Agriculture might have had a collective “we told you so” moment on Thursday, given its swift response to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s report unveiled earlier that day.
Many farm organizations say the 68-page document, Making Our Children Healthy Again Report, is filled with “fear-based rather than science-based information about pesticides,” positioning that will sow seeds of distrust with the American public.
“This report will stir unjustified fear and confusion among American consumers who live in the country with the safest and most abundant food supply,” says Alexandra Dunn, president and CEO of CropLife America, in a prepared statement.
What The MAHA Report Says
The MAHA report declares: “Today’s children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease … . These preventable trends continue to worsen each year, posing a threat to our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness.”
The crisis, the report adds, can be traced in part to the consolidation of the U.S. food system. On one hand, the report says the progress made in producing food is “largely thanks to the hard work of American farmers, ranchers, and food scientists.”
However, the report adds the rise of ultra-processed foods has corresponded with a pattern of corporatization and consolidation in the U.S. food system. The report lays the blame for many of U.S. children’s health problems on the food they are eating:
The American food system is safe but could be healthier. Most American children’s diets are dominated by ultra-processed foods (UPFs) high in added sugars, chemical additives, and saturated fats, while lacking sufficient intakes of fruits and vegetables. This modern diet has been linked to a range of chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. The excessive consumption of UPFs has led to a depletion of essential micronutrients and dietary fiber, while increasing the consumption of sugars and carbohydrates, which negatively affects overall health.
Nearly 70% of an American child’s calories today comes from ultra-processed foods (increased from zero 100 years ago), many of which are designed to override satiety mechanisms and increase caloric intake.
UPFs make up over 50% of the diets of pregnant and postpartum mothers.
American children’s exposure to environmental chemicals: The cumulative load of thousands of synthetic chemicals that our children are exposed to through the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe may pose risks to their long-term health, including neurodevelopmental and endocrine effects.
Over 40,000 chemicals are registered for use in the U.S. Pesticides, microplastics, and dioxins are commonly found in the blood and urine of American children and pregnant women—some at alarming levels.
Children are particularly vulnerable to chemicals during critical stages of development—in utero, infancy, early childhood, and puberty. Research suggests that for some chemicals, this cumulative load of exposures may be driving higher rates of chronic disease.
According to Courtney Gaine, Ph.D, R.D., Sugar Association president and CEO, added sugars make up around 12% of Americans’ total calories — the lowest level in 40 years and near the lowest level ever recorded at 11% in 1909. The steep decline in added sugars intake over the past 25 years has coincided with rising rates of childhood obesity and chronic disease.
“America’s hardworking sugarbeet and sugarcane farmers agree that chronic diseases are serious and warrant attention and rigorous scientific review to determine their root causes,” Gaine says. “We are confident that continued evaluation of gold-standard evidence will reaffirm what hundreds of years of history have indicated that balanced diets have room for moderate amounts of real sugar, which plays many important functional roles in foods and generally cannot be removed without adding industrial additives like artificial sweeteners that Americans prefer to avoid.”
Calls Go Out For USDA and EPA To Respond
CropLife America’s Dunn is concerned the MAHA report casts doubt on the integrity of EPA’s federal review process for crop protection products.
“Without access to EPA-approved pesticides, significant crop losses would threaten the livelihood of family farms and lead to higher grocery prices and fewer healthy food options for families – the very opposite of what the MAHA Commission seeks to achieve,” Dunn says.
The Agricultural Retailers Association criticizes the anti-science pesticide claims in MAHA Report, saying: “Hidden in the report is a call for consideration of ‘actions that further regulate or restrict crop protection tools beyond risk-based and scientific processes set forth by Congress.’ In other words, the MAHA Commission Report calls for the United States to abandon its gold standard regulatory system and instead embrace a hazard-based precautionary system that includes non-scientific factors, such as that in the European Union.”
To ARA’s point, the MAHA Report calls out atrazine, chlorpyriphos and glyphosate on page 35 of the document as pesticides that are “exposure pathways” for children.
Farmers and more than 300 agriculture organizations have engaged with the Commission to advocate for the preservation of science-based systems and credible data in their evaluations of products and practices essential to food and agriculture – including pesticides such as glyphosate – in recent weeks. However, Zippy Duvall, American Farm Bureau Federation president, says farmers “were excluded from development of the report, despite many requests for a seat at the table.”
The American Soybean Association (ASA) says it strongly rebukes the MAHA report: “[It is] brazenly unscientific and damaging to consumer confidence in America’s safe, reliable food system. Should the [Trump] administration act on the report — which was drafted entirely behind closed doors — it will harm U.S. farmers, increase food costs for consumers, and worsen health outcomes for all Americans. ASA calls on President Trump, who has long been a friend of farmers, to step in and correct the Commission’s deeply misguided report.”
Jon Doggett, former CEO of the National Corn Growers Association and current principal at Camas Creek Consulting, says he would like to hear more perspective from leadership at USDA and EPA on the Report.
“We would hope that Secretary Rollins and [EPA] Administrator Zeldin would have a lot more say on this than what we are seeing so far,” Doggett says.
Doggett expands on his concerns regarding the MAHA Report in a conversation with Host Chip Flory on AgriTalk.
Individuals who want to share their perspectives with the Trump Administration and Congress can submit a letter at https://www.farmervoicesmatter.org.
The Executive Order creating the MAHA Commission directs a second report, providing policy recommendations, be issued within 80 days.
Your next read: Farmers Brace for Impact: What the MAHA Report Could Mean for Agriculture
