USDA's Sam Berry on SNAP fraud, food security, farm succession, and data center siting on farmland

USDA's Sam Berry on SNAP fraud, food security, and farmland

Sam Berry came to the USDA through Doge and brings an unusual background to the role: a family of farmers who turned engineers, now trying to run the thread back the other way. He describes the agency as far broader than its public image — food stamps, the Forest Service, rural development loans, agricultural research labs, and food inspection all sit under one roof.

The SNAP fraud problem

The single sharpest data challenge Berry describes is SNAP. The program runs at $100 billion a year in federal funding, administered not by USDA directly but by individual states. USDA's role is as funder, which means it depends on states to hand over their data before it can audit anything. Secretary Rollins issued a data call to all states on day one of the new administration, but compliance has been uneven — some states are struggling technically, others simply aren't cooperating.

The internal audit already puts improper payments at roughly 12%, which is around $12 billion annually. Berry's goal is a fraud detection system modeled on credit card monitoring: the moment fraud is detected, the benefit is cut off immediately. He also notes that SNAP has been exploited by international criminal organizations and is explicit that the fraud scale is not a fringe concern.

“SNAP is $100,000,000,000 a year. The organization itself does an audit every year — there's 12% improper payments. That's $12,000,000,000 a year. You could grok how SNAP has been used to fund international crime organizations and terrorist groups. It's being exploited at a huge level. We want to get to the point where if somebody's committing SNAP fraud, it's off immediately.”

Farm succession and automation

A quieter crisis Berry flags is generational succession. The farming workforce is aging and children are not returning to take over. H-2A visa workers are filling gaps, but Berry argues the structural answer is automation. He points to John Deere precision agriculture apps that effectively allow near-autonomous tractor fleets, and university research into automating cattle breeding and meat production. USDA's rural development lending arm offers subsidized loans to new farmers, though Berry acknowledges the loan modernization process is still being improved.

Data centers on farmland

Berry is skeptical of siting data centers on agricultural land and frames the conflict in national security terms. His own hometown of Saline, Michigan — a small farming community 30 miles from Detroit and Flint — is having a data center dropped into it, despite both cities having existing industrial infrastructure, developed land, and depressed economies that could absorb the tax revenue. He argues the economics should push construction toward already-developed areas, and suspects local approval boards are not adequately reflecting community interests.

His longer-term answer is data centers in orbit. USDA is pursuing a technical partnership with SpaceX, though Berry is clear that orbital infrastructure is still years out and not yet operationally relevant.

Biodefense and food security

Berry takes seriously the idea that adversaries target food supply chains before any kinetic conflict becomes visible. He points to the New World Screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite moving north through Mexico, as a current live example. USDA is building a lab to produce and release sterilized flies to suppress the population — a biological containment method Berry personally dislikes but supports as a necessary capability. He makes the broader point that GMO research and agricultural science give the US a geopolitical edge: the ability to rapidly engineer drought-resistant crops or respond to biological threats is an asymmetric advantage that requires ongoing investment to maintain.

Berry's through-line across all of it is that food self-sufficiency is not a given. The workforce is shrinking, the data infrastructure is fragmented, and the programs moving the most money have the least visibility into how that money is being spent.