A USDA portal has been launched to record farmer claims related to unfair and politically motivated lawfare originating under the Biden administration. USDA Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced the online portal recently and said that “we must ensure that our farmers and our ranchers have not and will not be targeted for living the American way of life.”
This follows the Trump administration announcement that criminal charges against Charles and Heather Maude were being dropped. The South Dakota ranching couple was preparing for a trial over a land dispute with the US Forest Service. The husband and wife were charged individually with criminal trespass and have a small cattle and hog operation with land adjacent to the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in South Dakota. The ranch land has been a part of their family since the year 1910.
“The Maudes are not criminals. They have worked their land since the early 1900s and something that should have been a minor civil land dispute that was over and done with quickly turned into an overzealous criminal prosecution of a hard-working family,” according to Rollins.
The portal is for farmers and ranchers and those in agriculture only. Forms can be submitted anonymously, but it does limit USDA from contacting you for more information that may be needed with regard to the complaint. Get more information and submit claims at at www.usda.gov/lawfare.