Despite a federal funding freeze, a newly proposed bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate could enhance loan programs for farmers.

Backers say in Pennsylvania, it would address a key barrier to farmland ownership and access to capital.

Pennsylvania's $83 billion ag economy includes more than 50,000 farms.

Amanda Koehler - the land policy associate director at the National Young Farmers Coalition - said the legislation would create a U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program, for pre-approved direct farm ownership loans.

"By allowing a pre-approval program for direct farm ownership loans," said Koehler, "folks will have greater access to credit - and can close a deal quicker, meaning that their access to owning farmland will be greater."

Koehler said right now, it can take six months to process a direct farm ownership loan, even after a purchase agreement has been signed.

She said she believes the program would still be useful, despite federal workforce and staffing challenges at the USDA.

Small farms play a vital role in local economies and food systems.

Jane Kaminski, who co-owns John-Paul's Farm in Indiana County, said hers is an organic farm.

She noted that young or beginning farmers face challenges getting land, and she said she's concerned about the inequities that keep some from starting or expanding their business.

"So I think it's really important that we have policies in place that help young and beginning and small farmers access land," said Kaminski, "so that they can be a part of our agricultural system."

Kaminski said it's also important to ensure the future of small, sustainable farm operations.

The large, industrial farms are usually centered around commodities, whereas small farms like hers focus on supporting their local community.




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By Grey Moran for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Mississippi News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

As avian flu decimated poultry flocks, two major U.S. egg producers - Vital Farms and Cal-Maine - have seen their profits and stock values soar. Between February 2024 and February 2025, Vital Farms saw its share value spike by 157.4 percent, while Cal-Maine observed an 87.4 percent uptick. These climbing stocks coincided with sky-high egg prices, often attributed to the shrinking egg supply, leaving consumers pinched.

The financial strain faced by consumers stands in sharp contrast to the financial windfalls of major egg companies - and their investors - over the course of the avian flu outbreak in the U.S. that began in early 2022. This stark disparity is emblematic of the often inverse relationship between consumer and corporate financial pressures during economic crises.

"When eggs are short, everybody wants in," Russell Diez-Canseco, the CEO of the egg producer Vital Farms, said on a call with investors in 2023, following a quarter of record-breaking revenue, as average egg prices soared across the U.S.

Vital Farms' top institutional investors - BlackRock, Wellington Management Company, Vanguard Group, Amazon, and Pictet Asset Management, according to Nasdaq - have also benefited from the company's soaring stocks over the course of avian flu. Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, may have also benefited from higher retail prices of eggs, as well as the record-level volume of sales reported last quarter.

"[Amazon] is making money in both directions. They're making money if Vital Farms is charging Whole Foods a higher wholesale price, and Vital Farms' profit margins are improving, which they are, year-after-year," Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of Farm Forward, an advocacy research group, tells Sentient. Amazon has around a four percent equity stake in Vital Farms, which currently sells at Whole Foods for around $11 for a carton of organic eggs.

Vital Farms attributes some of its major boom in profits to avian flu. "We grew 55 percent in the first quarter of 2023, due in part to the category disruptions from avian influenza," Diez-Canseco said in another investor call. This momentum continued through 2024, as Vital Farms reported a 28.5 percent increase in net revenue over the course of the year. And as the company experienced reported outbreaks of avian flu in 2022, 2023 and 2024, it continued to rake in soaring profits to the benefit of its investors.

As profits soared, some investors bought more stock. For instance, in February of 2023, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, disclosed that it increased its ownership in Vital Farms to 8.3 percent of the company's stock.

Top Companies Enjoy Rapid Growth Despite Avian Flu & Record Egg Prices

Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the U.S., has observed a similar trajectory of record profits and rapid growth even as avian flu wiped out entire flocks. The company reported two outbreaks on its farms during 2023 and 2024, yet this was not enough to make a serious dent in Cal-Maine's egg supply: The company sold more eggs in both 2023 and 2024 than previous years, cementing its corner of the conventional egg market.

Meanwhile, during the first three months of 2025, the egg producer saw its net profits rise to $508 million, more than three times the level from a year before, and eight times more than at the start of the avian flu outbreak in 2022. As a recent report by Food & Water Watch observed, "The bird flu outbreak and Cal-Maine's price increases likely helped push its stock value up, which more than doubled since the start of the outbreak." The report also found that the company's board chair's stock value grew by over $9 million in three years.

Cal-Maine's top institutional investors include BlackRock, Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Renaissance Technologies and State Street Corp, according to Nasdaq - some of the largest asset managers in the world that appear to be benefiting from the high egg prices. Earlier this year, the four daughters of Cal Maine's founder decided to cash in the high stock, converting $4.8 million shares of stock at $92.75 per share.

Corporate Accountability Remains Scarce

While the spike in egg prices is often blamed on supply and demand, the dramatic surge of profit has raised questions about whether Cal-Maine has raised prices beyond what is reasonable to compensate for a more constrained egg supply. This has prompted the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Cal-Maine for price gouging.

"The total number of hens and the total number of eggs produced fell maybe five percent over that first year [2022], but prices went...up about two and a half times," says Amanda Starbuck, the research director of Food and Water Watch. "[This] suggests that a lot of it has to do with corporate consolidation more than actual shortages." While there is not a 1:1 relationship between egg supply and prices, the shrinkage of the egg supply didn't appear to justify such a sharp rise in prices, according to Starbuck.

Though Vital Farms and Cal-Maine are both large, publicly-traded companies, they have different business models and customer bases.

Vital Farms, which sells pasture-raised eggs, has always priced eggs at a higher cost than conventional eggs. During the early covid pandemic, the company prided itself on not raising its price of eggs. "Despite fluctuations in demand, the cost of our eggs - nor other Vital Farms products - have not increased," stated the company on its website in 2020.

But this shifted in 2022, when Diez-Canseco announced that the company would "reluctantly and in small amounts" raise prices. Just last week, the company announced again that it would raise wholesale egg prices by at least 10 percent in response to the Trump Administration's tariffs. It remains to be seen whether Vital Farms' retailers, like Whole Foods and Target, will respond to this hike by also raising retail prices even more.

Diez-Canseco did not respond to a request for comment, but he has previously attributed Vital Farms' recent success to an increase in total eggs sold, not increases in the price of eggs - particularly as the price of commodity eggs has risen much more sharply than pasture-raised eggs over the course of the avian flu outbreak.

Cal-Maine also didn't respond to a request for comment, but the company has previously "strongly" denied the allegations of price gouging.

The Bottom Line

Flush with profits, both Vital Farms and Cal-Maine have expanded their operations over the course of the avian flu outbreak, cornering an even larger share of the egg market. Vital Farms is expected to soon begin construction on a new egg packaging and washing facility in southern Indiana, enabling the company to add165 farmers to their supply chain. Meanwhile, Cal-Maine acquired the former egg production facilities of ISE America, Inc. in 2024, adding the capacity for 4.7 million laying hens. Last month, it acquired the popular breakfast foods brand Echo Lake Foods.

"That's part of this broader trend toward just enormously large companies," says Lisa Graves, a democracy researcher and the founder of True North Research, an investigative research watchdog group, who has observed similar consolidation across the agriculture industry and other sectors. And even as these companies see record profits, she notes that worker wages remain about the same.

Referring to the sky-high egg prices and profits, Graves observed that, "it seems like consumers are being gouged in order to enrich the shareholders in ways that are really affecting the daily lives and the budgets of families across the country."


Grey Moran wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

At the end of their studies at San Carlos University in Guatemala City, Fredy Alvarado Contreras, Sergio Escobar Gonzalez and Dennis Najera Barillas were recruited to participate in a special opportunity: a year-long internship at a swine operation, where they would learn from experts, partake in American cultural activities and agronomy courses and receive free housing, according to a new lawsuit. The plaintiffs came on a J-1 visa: a State Department visa commonly awarded to foreigners coming here for educational or research programs. Yet according to the lawsuit, plaintiffs instead worked dangerous jobs in hog processing facilities and discovered that most of the other promises — from free housing to cultural exchange — were a “sham.” Before their first paycheck, the plaintiffs had to shell out thousands of dollars, relying on loans and selling their belongings.

“My hope in coming to the U.S. on a J-1 visa was to share my culture and learn about U.S. culture. I wanted to improve as a person, as a professional, and economically. I wanted to improve my job prospects and get a certificate to help with that,” said Sergio Escobar Gonzalez, one of the plaintiffs in this action, via a press release from the legal advocacy non-profit FarmSTAND.

The lawsuit was filed against Livingston Enterprises Inc. (LEI), a company that operates in Nebraska and Kansas, and Worldwide Farmers Exchange, a California-based non-profit. A number of employees at both organizations are also named in the suit. The plaintiffs are represented by FarmSTAND, Legal Aid of Nebraska and Georgia-based law firm Radford Scott LLP.

Work visa programs, like the H-2A program, allow immigrants to temporarily fill agricultural labor shortages in the United States. H-2A programs are controversial and rife with exploitation, a recent investigation by the nonprofit newsroom Prism shows. In December, a Connecticut farm that employs H-2A visa holders was served a class-action lawsuit for violating labor conditions.

The J-1 visa, on the other hand, strictly prohibits using visa-holders to fill a labor need or engage in work that a U.S. worker could be hired for. In theory, these visas are supposed to provide educational work and study opportunities, and are often awarded to visiting professors and scholars. But unlike H-2A visas, which are for temporary agriculture positions, these can cover up to 12 months in the United States.

“Animal agriculture is year-round, so they can’t avail themselves of those visas,” Amal Bouhabib, a senior staff attorney for FarmSTAND, tells Sentient. A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented the exploitation of J-1 visas by employers seeking cheap labor; and this lawsuit suggests the agricultural sector is not exempt from the practice. Luring visa holders to work in concentrated feeding operations with promises of a cultural and educational experience via the J-1 visa program is deceptive and exploitative, the lawsuit alleges.

Sold on a Fake, (Bedbug-Ridden) Promise

To pay for the approximately $2,535 program fees, Gonzalez sold his car and took out a loan with a monthly interest of around 15 percent. Contreras depleted his savings account, borrowed cash from his parents and put some of the fees on a credit card. They then purchased their approximately $660 flights to Lincoln, Nebraska.

When Gonzalez and Contreras got to their housing there — which they were charged for via a paycheck deduction — they found that they would be living in four-person “makeshift windowless rooms in a former Walmart,” the lawsuit alleges. For the approximately 40 men living in the building, there was one kitchen with one working stove. The lawsuit also alleges that all common areas, including bathrooms, had 24/7 video camera monitoring. Two months into living there, a bed-bug infestation broke out, according to the allegations in the suit.

Their paychecks also did not reflect what they were promised, the plaintiffs allege. To meet the hourly wage they were promised at recruitment — after deductions for housing and a lower hourly rate — Contreras and Gonzalez would have needed to work 70-90 hours a week. They ended up agreeing to a 56-hour a week schedule, which they say their manager advised them to do, citing that most Guatemalans did that, but they could earn more money by working more.

Recent Grads Made to Do a Gruesome Job, Without Training

In the swine processing facilities, Contreras and Gonzalez were asked to “process” newborn piglets. “This included, among other things, applying a tattoo gun to their ears to give them identifying marks, and cutting off their tails with scissors,” the lawsuit states. The defendants were not trained in this practice. “When the piglets Plaintiff Escobar Gonzalez was tattooing began to bleed profusely, Plaintiff Escobar Gonzalez did not receive any instruction or guidance from anyone at LEI as to whether he was performing the task correctly. Even after some of the piglets bled out and died, LEI still didn’t make any effort to instruct Plaintiffs.”

Contreras was also instructed to assist a sow in birthing piglets. The complaint states that he received no formal training in tasks such as administering oxytocin, a hormone used to induce labor. In one instance, Contreras gave one sow two doses, causing her to suffer from a prolapsed uterus and die.

Livingston Enterprises Inc., where the plaintiffs worked, raises 36,000 sows and 1.2 million weaned pigs for production per year. They mention the J-1 visa program on their website, which they describe as an experience for “trainees” to “not only to learn about our farm practices, but to also experience American culture.” LEI did not respond to Sentient’s multiple requests for comment.

The plaintiffs were also instructed to power-wash the barns without instruction or sufficient personal protective equipment. They were only given goggles and an N-95 face mask that they would use for up to three weeks. According to the claims in the lawsuit, this is especially dangerous. The task can cause “the debris to be forcibly ejected into the air in a toxic spray of feces and blood particles and highly concentrated chemicals like hydrogen peroxide that can enter a worker’s mouth, eyes, ears, nose or skin if the worker is not properly protected.”

Because of this, Gonzalez developed hives, which the lawsuit alleges were brushed off by his manager as allergies, and Contreras developed impaired vision and eye pain, even wearing goggles. When Contreras took a day off from work due to these ailments, the Visa Program Administrator/HR Assistant told him that his boss “was punishing him for missing a day of work,” by making Contreras subsequently power wash for three days in a row.

As for the “cultural exchange” promise, the lawsuit alleges that while the plaintiffs were informed of goings on in town, like a bake sale at a local school, the events were during work hours. And, “if Plaintiffs wanted to go anywhere or do anything in their time off, they had to request a company car, a request that was frequently denied,” the lawsuit states. “After several months, unable to handle the isolation, Plaintiffs Escobar Gonzalez and Alvarado Contreras and others pooled together some of their earnings to buy a car together,” the lawsuit alleges.

Worldwide Farmers Exchange’s “About Us” page describes the long-lasting benefits of the program. “For many WFE participants, the true value of the exchange comes in the friendships made, the cultural experiences shared, and the professional connections that last a lifetime.”

In response to a request for comment, Worldwide Farmers Exchange Executive Director Ashley Medulan, who is also a defendant in the suit, wrote to Sentient that while the organization cannot comment on the specifics of pending litigation, “we remain confident in our position and will respond appropriately through the legal process. Our organization is committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and compliance, and we will continue to operate with transparency and professionalism as this matter proceeds.”

Threats of ICE Detainment and Retaliation, Suit Alleges

When Contreras and Gonzalez asked to lower their hours to a 45-hour a week schedule, they say their boss refused, telling them that the 45-hour schedule was ‘only for Americans. They were then transferred to a different facility, in an apparently retaliatory move. When Contreras asked to do some of the tasks he was initially promised, like learn about the industry, he was told that he was not there to learn, but to do “whatever we tell you to do.”

The workers were also unable to leave the arrangement without consequence. They were told that “if they left early or tried to leave the program, they could be picked up by ICE, they could be detained. One of the threats was that they would never be able to work in the U.S. again,” Bouhabib says.

The plaintiffs were essentially trapped.

“That is really what the federal trafficking statute tries to get at,” Bouhabib says. “You’re not necessarily being physically bound, but the number of ways the pressure can be exerted to coerce someone into staying where they don’t want to stay and do the work they shouldn’t be doing.”

The complaint alleges that the companies involved in recruiting the plaintiffs were experienced users of the J-1 visa program, and thus would have known that the visa cannot be used to replace laborers, let alone exploit them. The plaintiffs’ attorneys are making claims under a range of statutes, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, Nebraska wage and employment laws and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory, punitive and declaratory relief, as well as an end to the abuse of the J-1 visa program.

A New Pattern of J-1 Visa Abuse in the U.S.

One recent study found that between 2018 and 2020, 45 percent of surveyed J-1 visa holders reported that the work they performed did not align with what was promoted during recruitment, and that threats of deportation were a common form of exploitation.

From illegally detaining J-1 visa holders to asking undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” the Trump administration has been imposing a host of new immigration practices. The exploitation of the J-1 visa is a way for organizations to get around the system, says Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida, a labor advocacy group. While the administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, visas are a way for companies “to have cheap labor and fewer restrictions,” she says.

Economos, who has worked at the organization for 25 years, says she first noticed J-1 visas being used for agricultural work in the past few years. She says she knows of one operation that replaced their permanent, undocumented employees with J-1 “interns.”

“It’s supposed to be an internship, and I think that’s kind of stretching it a little bit,” she says. In an internship model, you would expect the students to spend some time in the classroom and some out in the field, she says, which is what they had been told their experience would be. It’s also common to hope for more, Economos says. “They come to learn, they come for an ‘internship,’ but they also have hopes of possibly coming back someday when they graduate in their home country, maybe finding a job here.”

This is why many J-1 visa-holders are afraid to speak out against their employers, Economos adds. They are threatened with not only deportation, but also potentially being barred from returning to the U.S. — threats Contreras and Gonzalez say they experienced in Nebraska.

“All of this mess right now is because we have a broken immigration system that’s getting increasingly worse, literally day by day, if not hour by hour,” she says. “It’s a way to circumvent that.”

As of last month, more than 525 student and faculty visa holders have had their visas revoked this year, according to CNN. Also last month, the Washington Post reported on a leaked memo signaling that Trump’s 2026 fiscal year budget would include major cuts to the State Department, including the elimination of “all educational and cultural programs administered by the State Department.”

Bouhabib says the case highlights an important, often underscored element of the industrialized food system: Many operations rely on foreign, exploited labor to keep prices low and maintain high profits. “Big agriculture is abusing these visas,” she says.

The attorneys are still waiting to hear back on a Freedom of Information Act request, filed with the U.S. Department of State in June 2024.

At the time of publication, LEI is still promoting their J-1 “trainee” program on their website.


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Iowa has a cancer problem: over 20,000 people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in the next year, with over 6,000 likely to die from the disease. One of the most frequently cited reports in the state is produced by the Iowa Cancer Registry, which has historically refrained from mentioning agriculture as a potential factor in increasing cancer risk. Yet farming is the dominant industry in the state — over 85 percent of the land is devoted to agricultural use and millions of animals are raised on factory farms contributing to environmental pollution. A new initiative, co-developed by The Harkin Institute at Drake University and the nonprofit Iowa Environmental Council, aims to fill this gap and hone in on the role agriculture plays in increasing cancer risk. The initiative was announced at a conference on water quality, held at The Harkin Institute on April 16.

“Even though there are lots of groups talking about studying the high cancer rates, there are some groups that want to limit what we’re looking at when we’re having these conversations,” Adam Shriver, Director of Wellness and Nutrition Policy at The Harkin Institute, said at the conference. “They might want to look at personal behaviors like going to tanning beds or smoking or drinking. And we feel like there’s a really important part of the conversation that’s being left out.”

While behaviors like smoking and binge drinking are linked to higher cancer risk, the new initiative wants to see the link between agriculture and cancer investigated with the same rigor, especially given the prominent role of industrial animal agriculture in Iowa.

The overwhelming majority — 99 percent — of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms. In Iowa, there are almost 124 million farm animals at any given time — around 55 million chickens, 53.4 million hogs, 11.5 million turkeys and 3.7 million cattle and cows. Manure spills are commonplace: a recent report by Food and Water Watch found that from 2013 to 2023, there were 179 documented manure spills that killed almost 2 million fish.

Sarah Green, Executive Director of the Iowa Environmental Council, tells conference attendees that Iowa’s cancer rate is not the only outlier statistic about the state. “Iowa has the most factory farm waste of any other state in the country. Iowa has more concentrated animal feeding operations than any other state in the country. Iowa is among the top five states with the highest industrial pesticide use,” she said. “What role do these factors play in Iowa’s cancer rates? What else might be at play?”

In Iowa, waterways are just as impaired as the health of its residents. Almost 2 million fish were killed from the manure spills that occurred in Iowa between 2013 and 2023. The 179 spills were documented throughout the state, with a major hotspot for spills in Iowa’s northwest corner, where hog and other livestock operations are especially dense. Earlier this year, the group reported that Iowa factory farms produce more waste than any other state, at 109 billion pounds of manure annually, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture data. In March, just one manure spill in northeast Iowa killed over 100,000 fish.

For the new initiative, researchers will conduct a review of existing scientific studies and reports for what the research shows (and what it doesn’t) about the connection between agriculture, both row crop and livestock operations, and cancer in the state. The next step is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence based on the review to recommend stronger public health policy. 

The project will also host 15 listening sessions around the state to allow Iowans to “share and record their lived experiences with cancer,” Green said. Public awareness is at the heart of the project. “This entire initiative is about each of you and about Iowans, making people’s lives better, giving families more years to make memories together, helping Iowans from all walks of life have healthier, longer futures in our state,” Green said. “The cancer crisis touches every single county in Iowa.”

The initiative is funded by the Walton Foundation, which provides funding to organizations working to protect rivers, “oceans and the communities they support,” as well as philanthropic organizations Builders Vision and Grace Communications and Iowa Radiology, a radiology imaging practice. Disclosure: Builders Vision and Grace Communications are donors to Sentient; donors have no say over Sentient’s editorial coverage or content.

In an email to Sentient, Jim Larew, legal counsel for the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Driftless Water Defenders, praised the new initiative, noting “those holding visible and prominent positions in cancer research in Iowa” have focused their attention on binge drinking, making no mention of industrialized agriculture. A more “objective” review is necessary, he wrote.

“Established institutions have a tendency to avoid naming environmental causes of cancer, which normally can be addressed by policy changes and, instead, point to behavioral contributors to new cancers. Such tendencies have the effect of insulating the investigating institutions from intense political pressures exerted by powerful industrial-agricultural oligarchs,” Larew wrote.

Shriver told Sentient in an email that the plan is to have the report on the literature review completed by fall of this year.


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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