Ag Tribes Report: Farm Bureau shoots at MAHA, Screw Flies headed to the US

About this episode

Joe Ailts, an independent Wisconsin crop consultant specializing in soil health, discusses the Farm Bureau's pushback against the MAHA Commission's report questioning pesticide safety (Ailts is measured — supportive of continued scientific reassessment via long-term exposure studies rather than single-point testing, while agreeing decades of EPA approval shouldn't be dismissed outright), the "One Big Beautiful Bill's" $10B in farm tax relief (Ailts wants more federal ag dollars redirected toward soil-health-building rather than crop insurance subsidies, which Vance argues entrenches inefficient operators and prevents healthy market "churn"), the New World Screwworm outbreak threatening US livestock from Mexico (both agree stopping a fly-borne disease is likely a losing battle, drawing a COVID-response parallel), and a $66M SNAP fraud scheme (Ailts strongly endorses DOGE's fraud-rooting efforts; Vance is more conflicted, citing firsthand experience with hungry children at inner-city camps). Ailts's Peter Thiel paradox is a technical, mildly controversial agronomy claim about using the Haney Soil Health Test for in-season nitrogen management, which he says university experts dismiss without proper understanding. His worthy adversary, unusually, is a category rather than an individual — "glyphosate absolutists" on both extremes of the chemical-safety debate — earning some pushback from Vance for dodging a named adversary.

“I love cover crops. I love minimizing tillage. I love using biological products... my goal is to meet farmers where they're at.”

“How well did we do at stopping COVID?... when humans try to intervene in slowing down mother nature's ability to spread diseases, look what happens.”

“How can anybody in America look at [DOGE rooting out fraud] and go, that's a bad thing?... we should all be rallying together.”

Key moments

• MAHA report reception — Ailts is disappointed regenerative agriculture/soil health wasn't more central to the report but understands the report's narrower childhood-disease focus; both favor long-term exposure studies over single-point testing for pesticides like glyphosate and atrazine.
• "One Big Beautiful Bill" farm tax relief — Vance criticizes expanded crop insurance subsidies for entrenching underperforming operators and preventing beneficial market "churn," using a wildfire-suppression metaphor; Ailts wants redirected federal dollars toward soil-organic-matter building rather than insurance bandaids.
• New World Screwworm outbreak — Ailts draws a striking COVID-response analogy questioning whether humans can meaningfully slow a fly-borne disease's spread at all, despite historical sterile-fly-program success.
• $66M SNAP fraud scheme — Ailts strongly endorses DOGE's anti-fraud efforts as uncontroversial common sense; Vance complicates this with a personal account of genuinely hungry children he met at inner-city camps.
• Ailts's Peter Thiel paradox — using the Haney Soil Health Test for precision in-season nitrogen management, a technique he says university agronomy experts dismiss as "garbage" without proper understanding; Vance gives it an unprecedented "N/A" score for lack of context to judge controversy.