July 30, hosted by
@thebti.bsky.social with @mikegrunwald.bsky.social, @farmfuture.bsky.social and @jennysplitter.bsky.social: t.co/CobCxQF8l4

Cover crops do important things, including building soil organic matter. But the potential contribution to carbon sequestration is negligible.

I didn't actually make this figure. I would typically use a bar, column or arrow plot in this case. But i also dont think the use of a line chart obscures or misleads here. It just isn't the clearest visualization option