Farmers and environmental groups have sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture after the agency removed from its website numerous online tools, data sets and services related to climate change.
Wes Gillingham is a New York farmer and board president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, which is one of the groups suing the USDA for what the lawsuit calls an "unlawful purge" of climate information.
Gillingham told Newsweek that many farmers rely on the USDA site for information on climate-smart farming practices and technical assistance for grants and loans designed to help farmers adapt to climate impacts such as drought, floods and changes in growing seasons.
"This isn't a political agenda," Gillingham said. "We're trying to feed the country, and to take science and information and potential funding resources away from farmers is ludicrous."
The nonprofit environmental group Earthjustice filed a suit Monday on behalf of the organic farming association and two environmental organizations, the Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said that following an executive order by President Donald Trump reversing climate policies, the USDA began removing climate-related interactive tools, data sets, guides and policy statements.
"[The] USDA took them down without any public notice or explanation, in violation of multiple federal laws," Stein told Newsweek. Stein said applicable laws include the federal Freedom of Information Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act.
Those laws require public disclosure of many records and policy statements and include provisions for public notice before making major revisions to agency websites, Stein said.
A spokesperson for the USDA declined to comment on record and instead referred questions to the Department of Justice, which also declined comment.
Stein said climate researchers and public interest groups depend on tools such as the U.S. Forest Service's climate-risk viewer, one of the climate sites that was taken down by the USDA.
Other climate-related sections that have been removed from public view, according to the lawsuit, include agriculture programs that had been funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which Stein said are "in the crosshairs" of the Trump administration.
Much of the climate-related spending under the IRA was frozen by an executive order, which is also the subject of legal challenges. Stein said the removal of the USDA information hampers the ability of farming groups to pursue those funding sources.
"At precisely this moment when farmers are fighting for funds that they are owed that have been illegally frozen, the Trump administration is purging the public record of information about those programs," he said.
Gillingham said he has been in touch with other farmers who have made business decisions based in part on USDA grant funding, which is now frozen.
"There's a lot of farmers over the barrel," he said.
The region where he farms in New York's Catskills has been severely impacted by climate-driven extreme weather, Gillingham said. Repeated floods washed away topsoil, eroded cropland and damaged his tractors, irrigation equipment and fencing, he said.
"Farmers are witnessing extreme weather events that never happened before, so we're all having to adapt to the new reality," he said. In addition to certifying farmers for organic practices, he said, the organization operates an educational program that makes frequent use of USDA data and guides, including assistance for climate-smart growing.
"We're trying to deal with the reality of climate change and, you know, it's not a hoax," Gillingham said. "It's real, it's here and taking it off a website isn't going to fix anything, it's only going to make it worse."
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