The Trump administration has deleted thousands of climate-related web pages from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) website, stripping farmers of critical resources as droughts, floods and shifting growing conditions intensify. Now, a coalition of environmental and farming groups is suing to get that information back, arguing that the purge is not just reckless but illegal.

The lawsuit, brought by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute on Feb. 24, argues that this “unlawful purge” violates multiple federal laws and directly harms farmers.

“The web pages that the USDA has taken down are depriving farmers and researchers of that central depository of information they need to adapt to climate change and implement climate-smart agricultural practices,” said Jeff Stein, associate attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm that provides legal representation to public-interest clients.

Decimating these data hubs—while simultaneously freezing funding for many climate-focused initiatives—has created a chaotic scramble to reestablish access to resources that have been available for decades.

“They’ve taken down numerous pages on the rural development website, which provided comprehensive information about billions of dollars of funding for clean energy projects throughout rural America,” said Stein. “Depriving communities of that information is making it really difficult for them to push back against the illegal funding freezes.”

The USDA did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the data purge and its potential impact.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA), the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group, aims to have these critical webpages restored. It argues that the sudden purge violates three key federal laws: the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The PRA requires agencies to give adequate notice before substantially modifying or terminating important public information or resources. The APA governs administrative agencies and prohibits them from engaging in irrational decision making by requiring public notice of proposed changes, most of which have a 30-day delay before taking effect. FOIA mandates public access to most government information.

The removed web pages hosted essential resources on climate-smart farming, federal loans, conservation and climate adaptation. The purge also disabled interactive tools, such as the U.S. Forest Service’s Climate Risk Viewer, which supported risk management and resource planning for the National Forest System, and provided technical guidance on emissions reductions and climate resilience.

Agriculture is not the only sector affected by these sweeping removals of public information. Doctors for America, a nonprofit physicians’ group, has filed a similar lawsuit against several federal agencies for taking down medical information from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

“There are other lawsuits that are similar in nature, but ours is the only one that has tried to tackle the harm that USDA’s website purge has inflicted on farmers, climate scientists and advocates,” said Stein.

Since Jan. 20, the Trump administration has taken down over 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen agencies, cutting off public access to federal data. And experts have been bracing for the impacts.

“The previous Trump administration also saw a similar area of critical loss of data as it relates to inequity, climate, air, clean water, and DEI,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Those of us who rely on publicly available data knew this was coming. This has been a historic trend. So in many ways, we were prepared for it.”

In response, individuals and organizations have been archiving as much data as possible. However, some resources—especially interactive tools—cannot be downloaded and reconstructed in a way that maintains their previous functionality.

“There is just no way to recreate the utility of a government website,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The consequences of these information restrictions will soon be felt on the ground, particularly as financial losses for farmers.

“Some small-scale farmers could be at risk of going out of business,” said Goswami. “Not every farmer has the ability to navigate this and manage their expenses. And this coupled with frozen funding, mass layoffs of USDA staff and the loss of research creates massive pressure on an already stressful profession.”

“That could put a whole bunch of farms right out of business because they can’t afford to make the payment they were promised by the U.S. government.”

Wes Gillingham, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York

The missing information will start to impact farmers immediately, said Wes Gillingham, a farmer in the Catskills and president of NOFA’s board, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. 

“The missing information is really impacting farmers who are planning for this upcoming season,” he said. “They’re going to be making decisions that may or may not be supported by what they can access for information.”

This uncertainty doesn’t just affect future planning—it also has immediate financial consequences for farmers who have already invested in improvements based on promised support.

“You’ve got farmers who have already laid out their money, paid contractors to come in and do work and now they’re not going to get a refund in terms of a grant,” Gillingham said. “That could put a whole bunch of farms right out of business because they can’t afford to make the payment they were promised by the U.S. government.”

For young farmers, the disruption could be a deterrent to entering an industry that is already facing a rapidly aging workforce. According to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, the average age of U.S. farmers was 57.5 years, and the number of farmers under 35 years old accounted for only 9 percent of the total farming population. And it puts those who are already in the industry at greater risk under unstable conditions.

“New farmers especially need these resources,” said Gillingham. “They need the information that’s not just how to put seeds in the ground, it’s about having a farm plan, figuring out issues like what to do if you have a drought, how to put in an irrigation system that makes sense so it won’t cause flooding for your neighbors, etcetera.”

For agriculture professionals working within federal agencies, the removal of this information could signal a step toward more censorship by their agencies or self-censorship to avoid getting into trouble with the new administration.

“If this is happening publicly, what message does that send to [ the Natural Resources Conservation Service] staff and other agency employees about what they can and cannot talk about safely to keep their jobs?” said Lavender.