by Frida Garzagrist
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Shortly after President Donald Trump took office last January, USDA employees were reportedly ordered to plant the flag. Delete any webpage That mentions climate change – including resources used by farmers to prepare for extreme weather. In response, a group of environmental and agricultural nonprofits sued the agency for the loss of critical information. In May, days before a scheduled hearing, the USDA announced that it will restore its climate webpages. At the time, “we basically won,” said Peter Lehner, managing attorney at EarthJustice, the nonprofit law firm representing the plaintiffs. But negotiations for a legal settlement continued.
Last week, the AG Department finally settled the lawsuit, agreeing to share the datasets used to power its Climate Risk Viewer and other tools. Although most of the webpages in question have already been restored, Lehner added, the plaintiffs wanted to ensure that access remained public — a priority that prolonged the negotiations.
The Department of Agriculture agreed to keep it as part of the settlement Climate Risk Viewer — which contains more than 140 layers and includes wildfire hazard maps — is online, at least until the plaintiffs get the underlying raw data. That way, Lehner told Grist, if these webpages are taken down at some point in the future, plaintiffs — such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit — will be able to recreate the climate risk maps.
This is important because the settlement does not guarantee that USDA will maintain these digital resources indefinitely “The government should be able to change their website,” Lehner said. “But they have to do it in certain ways. And if it’s important information, they have to give public notice and they have to do it carefully.” (The Justice Department, which represented the USDA in the case, declined to comment on the settlement.)
in Initial complaintEarthjustice alleged that the USDA’s purge of webpages referring to climate change violated several federal laws — including the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, which requires federal agencies to provide adequate notice before changing public access to information tools and Freedom of Information Acts.
Of particular interest to one of the plaintiffs — the Northeast Organic Agriculture Association of New York, or NOFA — was a webpage about loans for climate-smart conservation practices. Wes Gillingham, head of the NOFA board, told Grist that the agency directs many farmers to these resources to help with the financial costs of implementing more sustainable growing practices.
However, the settlement doesn’t mean farmers are getting everything they need from the USDA. Gillingham, himself a farmer, added that he is not yet sure what loan programs are available for farmers under the second Trump administration. “Whether the loan program is live or not is a huge question,” he said.
The plight highlights the financial uncertainty of many agricultural producers in the United States, as the federal government cuts funding programs for farmers. And it illustrates the work that farming communities put in to protect their livelihoods Gillingham noted that he is currently concerned about future farm bills that could fund conservation practices, such as helping farmers protect soil health.
Lehner agreed that farmers are struggling under the Trump administration and that, in a way, has given them leverage in their case.
“Frankly, I think that we were representing farmers and others who were saying, ‘Look, this is hurting us. We’re trying to deal with climate change. We’re trying to deal with extreme weather and you’re cutting the leg out from under us,’ that didn’t make them look very good,” he said. “It makes them, in my view, look stupid and bad.”
Editor’s Note: Advertiser with Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council GRIST. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
This article originally appeared on grist A https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/after-a-lawsuit-usda-agrees-to-share-climate-risk-data-with-farmers/.
GRIST is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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This is the story Originally published by grist.
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Photo credit: splash
