08/19/2026
When the National Weather Service and the NOAA fail to provide farmers with the most up-to-date information on weather conditions, that makes it harder to know when to plant and when to harvest.
That leads to poor growth, increased crop failures, lower crop yields, and greater spoilage.
Those costs are then passed along to the consumer, and the end result is food costing more than ever before.
So, let's make it plain - Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, has played a direct role in making groceries more expensive for all Americans.
Elon Musk’s DOGE gutted staffing and budgets at NOAA and the National Weather Service early last year. It left America’s fishing fleets, farmers and insurers exposed to the fallout.
NOAA’s systems rarely announced their value. They just worked—until they didn’t. Now failures are arriving quietly: one dead weather station, one missing balloon, one stale map, one climate website at a time.
Read the full story on what happens when the government dismantles the country’s vast environmental intelligence system: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2026/08/17/the-cost-of-doge-americas-environmental-intelligence-is-going-stale/?utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ForbesMainFB
Illustration: Yunjia Yuan for Forbes; Photos: The Washington Post, Wirestock, Adastra, Mikroman6, Imagebroker/I. Gercelman, Piola666, Ilbusca, Mashuk via Getty Images
