# Department of Agriculture The **Department of Agriculture (USDA)** is far broader than its name suggests. Founded in 1862 under Lincoln (the "People's Department"), it runs farm support and crop insurance, the U.S. Forest Service (193 million acres of national forest), food safety inspection, agricultural research, rural development — and, by budget, its largest single function: **nutrition assistance**, including SNAP (food stamps), which serves roughly 40 million Americans. The capture lens: USDA is contested on two fronts. The **nutrition programs** are a recurring target for work requirements and benefit cuts in the [[Project 2025]] agenda, which would shrink SNAP and tighten eligibility. Separately, the department has become a node in the **data-consolidation** story — the April 2026 [[Palantir USDA One Farmer One File Contract]] ("One Farmer, One File") tasks [[Palantir]] with merging farmer data and program-delivery systems across the department, part of the broader pattern of government data centralization that runs through the second-term agenda. ## Biosecurity retreat: APHIS and the screwworm (2025–2026) USDA's **Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service** — [[APHIS]] — is the department's front line against animal disease and invasive pests. In 2025, Trump-administration staffing cuts dropped APHIS headcount by **25%**, and **more than half of the agency's area veterinarians retired or resigned**. The timing was consequential: the **New World screwworm**, a flesh-eating parasitic maggot long eradicated from the U.S., spread north through Central America and into the U.S., with conservation cameras documenting infestations in deer, jaguars, peccaries, and porcupines. Secretary [[Brooke Rollins]] repeatedly blamed former president [[Joe Biden]] for the screwworm's arrival. But three former USDA officials told *Politico* (June 2026) that Trump-administration officials had **held up funding** for a facility crucial to slowing the pest's spread and **delayed a $100 million research initiative** to combat it. The episode parallels the [[CDC]] FoodNet surveillance rollback: a documented reduction in the government's capacity to detect and contain a biological threat, followed by the threat materializing. ## The Salmonella framework withdrawal (April 2025) On **April 24, 2025** the Food Safety and Inspection Service withdrew the *Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products*, a rule proposed in August 2024 that would have declared Salmonella an adulterant in raw poultry above 10 CFU per mL or gram and at any detectable level for five serotypes of concern — meaning contaminated chicken and turkey could no longer be shipped. The stated reason was that "additional consideration is needed in light of the feedback received during the public comment period." The National Chicken Council had opposed the rule on food-waste and price grounds; Consumer Reports, STOP Foodborne Illness, and CSPI called the withdrawal a decision to keep shipping product that tests positive. Salmonella causes roughly 26,000 illnesses and 420 deaths a year in the U.S. The withdrawal was published in the [[Federal Register]] on April 25, 2025, and belongs with the [[CDC]] FoodNet rollback and the screwworm funding delay above as a third instance of the department reducing its own capacity against a biological threat — and, because the beneficiary is a regulated industry, on the [[Deregulation]] and [[Canceled Corporate Enforcement]] ledgers. ## See Also - [[Palantir USDA One Farmer One File Contract]] - [[Project 2025]] - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Federal Agencies]] - [[Soil and Agriculture]] — soil loss, agribusiness power and the Farm Bill ## SNAP and the 2026 fraud-enforcement turn USDA's Food and Nutrition Service administers [[SNAP]] — $95.7B in FY2025 benefits to roughly 37 million people, the department's largest single outlay and the political core of budget function 600. In 2026 the department became the showcase venue for federal fraud enforcement: USDA referrals fed small-dollar benefit prosecutions such as [[United States v. Soriano]], where charged conduct totaled **$277**, during a period when white-collar prosecutions hit a modern low. Analysis at [[Fraud Enforcement Inversion]]. Over the same period Secretary [[Brooke Rollins]] accepted six-figure corporate contributions — from USDA contractors and from antitrust defendants adverse to the [[Department of Justice]] and the [[FTC]] — routed through the [[National Forest Foundation]] into a fund for her departmental priorities. See [[USDA Secretary's Priorities Fund]].