USDA staff cuts leave farmers unable to obtain loans and grants

Navajo farming couple, Mary and Zachariah Ben, sought a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for
their dream property last fall in Aztec, New Mexico, but quickly learned that only half a dozen loan specialists remained to process claims for the entire state. Approval of their low-interest loan had been on hold since November’s government shutdown, but after learning about the staffing shortages — which would have held up their loan even longer — they turned to private lenders, reports Linda Qiu for The New York Times.

The Bens are not unique. “Across the country, farmers and rural residents describe struggling to obtain the basic services the Agriculture Department is meant to offer, including loans and grants, technical assistance and financing for housing and utilities,” Qiu reports.

This comes after President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency push for USDA employees to voluntarily resign, to “trim a bloated agency” with too many employees hired in the previous administrations. 

More than 20,000 workers of the 110,000 in the USDA left in the first half of 2025. In the division of the Farm Service Agency, which the Bens hoped would approve their loan, there is no staff left in dozens of counties, which Qiu writes has forced “farmers to travel long distances for assistance or to simply give up.”

In the Rural Development subagency of USDA, nearly 1,700 workers — one-third of its staff — have left under the Trump administration. More than 2,700 workers have left the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a branch helping farmers practice sustainability. Queries wait for weeks, charities that had been approved under Biden are now waiting years for federal funding, and Oui reports that farmers “turn to expensive private consultants for advice.”

It's unclear whether staffing cuts have been a factor in Rural Development cuts, but far fewer loans and grants have been financed in the past year.

Trump’s budget proposed a nearly $5 billion cut to the USDA in the next fiscal year, which Qiu writes will essentially eliminate “programs for beginning farmers, conservation and rural aid.”

What it’s like to be disabled in a rural community as Medicaid cuts hit?

Trillions of dollars will be cut from Medicaid over the next 10 years because of the One Beautiful Bill Act, which will have a major impact on rural families who relied on the program for healthcare. Marsh Naidoo, a physical therapist, advocate and mother of a child with cerebral palsy, sat down with Madeline de Figueiredo of The Daily Yonder to discuss navigating life with her son, Kellen, amid today’s political landscape.

Naidoo, of Dyersburg, Tennessee, said the American healthcare system is extremely complicated to manage with a child who has a disability. “The advocacy part came around when we [realized] that there were so many policies being shaped by legislators who didn’t actually know what it meant to be in the lives of families experiencing disabilities.”

Her community has embraced her son, Naidoo said, but there are still barriers in place. There isn’t always access to efficient healthcare providers when it’s needed, patients are not without the administrative burden of multiple appointments in different locations, and telehealth is not always the answer.

“But the fact is not all rural communities are set up with broadband, nor is internet access always a given,” Naidoo told de Figueiredo. “I also see this in my experience as a healthcare provider. My physical therapy patients would rather come in to see me than communicate through a screen.”

With fiscal cuts for the coming years, Naidoo said families like hers aren’t sure how the loss will affect them. Medicaid is the largest healthcare payer source in the United States, but “Being the richest nation on earth, where 17% of our GDP goes toward healthcare, and not knowing you have healthcare security when you have a child with complex medical needs is frightening.”

Trump deems Digital Equity Act illegal on basis of racially designated grants; new applications will be required

“Rural residents live sicker and die younger on average than people in the rest of the country when they live in counties lacking high-speed internet access and healthcare,” reports Sarah Jane Tribble for KFF Health News. “While 81% of white adults surveyed said they subscribed to broadband at home, only 71% of Black adults and 68% of Hispanic adults said the same.”

Congress allocated $2.75 billion for the Digital Equity Act under the Biden administration in 2021. The money was for skill development under the broader “Internet for All” infrastructure initiative. “The Digital Equity Act lists exactly whom the money should benefit, including low-income households, older people, some incarcerated people, rural Americans, veterans, and members of racial or ethnic minority groups,” Tribble reports.

A few months into Trump’s second term, he called the DEA program “illegal.” This came in the wake of two executive orders dismantling DEI and the 2023 Supreme Court decision invalidating affirmative action.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates sided with the administration in an opinion, stating “that it was unconstitutional for the government to use race or ethnicity as the basis to award money under a program created to expand internet skills and access.”

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration halted DEA grant programs after the decision, heavily impacting the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. The NDIA serves rural and marginalized communities, providing programs where community workers teach internet and technology skills.

With Bates’ decision, federal attorneys said the government would reinstate NDIA competitive grants without racial classifications. A new grant application is expected for release in December, and the NDIA must reapply for the grants they once had.

Farmers, groceries and midterms: Diesel prices hit record-highs, leading to widespread cost increases

Diesel prices in the United States have continuously hit all-time highs in September. As of Sept. 10, diesel costs $5.98 on average, $2.31 more than when the U.S. and Israel began their war on Iran in February, reports Tik Root for Grist.

The surge in diesel prices comes just before November's midterm elections, and as domestic inventories are at their lowest since 1982.

Farmers and truckers who use more diesel in autumnal harvest seasons will be significantly impacted. Though most Americans don’t buy diesel, they still pay for it. The cost of diesel used to cultivate crops and transport those harvests to market is linked to the grocery prices one sees at the store.

“Early on, much of the cost increase gets absorbed along the supply chain through existing freight contracts and retailer margins,” David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, told the Associated Press. “But as contracts reprice and fuel surcharges take hold, more of that cost makes its way to the grocery store.”

This year, the Strait of Hormuz — through which 10% of imported diesel travels — was closed by Iran, which caused prices to surge. The last time gas prices soared this high was when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, which also shut Russia out of the global diesel market. 

Apart from higher prices for farmers and at grocery stores, a challenging winter is likely. Heating oil is essentially diesel, Root writes, and “the millions of U.S. households that still rely on it can expect unprecedented bills.”

Commentary: AI is making food more abstract to restaurant-goers; Wendell Berry said it already was in 1989 essay

Brady Brickner-Wood writes for The New Yorker about how the role of food in our lives is becoming increasingly abstract as restaurants begin to sell from AI-generated menus, presenting never-before-seen “horrors” and “slop.” He compares this new trend to the ways Victorians shot stills of their fruit draped with hunted game, and how advertisements in the 2010s drew in millions for the ‘aesthetic value’ of food rather than its actual quality.

“From Minneapolis to Hexentanzplatz, restaurants are plastering menus and promotional materials with A.I.-generated renditions of shrimp scampi and quiche, chicken nuggets and burritos, Italian subs and bacon, egg, and cheeses,” writes Brickner-Wood. “Anyone with even the mildest case of trypophobia—the sense of revulsion from tiny clusters and holes—should avert their eyes.”

Outrage at the recent “food slop” is a protective instinct, Brickner-Wood explains. AI came for music, art and jobs — food was only a matter of time. Food, however, is a physical necessity sustaining human life, so ‘slop’ offends “the materiality of the living in a way that A.I.’s distortions of words and other inanimate objects somehow do not. These images violate science; they mock life itself.”

Brickner-Wood says this trend of disconnection from the food we eat is a new phenomenon, but Kentucky agrarian champion Wendell Berry proposed in his 1989 essay, "The Pleasures of Eating," that the origins of food for the urban consumer were already abstract. Brickner-Wood simply argues that in the age of AI, food production is abstract to us all, and is no longer real, making it completely disconnected from rurality and the processes of farming. 

As Berry wrote: "When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous." Berry, 92, died on Aug. 31. 

Wood explains that many are choosing AI menus to save on costs — it is expensive to take photos, hire a real artist or sacrifice anything from your small business. According to Berry’s interpretation, though, the industrial society is a surrendering of one’s own freedom; it is a relentless system where choice matters less than artificial cravings.

Farmers enter conservation easements to protect their land for the future

John Boyer repurchased 131 acres of his childhood farm in rural East Jordan, Michigan, and entered it into a conservation easement with the Little Traverse Conservancy, hoping to prevent future development from destroying family land, reports Vivian La for Grist. The future rights of his property will belong to the conservancy.

Rising land values, climate change and a non-farming younger generation is changing farmland around the country, forcing farmers to make tough decisions about what to do with their land. Some are consider whether they should protect it. 

Between 2017 and 2022 farmland in Michigan, “where the majority of operations were family-owned, decreased nearly 470,000 acres … ” In that same timeframe, non-traditional farm ownership increased, with the state seeing an additional 22,000 acres of easement-protected land.

Easements allow farmers to own property, sell it to others down the line or transfer it generationally. The conservancy behind an easement acquires land and protects it, holding rights in case of future development. Farmers still own their land, but the conservancy protects it.

“An easement can be a hard decision for farmers because land is typically their greatest asset, something that can pay for retirement or a college fund,” said Joe Graham, chief financial and operating officer for the Little Traverse Conservancy. “We’re offering them another alternative. We’re offering a way to capture some of the equity and the value they have in that land without having to sell it and see it leave their ownership.”

Pressure to preserve farmland could be especially strong in Northern Michigan, La writes. “Farmers there are already confronting the effects of climate change, including more extreme precipitation, crop disease, and temperature swings, but some local farmers said those impacts are relatively easier to deal with than elsewhere in the country.”

Letting forests burn in a controlled way could be the only way to stop mega-wildfires from continuing

The United States is losing the battle against mega-wildfires, and the only way to reverse course might be through fire itself in the form of prescribed burning, reports Mark Betancourt for Grist. While the nation's wildfires have blazed their way into urban areas in recent seasons, most wildfires burn in the rural West.

"Over the past decade, so-called megafires — characterized not only by their size, often bigger than 100,000 acres, but by their severity, speed, and impact — have become more common. They now account for the bulk of the money spent on firefighting, with the federal government spending 10 times more on suppressing wildfires than it did 30 years ago," Betancourt reports. 

He writes: "This summer’s fire conditions have already been extreme. Nearly 73 percent of the Intermountain West is experiencing severe to exceptional drought, with temperatures breaking records across the country. Add to that last winter’s meager snowpack, which has left forests ready to burn. So far in 2026, the U.S. government has reported more than 53,000 wildfires that have burned over 8 million acres — about 3 million acres more than average over the past decade."

Betancourt reports that many fire scientists say letting smaller fires "run their course" and burn away excess fuel — like dead grasses, underbrush, and small trees — in forests across the West could help prevent future megafires from erupting. "Once the extra fuel is gone," Betancourt reports, "a semblance of balance is restored," which will allow humans to "make friends with natural, lower-severity ground fires by hardening human communities against them and letting them be."

Read more about the practice of prescribed burning, which Betancourt writes has been a part federal policy in some form or fashion since the 1990s, here.

Proposed EPA rule would not require public input before construction of new pollution-causing facilities, most of which are in rural places

A newly proposed federal Environmental Protection Agency plan would eliminate the requirement that states seek public comment before issuing new air pollution permits for AI data centers and other industrial facilities, Matthew Daly reports for The Associated Press. 

If approved, this change would mean the public would have less say in construction of new data centers, which would impact rural areas more than most since the "nation’s largest data centers are being planned in marginalized and vulnerable rural communities," according to Sarah Alexander Melotte of The Daily Yonder. Pew Research found in April 2026 that 67% of planned data centers were in rural areas, with most of those being built in the South and Midwest.

"Critics say the move could thwart local residents from learning about proposed data centers or making their voices heard before projects are approved and construction begins," Daly reports. A former deputy director of EPA’s air quality office told him that "the plan could create 'an unlevel playing field where citizens in one state are kept completely in the dark about new data centers and heavy industrial emissions in their backyards, while neighboring states maintain oversight.'"

The plan could mean that the EPA could fast-track permits without requiring facilities to inform the public about where new facilities are being located. "'Data centers and other industrial sources should not be able to get their air pollution permits in secret,'" Keri Powell, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Daly. SELC represents almost 200 "environmental, health and community groups that filed comments with the EPA opposing the plan."

When the last grocery store in Shoals, Indiana, closed, locals pitched in to start their own

In many rural communities, the only grocery mainstay is a Dollar General. Shoals, Indiana, has been on that list for a year since its last remaining grocery store, JayC, closed. Its 670 residents had begun to "fill the gaps" with limited Dollar General inventory, reported Laura Lane for The Daily Yonder. But one resident aims to change that by opening a locally-owned and operated grocery store in the near future.

Lane reports that Kroger, the parent company of JayC, cited a desire to operate more efficiently as the reason for closing the store, but residents say they were not given notice about the closure until “the last minute.”

Ever since, some residents had to “travel 25 miles to Washington or Bedford, cities with big grocery stores and Walmart Supercenters.” Others cannot drive or order a driving service because those don’t exist in Shoals. 

The Dollar General half a mile east of town carries “processed meats like hot dogs, frozen items, milk and cheese, canned goods, and they have limited produce,” a Shoals resident told Lane. “You can get by, but it’s kind of pricey.”

To combat Shoal’s new food desert, Todd Baker, owner of Bo-Mac’s drive-in restaurant on the town’s eastern edge, set up a “Grocery Grab” in the parking lot of his restaurant every Tuesday evening for 12 weeks. 

"Vendors sold Amish-grown produce, local meats, Prairie Farms dairy products and fresh-baked sourdough bread. People came and stocked up." With the popularity of the parking-lot grocery, Baker and local officials are now collaborating to discuss the possibility of opening a small grocery store.

Appalachia sees highest rate of Black Lung Disease in 50 years from silica dust

Appalachia is facing its highest rates of Black Lung Disease since 1978, reports Howard Burkes for The
Daily Yonder (republished from Public Health Watch). The statistics come from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, just as courts stall protections for coal miners.

“If you imagine one out of every three school teachers were getting an incurable lung disease because of something they were exposed to at work, the whole country would put their hands up screaming and stop whatever this exposure was immediately,” said Dr. Drew Harris, a medical director at Virginia’s Stone Mountain black lung clinics, which sees the most patients for black lung care and legal help in the country. “[But] this is largely impacting rural Appalachian folks that don’t have a voice, that don’t have a country to unite behind them.”

A troubling reality is that younger coal miners are falling ill because as Appalachia’s thickest coal seams were mined out, companies looked to smaller seams, which require digging through more rock that tends to be rich in silica. Mining through silica produces highly toxic dust that poses health risks to miners.

“Excessive inhalation of coal mine dust is the sole cause of [black lung] in coal miners,” the new NIOSH research letter said. “Substantial evidence shows that exposure to the respirable crystalline silica component of coal mine dust plays an important role in contemporary disease patterns.”

Even as mining companies comply with silica overexposure regulations 90-97% of the time, any exposure can lead to an influx of cases and lives affected. Stricter regulations for exposure have been suggested by NIOSH since 1974, but no bipartisan action had taken place. 

The Biden administration made exposure limits twice as restrictive and incorporated noncompliance fines in 2024. In response, mining companies sued and federal courts responded. “The Trump administration did not oppose the delay, announcing it too would put enforcement on hold.”

Midwest Native communities oppose newly issued permit for updates on oil and gas line under waterways

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit plan to update an older segment of a pipeline that carries crude oil and natural gas 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario. The plan faces opposition from indigenous nations in Michigan, whose traditions and burial grounds are in the path of the Straits of Mackinac, reports Vivian La for Grist. 

Owner of the pipeline, Enbridge Energy, “wants to replace a 4-mile segment that lies on the bottom of the ecologically sensitive straits with a new one, buried in a tunnel under the lakebed.” The permit was fast-tracked under an executive order from President Donald Trump last year.

The Michigan native nations affected by the pipeline believe reconstruction would breach their treaty rights, established in the 1836 Treaty of Washington. They  “hold treaty rights to fish and hunt in these waters, rights that predate Michigan’s statehood.

The Army Corps said their plan would cause minimal impacts on the waterway or surrounding lands, and that it would  “reduce the environmental risks associated with the pipeline, such as leaks caused by a direct hit from a boat’s anchor.”

But La reports that previously collected data from the Army Corps said tunnel construction would have adverse impacts on wetlands, vegetation, land use and cultural resources. 

Building of the pipeline has been caught up in state legislation. The Michigan Supreme Court sent permit approval back to regulators for more review after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer sought to shut down the pipeline last year. 

Trump announces temporary pause on beef import tariffs, faces opposition from ranchers

The Trump administration announced a “deal” allowing imports of up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to enter the U.S. market with relaxed tariffs. The announcement came on Aug. 21, and states that, “... foreign beef exporters will provide a 25% discount on beef exports ‘to be passed along to American consumers’ in exchange for tariff relief” for 90 days, reports Emily Chang and Benjamin Siegel for ABC News. 

Ranchers and several Republican lawmakers from farm states oppose the plan. Chang and Siegel report Republican Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy said “... this action will make it more difficult for American ranchers to rebuild our herd and bring prices down for the American people.” CEO of the National Cattleman’s Beef Association Colin Woodall also advocates against Trump’s deal, saying it "sacrifices long-term stability for short-term messaging.”

Many customers have expressed concern over rising grocery prices. Beef and veal prices soared 9.4% in the last month as compared to last year. The U.S. cattle supply has reached a 75-year low, and domestic farmers are struggling with high fertilizer and diesel costs amid ongoing supply issues caused by the Iran war. 

Chang and Siegel report that the White House official who confirmed the 25% discount also told ABC News “that the president will formally sign an executive order on the matter within the next two weeks.”

The White House official told ABC News the administration is working with domestic ranchers to expand production. Trump wrote in a social media post that “This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again.” 

Conference to celebrate International Year of the Woman Farmer and reveal results of women in agriculture study

The Women in Agribusiness Summit will convene from Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans to celebrate 2026 as the

International Year of the Woman Farmer. Farm Bureau News reports that the Summit’s goal for its 15th year is to provide space for individuals in all types of rural communities to connect and collaborate with one another. 

This year, the WIA Summit will feature “panel discussions offering insights on ag markets, sustainability, risk management and several other topics, as well as workshops focused on leadership development and workplace transformation.” 

One panel in particular will share results of an American Farm Bureau Federation study about women in agriculture. The panel is led by Jessica Cabrera, managing director of member engagement at the American Farm Bureau Federation, and features Juliana Farah, president of the Agricultural Sowing Commission of the Sao Paulo State Agriculture and Livestock Federation, and Payal Pathak, director of Athena Tradewinds PVT LTD. 

"The study … identifies the essential roles women play in building a sustainable future for agriculture as well as opportunities for growth, improvement and additional support.” More than 4,000 women from all 50 U.S. states and territories were interviewed. 

Key findings from the study are: 

• Women in agriculture have strong confidence in their ability to balance farm work and family responsibilities

• 90% of women surveyed are interested in taking on leadership roles now or in the near future

• Most respondents have a high level of confidence in their ability to represent agriculture in public or professional settings 

• 9 out of 10 women would feel confident speaking at community meetings about agriculture

In addition, “the study also identifies five key areas where the agriculture sector could increase support: time and caregiving; skill development; leadership involvement; financial future; and overall wellbeing.”

• 52% of all respondents reported interest in training related to farm succession or ownership transition

• 44% are interested in gaining equipment or technical skills training

• Nearly 6 in 10 respondents expressed interest in business and financial management training

• 45% of respondents expressed interest in policy or civic engagement training

• 42% expressed interest in community involvement or advocacy training

Walmart to pay $50 million for its role in bolstering the opioid crisis

The Justice Department announced this week that Walmart must pay $50 million to resolve claims “that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious prescriptions for opioids,” reports Ishani Desai for The New York Times. 

In 2020, government lawyers alleged that Walmart, the biggest retailer in the country and a mainstay in many rural communities, failed to detect and report ‘shady’ orders, thus fueling the opioid crisis — a crisis that disproportionately impacts rural communities. 

“Over an approximately four-year period, a time during which Walmart shipped an estimated 37.5 million controlled-substance orders to its pharmacies, it reported only 204 suspicious orders to D.E.A. — in other words, almost none,” Desai reports. 

The federal suit cited an instance in which an employee admitted to filling illegitimate and lethal doses of an opioid, and another in Florida of a doctor for whom Walmart filled over 3,500 controlled prescriptions. Workers who flagged such practices “were ignored in part to drive sales.” 

The settlement was announced as a government effort “to hold companies accountable for what it says were their roles in the opioid epidemic.” A Walmart spokesperson said the company was pleased to resolve the case. 

United Houma Nation credits 'good journalism' as reason for $56.5 million federal grant award

The United Houma Nation in South Louisiana is crediting "good journalism" for a newly awarded $56.5 million grant it received from the U.S. Department of Commerce and NOAA to help implement a climate "disaster and resilience plan," reports Ottavia Spaggiari of The Margin, a digital-only nonprofit news outlet that covers climate change's impacts on marginalized communities. 

"The funding will assist six hurricane-prone parishes in South Louisiana, including Lafourche Parish, home to the United Houma Nation," Spaggiari reports, writing that the grant comes after the outlet's "in-depth reporting on the United Houma Nation's decades-long fight for federal recognition and how that status gap heightened its climate exposure."

The Margin’s original reporting in 2022 focused on the impacts of Hurricane Ida in August 2021. "The storm left 26 dead, 14,000 displaced, and 75% of the buildings damaged or destroyed in Lafourche Parish, one of the hardest-hit areas and one of the parishes with the highest number of Tribal citizens," Spaggiari reports. 

Tribal citizen Sherry Parfait told Spaggiari: ''That kind of journalism is key to telling the story of the place.'" Spaggiari continues: "[Parfait] explains that deep narrative journalism can help people get a comprehensive understanding of the toll coastal erosion is taking on Tribal communities like the one she grew up in, where hurricanes and climate change have forced dozens of Tribal members to leave."

The grant will help the United Houma Nation create plans for climate mitigation, disaster preparedness and recovery best practices. It will also help to "develop community-led migration strategies" so tribal members can stay on their ancestral homelands after disaster strikes. 

Wendell Berry, champion of natural places and agrarian life, has died at 92

Wendell Berry, Kentucky poet, novelist, essayist and farmer, died at his home in Henry County on
Monday, Aug. 31. He was a naturalist, staunchly advocating for and supporting returning land to its natural state, and encouraged an off-grid lifestyle that would do as little harm to the natural world as possible. He was also a fierce advocate for rural places. 

"Mr. Berry wrote more than 50 volumes of poetry, fiction and argument that championed small family farms, the environment, local foods and interdependent communities, and railed against chemicals, most technologies, agribusiness and distant government," reports Robert D. McFadden for The New York Times.

McFadden continues: "He never became a household name but, as his oeuvre grew over a half-century, advocates of agrarian and ecological causes embraced his work as an eloquent, if sometimes didactic, expression of their own hopes. Some critics likened his landed exhortations to those of Thoreau or Thomas Jefferson."

He studied English at the University of Kentucky, writing at Stanford and taught at New York University for two years before being called back to his Henry County, Ky., homeplace, "an old two-room cabin on the Kentucky River at Port Royal... where his ancestors had lived since 1803," McFadden writes. 

"Returning to his home as a place to write for the rest of his life was a way to insure, to himself, that he would always be bound by the truth, Mr. Berry said in a phone interview in 2018 ...," McFadden writes. "The landscape was there to check me if I was wrong. I could never go away and make up stuff at cocktail parties about the backwoods of Kentucky," Berry said during the interview. "I worked with people here in all walks of life and learned from them. It’s been a very rich experience.”

Oil and gas drilling could increase in Alaska's wilderness under proposed exclusions to environmental laws

Alaska's wild places might be under threat -- with little oversight -- after a move by the Trump
administration to fast-track oil drilling in the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve. 

Adam Federman reports for High Country News that the administration is issuing a "categorical exclusion" in the National Environmental Policy Act that would allow "new winter exploration and drilling to move forward without any kind of environmental review" by federal agencies or input from the public.  

Drilling in the protected areas has been "well-documented" to heavily disturb wildlife and altar the landscape in harmful ways, Federman writes, and yet the exclusion "could be released as early as this week." 

There is legal basis for seeking such exclusions, but applying it to a delicate ecosystem is uncommon. Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with environmental advocacy group Earthjustice told Federman the exclusions are usually applied where the changes caused by industry won't threaten the natural environment. Lieb said the effects of what's being proposed in Alaska are "well-documented" and are exactly the "kind of actions that should be scrutinized by the land-management agency."

The exclusion is in line with other rules re-written by the Trump administration to make drilling easier in Alaska's protected wilderness, some of which are already affecting local tribal communities, who have been "inundated with new drilling activity," as a result, Federman reports. Such operations also pose risks to workers, and increase the likelihood of oil spills. 

New solar microgrids will help western North Carolina be more prepared for Helene-like disasters

It has been almost two years since Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, causing unprecedented flooding and leaving a large swath of destruction in its wake. Many communities were left in the dark in the aftermath because of blackouts that couldn't be remedied until power lines could be repaired. But a new statewide microgrid solar project aims to prevent such a situation from happening in the future. 

"The state Department of Environmental Quality invested $5 million in 26 microgrid projects last August, in partnership with a coalition of nonprofits dedicated to the expansion of sustainable energy. The goal is to build 24 stationary microgrids and two mobile ones, with five sites announced in June," reports Katie Myers reported for Grist (republished by Next City). 

Solar microgrids can power one or more buildings and can store energy to keep the power on "for days without sunshine," Myers writes. Stationary systems remain in one place, and power "essential infrastructure." Myers writes that one such system powers the entire town of Hot Springs, N.C., and "kept the lights on during Helene." 

The Foothills Project, a nonprofit bringing microgrids to western North Carolina, uses what they call "beehives" -- small, portable systems with batteries that can work in sunny or cloudy conditions. They provide up to 100 kWhs of energy, and could power a building for 10 hours. Myers reports that "Foothills Project is prioritizing installing them outside food banks, fire stations, community centers, and libraries," because they "can store supplies and serve as a hub of community operations during a disaster."

Two solar "beehives" will be ready for use in 2027, and installations at five stationary sites began this summer. 

Data centers threaten Texas' farmland, echoing similar battles across U.S. rural areas

Texas agriculture is facing off against an increasingly heard-about foe: data centers. Construction of the facilities requires large swaths of cheap, open, flat land, and rural Texas has it in spades. Nearly 250 data centers are slated to be built in the state, reports Jayme Lozano Carver for The Texas Tribune.

The story connects with dozens of others from around the country's rural areas, where communities are facing similar pressure from data center developers. Carver writes that a recent Pew Research Center study  found that 67% of data centers nationwide are in rural areas. The tax revenue promised to local governments by such development is increasingly difficult to pass up for many that are struggling to keep essential services going with a declining tax base.

"Texas agriculture has been an illustrious behemoth for decades, generating more than $963 billion in total economic output and driving nearly $15 billion in exports annually. Texas also has more farmland than any other state — 126 million acres as of 2021," Carver writes. Data center development is adding stress to other issues Texas farmers have faced in recent years, such as rising costs of growing crops, drought, and loss of croplands. 

“They’re building them on our most valuable, most fertile farmland,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Carver. “Once our farmland is gone and paved over, we’ll never farm it again.”