A group of farmers walked into the Oval Office last week expecting to smile as the president signed an executive order supporting the popular farming practice called regenerative agriculture, a method cheered by the Make America Healthy Again movement as an alternative to pesticides.
Instead they were greeted by a virtual buzzsaw as President Donald Trump also brought in a top advocate who opposed the policy, prompting a live debate between top advisers, Cabinet secretaries and farmers.
“This was my first experience being this close to where policy was made, and it was really quite surprising,” said Will Harris, a fourth-generation farmer from Georgia who attended the Oval Office meeting.
The roughly hour-long meeting, which ended with the president signing the executive order, provided a vivid illustration of the president’s freewheeling governing style in action. The scramble showed that policy, even when it’s the product of months of work and widely supported among top brass, can face an uncertain fate up until the moment the president puts his thick black marker to the page.
In recent weeks, the president has bucked his top advisers on both artificial intelligence and housing policy, deciding at the last minute not to sign an executive order and legislation.
Last week’s Oval Office confrontation also gave a window into the way in which traditional Washington lobbying – once the domain of well-heeled K-Street insiders who work decades-old relationships on behalf of clients – has changed in the Trump era. In the case of the regenerative agriculture executive order, which directs government agencies to promote holistic farming practices that rely on natural land rehabilitation over chemicals, the proponents of the order were forced into a last-minute lobbying effort for a president who favors watching debate play out in front of him.
“The president likes watching people squirm a little. The people who handle it well get rewarded. And the people who don’t? Ask [former Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem. Or to put it differently: Who’s a player and who’s furniture?” said a person close to the White House, granted anonymity to discuss its inner workings candidly.
In this case, it was farmers from Georgia, Indiana and South Dakota, along with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and HHS senior adviser Calley Means, who fought to push the president over the finish line, three farmers who attended the Oval Office meeting said in separate accounts.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, also in the room, voiced support for the order as well.
“I thought the farmers … were going in there just for a photo opportunity,” said Jonathan Lundgren, a former scientist for the Department of Agriculture who runs a regenerative farm in South Dakota. “I didn't think that it was actually important that we had to convince the president to sign the executive order — and we did.”
They were up against Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents over 5 million farmers – a prized constituency for Trump – and who often has the president’s ear.
Duvall told the president he was concerned that the order would insinuate a negative impact from pesticide use and said he would not be able to advocate for Trump on behalf of farmers if he signed it, three of the farmers said.
Trump went back and forth with Duvall, asking him what he opposed, to which Duvall said he hadn’t been able to fully read the order, the three farmers said. Trump eventually told him he didn’t think the order posed a threat to farmers.
“He could have been swayed one way or the other, and Farm Bureau tried tooth and nail to convince him not to sign that order,” Lundgren said of the president.
Mike Tomko, communications director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the account of what Duvall said in the meeting was “not accurate” and Duvall didn’t say he would withhold support for the president.
“He did express concern about the EO but not related to its stated purpose. Farm Bureau supports research and innovation, which are key to advancing agriculture, and we support regenerative agriculture,” Tomko said.
Duvall’s concerns were over “the insinuation that our food supply is not safe” because of pesticides, Tomko said, and Duvall “warned against undermining confidence in the food system and confidence in EPA’s rigorous oversight that farmers rely on every day.”
In a statement, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the president “listens to a variety of opinions from many subject experts to inform his decision-making.”
“The President is committed to ultimately doing what’s best for the MAHA movement, our farmers, and the American people – and the signing of this executive order reflects that commitment,” Desai said.
Rick Clark, a fifth-generation Indiana farmer who uses regenerative farming methods and was in the Oval Office meeting, said it was a heated policy debate with the people who would be most affected by the executive order, which he thought was geared at best informing the president.
“The way I viewed it was President Trump was just making sure that he had everyone's opinion and was given all the information before he signed that document,” Clark said. “Were there some tensions in the room? Sure. Was there passion in the room? Yeah, most definitely passion.”
The Oval Office debate came as the Trump administration’s policies on pesticides have exposed major fissures between the White House and the Make America Health Again movement, which Kennedy brought into Trump’s coalition.
Earlier on the day of the Oval Office meeting, the Supreme Court handed Bayer, the parent company of the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup, a shield against thousands of lawsuits that claim the company failed to warn people about the health risks associated with its products.
When Lundgren introduced himself to Trump, he told the president that he was disappointed in the ruling. He said he felt families were being “poisoned by these chemical companies and didn't have recourse anymore” and found the president to be concerned.
“This is pretty important, and it wasn't okay,” Lundgren said of the Supreme Court decision and his decision to raise his disappointment with the president. “There's a lot of people in my community that are very sick, my own family included.”
Trump turned to Rollins and Duvall, who explained the ruling to him, Lundgren said.
Kennedy and Means framed the ruling as a black eye to MAHA, two of the farmers said, and Kennedy said the executive order on regenerative agriculture would be an important part of repairing relations with the MAHA supporters.
MAHA advocates were furious when Trump’s Department of Justice supported Bayer’s case, and the anger only grew with a February executive order shoring up domestic supply of the chemical used to make pesticides, glyphosate.
The White House, at the time, said the administration was concerned with protecting the supply chain for all kinds of critical minerals, irrespective of Bayer’s public and private warnings that its business was hanging by a thread, made worse with the arrival of MAHA.
Diana Nerozzi contributed to this report.
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