A Better Candidate for the Wood-Chipper

My good advice that Elon just didn't take

I know, I know, I said I was going to start emitting here regularly. I kinda lied. Life got in the way. But I did want to share my latest NYT piece, in which I suggest Elon Musk and his DOGE do-boys check out the waste and bloat at the US Department of Agriculture. Maybe we shouldn’t be redistributing taxpayer dollars to “farmers” who live in Palm Beach mansions down the street from Mar-a-Lago. Maybe our “farm safety net” that’s supposed to bail out farmers during down years shouldn’t keep bailing out some of them for 39 CONSECUTIVE YEARS. Maybe the feds shouldn’t be paying a crop insurance agent $3 million for writing a single policy.

Click here to read more good advice Elon just didn't take.

USDA is pretty ridiculous. Do we really need a department with 100,000 employees to serve a nation with only 2 million farmers? Does it really need four times as many offices as the Social Security Administration? Why do rural Americans need USDA to run rural health programs, rural energy programs, rural housing programs, and basically an entire parallel federal government for rural America? How come President Trump gave farmers a $28 billion bailout to offset the damages caused by his first-term tariffs, but didn’t show the same courtesy to manufacturers or retailers?

Because of the farm lobby, that’s why. America was once an agrarian nation, but even though only 1 percent of Americans still farm, it’s still an article of faith in Washington that cultivators of the soil are heartland heroes entitled to financial support from the other 99 percent of Americans. That’s why federal agricultural policies, if you’ll excuse my technical jargon, are totally bonkers.

Of course, my main interest in agriculture has less to do with its lavish subsidies than with its environmental destruction. It’s responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s the world’s leading driver of deforestation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and water shortages. It’s eating the earth.

Apropos of nothing, have I mentioned that my new food and climate book, We Are Eating the Earth, is coming out July 1? I worked on it for a very long time and I’m very proud of it. If you’re a journalist who wants to cover it or an influencer who wants to promote it or somebody who wants to invite me to blab about it for an audience of eager book-buyers, email me and Simon & Schuster can get you an advance copy!

You can also click here to pre-order it for your friends!

I know I said I was going to blog here about a novel I read, but it turns out I’m going to use those thoughts for another freelance piece. Which I’ll post here soon! I do plan to start emitting here, too, and I hope you’ll tell your friends to subscribe, but I’ll try not to make any more dumb hasty promises.