2025 has been chaotic, challenging, and heartbreaking as our communities, our work, and our values face relentless authoritarian attacks. Yet it has also been a year marked by powerful solidarity. Across the country, people have stepped up—building mutual aid networks, defending neighbors from ICE, advancing innovative policies, and deepening partnerships within rural communities.
For the CROP, the year looked different from years past. Our work centered on supporting state legislators as they confronted the rising tide of authoritarianism, whether through national events, regional organizing, or direct strategy support. Across these spaces, CROP members remained strong and steady leaders on food, agriculture, and rural issues in their statehouses.
2025 CROP Highlights:
Gatherings and lobby days brought CROP members together in person to build relationships, collaborate, and support one another strengthening our movement.
- In Illinois, SiX brought MS Senator Hillman Frazier and SC Rep. Annie McDaniel to join IL Rep. Sonya Harper, first Black woman to chair the IL House Committee on Agriculture, for her third annual Illinois Black Farmer Lobby Day. The event brought together over 100 Black farmers to the state capitol; Senator Frazier and Rep. McDaniel’s participation contributed to a powerful demonstration of co-governance, where legislators and community leaders built and moved a progressive Black farmer agenda in the Illinois state legislature.
- At the 40th anniversary of Farm Aid in Minneapolis, MN, SiX convened nearly two dozen Midwestern state legislators for a weekend grounded in music, movement-building, and community. Legislators engaged directly with farmers and advocates on a farm tour and farmer forum, deepening their understanding of the challenges rural communities face while celebrating the cultural and agricultural traditions that sustain them.
- For the second year in a row, SiX joined Rural Democracy Initiative and rural leaders and organizers from across the country at the 2025 Rural Policy Action Summit. As part of the host team, SiX facilitated the opening session, grounding in shared values and rural organizing strategy to craft a “pro-rural” policy agenda that can defend against the mounting threats to our communities and environment. Policy priorities from the Summit continue to be reflected in SiX’s Blueprint for Rural Policy Action in the States.
Rapid response communications, toolkits, and model policy equipped state legislators in fighting back against authoritarianism.
- In response to escalating federal actions, SiX launched a “Hot Takes” communications series that helped state legislators make sense of federal chaos in real time. These updates provided not only analysis, but guidance and resources to help legislators safeguard their communities from federal-level threats.
- State legislators need good policy solutions that support farmers and rural communities, so we updated and expanded the Blueprint for Rural Policy Action in the States with new model policies designed to support rural communities across a wide range of issues. Legislators used it as both a practical reference and a foundation for shaping proactive rural agendas in their states.
- We also developed a toolkit to help state legislators host meaningful listening sessions with farmers and rural communities and learn more about what farmers and rural communities are currently facing. In Michigan, Agriculture Committee Chair Senator Sue Shink used the handbook’s framework to organize listening sessions that surfaced critical local concerns around local meat processing and regional food system infrastructure.
- We also published our new resource: Tackle Box on finfish aquaculture, equipping policymakers and coastal communities with a detailed overview of the dangers of industrial finfish farming and centering the importance of values-based aquaculture practices. The toolkit includes science and policy solutions that strengthen local economies, protect marine environments, and reflect community priorities and can be adapted to each state’s unique context.
While the year was tough for proactive policy, we also saw some impressive legislative and legal wins building solidarity across communities and holding corporations accountable to the harms they cause farmers and rural communities in the process.
- Iowa Rep. Megan Srinivas organized a series of farmer-driven listening sessions to push back against a proposed pesticide immunity bill (also known as the “Bayer bill”), which sought to shield pesticide companies from liability for harms caused by their products. Her work empowered rural people through storytelling, educated legislators, and ultimately prevented the bill from advancing. This work continues in 2026, as we anticipate Bayer bills will be introduced in more states. We encourage legislators with one of these bills in their states to reach out to the SiX team for organizing assistance.
- Minnesota’s 2023 landmark PFAS regulation, known as Amara’s Law (Minn. Stat. § 116.943)—named in honor of Amara Strande, whose fight against PFAS-related cancer brought national attention to these “forever chemicals,” survived a constitutional challenge, and went into effect this year. PFAS poses a serious threat to public health, farms, and the environment and legislators around the country have been working to address its impacts. The Minnesota law is being implemented in three stages: banning PFAS in 11 product categories including cookware, cosmetics, cleaning products, and textiles; requiring manufacturers to disclose PFAS added to their products; and phasing in a ban to cover virtually all remaining products containing added non-essential PFAS,
Regional organizing remained at the heart of SiX’s ag work this year, offering a unique strategy for movement building that we plan to continue building on in 2026.
- In 2025, SiX launched two new legislator cohorts in both the Northeast and Midwest, expanding the network of lawmakers working collectively on food, farm, and rural issues. These cohorts emerged naturally out of shared experiences—particularly the conversations and connections sparked at Farm Aid. These nascent cohorts have led to some powerful actions, including over 100 Northeastern legislators collaborating on a sign-on letter opposing harmful federal actions on food and farm policy, demonstrating unified resistance across state lines.