Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 8/5/19

Plant physiologist Lewis Ziska served his last day at the Agricultural Research Service on Friday, citing USDA's effort last year to block dissemination of his study showing how rice loses nutrients due to rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The findings raise potentially serious concerns for the 600 million people globally who depend on the crop for most of their calories.

USDA is in constant fear of Trump and Secretary Sonny Perdue's open skepticism about broadly accepted climate science, Ziska told Pro Ag's Helena Bottemiller Evich in wide-ranging interview . It's causing officials to go to extremes to obscure researchers' work to avoid political blowback, he said. Ziska worked at the department across five administrations and had seldom seen such a dramatic shift in agricultural research priorities that could undermine USDA's ability to arm farmers and policymakers with the tools to combat threats to the food supply, he added.

USDA has repeatedly denied having any policy to discourage dissemination of science or the use of any climate-change related terms. In response to Ziska's resignation, the department said in a statement that objections to promoting his rice study were based on scientific disagreement involving career officials, not political appointees.

Ziska is among several government officials who've recently resigned over accusations that the Trump administration is censoring climate science. Last week, an intelligence analyst at the State Department said officials blocked his testimony to Congress about the national security implications of climate change. A National Park Service employee also stepped forward, alleging she lost her job after refusing to scrub mentions of human-caused climate change from a peer-reviewed paper that was set to publish.