Gift article from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/opinion/doge-elon-musk-usda-crops.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6E4.hdQs.vH88ObBfjTyh&smid=url-share
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Behind paywall. What’s the conclusion of the article?
It was supposed to be a gift article - I’ll try again. The conclusion is that Musk fired the people who do the work, some of them got re-hired, but they’re not allowed to do any work (I guess that makes them more efficient).
Edited to add: it is a gift article, but maybe it only works in the U.S.
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I was able to read it, so it seems like it works for those in the US to see.
I have nothing to add at the moment that isn’t four letter words. I hope to circle back to this to add more.
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Guess the main question is, is it still functioning for the people or has it been hijacked to serve for the oligarchy?
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Just shocking. I hope the lines are going to be distributed elsewhere at least.
I’ve been able to access the overall article from France without paying clicking on “full article” on my mobile
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When i think “government” i think “oligarchy”, full stop. I’m not gonna relax and assume government will lift a finger to help us. They won’t unless there’s something in it for them. Have you seen FEMA lately?
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I was never a fan of GRIN’s gatekeeper model. This is the obvious Achilles’ heel of that approach. Live and learn. That being said, this is an unfortunate development. Our efforts are that much more important now. Don’t be complacent, folks. Every landrace seed is going to be precious. Don’t assume that small independent seed retailers are going to be safe from what’s transpiring. Understand this for what it is. A complete hostile takeover. Now is the time to take the steps suggested in Joseph’s book, to safeguard your seeds against loss and destruction. Decentralize.
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The overall strategy is to remove all supports for the people, in order to bring them to heel. Give it about six months for that to be accomplished. Hopefully, being a simple gardener will still remain uncontroversial. I’m not even sure about that, but that’s my plan. I feel like that’s the best use of my time and energy.
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Neither. It seems not to be functioning at all (at least the wheat collection).
Agreed! Decentralize and landrace all day e’ry day!
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Noooooooooooooo! 
Yes, this really, really demonstrates how important decentralized seed saving is. We need something just like an open source GRIN. We need it really, really, really badly.
Maybe that’s something our community can eventually grow to become. If somebody else does it, that would also be awesome.
I suspect people growing their own food may eventually be something the US government actively attacks, precisely because it makes them less dependent on the government and thereby easier to control. I would rather be wrong. (If that happens, guerilla gardening and sowing native edible weeds in mixed stands that look wild and not like a garden would probably be a good way to go.)
I’m not wasting time on worrying. I prefer to act on the assumption that the worst case scenario will happen if people don’t work to stop it, so I am charging forward to make the world a better place in every way I know how.
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James C. Scott has written several academic (but not too dry) books on the tension between nation states, which prefer and even require predictable and easily “legible” production of grains for assessment & control, vs. hill tribes who deliberately adopt strategies like root crops and semi-nomadism to evade state control. Agreed, it’s important to relocalize food production in ways which can’t be centrally controlled.
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Seed Savers’ Exchange is sort of meant to be a decentralized nonprofit alternative to GRIN. I haven’t worked with them recently so i don’t know how diverse their offerings are. I think there’s definitely room for a lot of participants in the space. That’s implied by decentralization. The more, the merrier.
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Excellent point! The Seed Savers Exchange is a good example of precisely what we need – and you’re absolutely right, the more systems of people swapping and sharing, the better. 
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This. I would reference the whole raw milk issue, and what is going on with chickens and “bird flu.” And gmo crops with their patents. Ugh. I think staying under the radar for as long as possible is a good strategy, to give us as much time as possible to learn guerilla gardening and learn the wild native edibles, as you said, and time to get as many people as possible on board. Also, learning how to eat the edible ornamentals, because a beautiful flowering front yard will be permitted by HOAs and municipalities, and native mixed stands that look wild in the wrong location are apt to be sprayed. I have some wonderful public land nearby, but I can’t bring myself to forage it, because I worry about how it may be “managed.” We are going into an interesting time, no doubt.
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You raise some excellent points. Roots and groundcovers are probably quite likely to be hit by pesticide sprays. Maybe studying all the trees that grow edible leaves near you (mulberry, linden, elm, etc.) would be a good idea.
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Seed Savers’ Exchange is great, but I don’t think it has 62,000 varieties of wheat.
How can i access that wheat? Is it for us or for big ag?