MAHA-Minded Farmers Are Giving RFK Jr. the Benefit of the Doubt

Amid USDA cuts and Kennedy’s reversal on a pesticides ban, farmers said they’re giving the administration time.

Great American Farmers Market 2025 RFK Jr.
Tom Williams/AP

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-held belief that the use of pesticides in farming is making American children sick was again pushed to the wayside this week, even as the health secretary helped kick off what the administration is calling The Great American Farmers Market.

Kennedy didn’t argue when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said there was no way American agriculture could sustain heightened restrictions on pesticide use Monday.

“There is no chance that our current system of agriculture can survive without those crop protection tools, including the fertilizers that you mentioned,” Rollins said in response to a reporter’s question about whether the MAHA report would recommend removing such crop treatments from the market.