On a 200-acre farm and cattle ranch in Bandera, Texas, Mollie Engelhart grows organic produce, sells raw milk, and writes a daily column about the power of regenerative agriculture. She\u2019s a farmer and a Make America Healthy Again mom who doesn\u2019t like being called a MAHA mom. She prefers to think of herself as \u201cMAHA-aligned.\u201d<\/p>\n
In May, Engelhart opened her ranch to a couple hundred pro-MAHA politicians, activists, and leaders for a two-day event. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was there. Engelhart\u2019s brother, Ryland, is one of the co-founders of the movement.<\/p>\n
Her biggest issue with the MAHA label is what she considers the \u201cblue team or red team\u201d politicization of it. Like many MAHA-aligned supporters, she voted for President Donald Trump in the last election largely because of RFK Jr.\u2019s endorsement and their joint promise to clean up America\u2019s chemical-laden food system. Back then, she had faith Trump would make good on that promise. But in the last year and a half, that faith has frayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that one hundred percent the MAHA movement is very disappointed and disenchanted, and I am not the only one,\u201d said Engelhart. \u201cMAHA voters are homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n
MAHA\u2019s disenchantment with the Trump administration has much to do with its open support of Bayer, the manufacturer of the popular pesticide Roundup, which just won a Supreme Court case over whether the company failed to adequately warn users about the cancer risk of its weedkiller. First, the administration urged the Supreme Court to take up the case. Then, in February, the president signed an executive order that classified glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup as key to national security and called for increased domestic production of the chemical. In March, it was reported that top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency met with Bayer CEO to discuss \u201cregulatory\u201d issues. The following month, the administration sent a lawyer to argue for Bayer in a Supreme Court hearing.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of plaintiffs had sued Bayer alleging that the active ingredient in Roundup has caused cancer and other health issues and that the company failed to follow state laws when it did not include a warning about cancer risk on its label. But now, the court\u2019s ruling means that states cannot mandate more information on the product\u2019s label than what the EPA requires and any such claims against Bayer are preempted.<\/p>\n
Just hours after the decision was released, Trump signed an executive order framed as promoting regenerative agriculture. (Broadly speaking, the term \u201cregenerative agriculture\u201d refers to farming methodologies that focus on soil health and its potential for carbon capture, though there is no federal standard or definition like there is for \u201corganic,\u201d leaving it open to interpretation \u2014 and, in some cases, greenwashing.) The contradictions between the two actions have sparked a new barrage of criticisms from MAHA voters. \u201cIt does seem a little schizophrenic,\u201d said Engelhart. \u201cNone of us can be a one-issue voter anymore\u2026I don\u2019t think that anybody is just going to blindly go and vote for one party or another,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
That sentiment is already showing up in the data, though the picture is far from clear-cut. Polling results from last October found that roughly 51% of MAHA-supporters identified as Republicans, with 59 percent also identifying as Make America Great Again supporters \u2014 the president\u2019s most loyal base. Meanwhile, a survey conducted this spring revealed that 47 percent of self-identified MAHA respondents who voted for Trump believe the administration has not done enough to \u201cMake America Healthy Again.\u201d The same survey found that 28 percent of MAHA voters somewhat or strongly disapprove of the way the administration is handling food and vaccine policy, which may affect turnout in the midterm elections that could decide control of Congress. Limiting pesticide use, however, remains one of the movement\u2019s defining causes, with 72% of MAHA adherents in favor of reducing exposure to harmful chemicals.<\/p>\n
South Dakota farmer Jonathan Lundgren was at the White House on the day that the Supreme Court ruling was announced. Days earlier, he\u2019d been invited to the Rose Garden for a dinner recognizing farmers and was asked to join Trump in the Oval Office for the signing of the regenerative ag executive order. Lundgren raises bees, sheep, poultry, and grows flowers and apples on a 50-acre regenerative farm in Estelline, South Dakota. Like Engelhart, he shirks the political implication of identifying as MAHA, but considers himself aligned with the pro-regenerative ag and anti-pesticide faction of the movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey needed some farmer faces to kind of give the whole thing a spin,\u201d he said. Lundgren called the executive order \u201cmeaningful,\u201d though it\u2019s not lost on him that it doesn\u2019t introduce new funding or regulations. Experts say it doesn\u2019t do much at all. \u201cIt may sound great, but fundamentally, there\u2019s really nothing new or substantive or meaningful in the EO that I can see that actually changes the equation for how the administration treats regenerative agriculture,\u201d said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.<\/p>\n
Inside the Oval Office meeting, Lundgren watched on as Kennedy\u2019s team swiftly mobilized to try and soften the MAHA backlash to the Supreme Court ruling with the president\u2019s executive order, which culminated into an explosive argument between an HHS official and a top farming lobbyist who was in the room. Lundgren himself stopped using Roundup about eight years ago when he noticed that agrochemicals were \u201ccausing more problems than they were solving\u201d on his farm. But he can\u2019t escape the downwind effects of nearby farms that spray it. Right now, he\u2019s watching scores of bees slow down before outright dying and his orchard\u2019s leaves cup from herbicide drift. Then there\u2019s the human toll.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sick this time of year, and it\u2019s a direct result of all of these pesticides being applied. My family is sick. That ain\u2019t right,\u201d Lundgren told Grist. His daughter is grappling with asthma and allergy flare-ups while his farm staff battles recurring headaches and fatigue. \u201cIt\u2019s so intense that we call it in my community \u2018The Spray Flu.\u2019\u201d He says these dual actions by the administration, as well as the EPA\u2019s recent approval of pesticides that contain PFAS, often called \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d have changed how he plans to vote in the midterms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a weird state right now that has never really happened before, where food safety and the health of our children is weighing very heavily on American politics,\u201d said Lundgren. \u201cThis is far broader than the farming community. I think that this is consumers; I think this is parents; I think this is society at-large.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly Ryerson, a leading MAHA mom and co-founder of the farming organization American Regeneration, agrees that, when taken together, the ruling and the order reveal a disconnect. \u201cIt\u2019s inconsistent, to say the least,\u201d said Ryerson. \u201cIf Trump is going to be doing things like the Supreme Court situation, it\u2019s certainly not what anyone voted for\u2026it\u2019ll be really hard to come back from this now.\u201d For Ryerson, a registered independent who voted for Trump, the two actions have shifted how she plans to approach the midterms. \u201cI don\u2019t care if they\u2019re a Republican or Democrat, I\u2019m going to support the candidate that wants to decrease toxic exposures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MAHA voters who helped elect Trump are now disappointed by his support for Bayer’s Roundup and contradictory regenerative ag executive order. Polls show 47% think he hasn’t done enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}