“Snow Will Fall Too Fast for Plows,” ICE STORM APOCALYPSE, and Another Big Storm May Be Coming … were all headlines posted on YouTube this past weekend as the biggest snowstorm in years hit New York City.
These videos, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of views, are part of an increasingly popular genre of weather influencers,” as Americans increasingly turn to social media for news and weather updates.
People pay more attention to influencers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok than to journalists or mainstream media, a study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford found in 2024. In the U.S., social media is how 20% of adults get their news or weather updates, according to the Pew Research Center.
Its no surprise, then, that a number of online weather accounts have cropped up to cover the increasing number of extreme weather events in the U.S.
While some of these influencers have no science background, many of the most popular ones are accredited meteorologists. One of the most viewed digital meteorologistsor weather influencersis Ryan Hall, who calls himself “The Internet’s Weather Man” on his social media platforms. His YouTube channel, Ryan Hall, Yall, has more than 3 million subscribers.
Max Velocity is another. He’s a degreed meteorologist, according to his YouTube bio, who has 1.66 million followers. Reed Timmer, an extreme meteorologist and storm chaser, also posts to 1.46 million subscribers on YouTube. While most prefer to avoid the bad news that comes with bad weather, I charge towards it, Timmer writes in the description section on his channel.
The rising popularity of weather influencers is stemming not just from a mistrust in mainstream mediawhich is lingering at an all-time lowbut also from an appetite for real-time updates delivered in an engaging way to the social-first generation.
YouTube accounts like Halls will often livestream during extreme weather events, with his comments section hosting a flurry of activity. Theres even merch.
Of course, influencers are not required to uphold the same reporting standards as network weathercasters. Theres also the incentive, in terms of likes and engagement, to sensationalize events with clickbait titles and exaggerated claims, or sometimes even misinformation, as witnessed during the L.A. wildfires last year.
Still, as meteorologists navigate the new media landscape, the American Meteorological Society now offers a certification program in digital meteorology for those meteorologists who meet established criteria for scientific competence and effective communication skills in their weather presentations on all forms of digital media.
While we wait to see whether another winter storm will hit the Northeast this weekend, rest assured, the weather influencers will be tracking the latest updates.
You know the ancient proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
For leaders, first-generation AI tools are like giving employees fish. Agentic AI, on the other hand, teaches them how to fishtruly empowering, and that empowerment lifts the entire organization. According to recent findings from McKinsey, nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI, yet about the same number report no bottom-line impact. Agentic AI can help organizations achieve meaningful results.
AI agents are highly capable assistants with the ability to execute tasks independently. Equipped with artificial intelligence that simulates human reasoning, they can recognize problems, remember past interactions, and proactively take steps to get things donewhether that means knocking out tedious manual tasks or helping to generate innovative solutions. For CEOs juggling numerous responsibilities, agentic AI can be a powerful ally in simplifying decision-making and scaling impact. Thats why I believe it belongs on every CEOs roadmap for 2026.
As CEO of a SaaS company grounded in automation, Ive made it a priority to incorporate agentic AI into our everyday workflows. Here are three ways you can put it to work in your organization.
1. Take the effort out of scheduling
Starting with one of the most basic functions of any organizationand one that can easily become a time and energy vacuumscheduling is perfect fodder for AI agents. And they go well beyond your typical AI-powered scheduling tool.
For starters, theyre adaptable. AI agents can monitor incoming data and requests, proactively adjust schedules, and notify the relevant parties when issues arise. Lets say your team has a standing brainstorming session every Wednesday and a new client reaches out to request an intro meeting at the same time. Your agent can automatically respond with alternative time slots. On the other hand, if a client needs to connect on a time-sensitive issue, your agent can elevate the request to a human employee to decide whether rescheduling makes sense.
You can also personalize AI agents based on your unique needs and priorities, including past interactions. If, for example, your agent learns that you religiously protect time for deep-focus work first thing in the morning, it wont keep proposing meetings then.
By delegating scheduling tasks, organizationsfrom the CEO to internsfree up time for higher-level priorities and more meaningful work. You can build your own agent, or get started with a ready-to-use scheduling assistant that offers agentic capabilities, like Reclaim.ai.
2. Facilitate idea generation and innovation
When we talk about AI and creativity, the conversation often stirs anxiety about artificial intelligence replacing human creativity. But agentic AI can help spark ideas for engagement, leadership development, and strategic initiatives. The goal is to cultivate the conditions in which these initiatives can thrive, not to replace the actual brainstorming or strategic thinking.
For example, you can create an ideation-focused AI agent and train it on relevant organizational contextperformance data, KPIs, meeting notes, employee engagement data, culture touch points, and more. Your agent can continuously gather new information and update its internal knowledge.
When the time comes for a brainstorming or strategy session (which the agent can also proactively prompt), it can draw on this working organizational memory plus any other resources it can access, and tap generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to generate themes, propose topics, and help guide the discussion. Meanwhile, leaders remain focused on evaluating ideas, decision-making, and execution.
3. Error-free progress updates and year-end recaps
While generative AI can be incredibly powerful, the issue remains that it is largely reactive, not proactive. When it comes to tracking performance, team KPIs, and organizational progress, manual check-ins are still required. As Ive written before, manual tasks are subject to human error. Calendar alerts go unnoticed. Things slip through the cracks. Minor problems become big issues.
One solution is to design an AI agent that can autonomously monitor your organizations performance. Continuous, real-time oversight helps ensure processes run smoothly and that issues are flagged as soon as they arise. For example, if your company sells workout gear and sees a postNew Year surge in fitness resolutionsand demand for a specific productan agent can track sales patterns and alert the team to inventory shortages. An AI agent can also independently generate reports, including year-end recaps that are critical for continued growth.
Rather than waiting to be prompted by a human, they can do the work alone and elevate only the issues that require human judgment.
Agents have the potential to create real value for organizations. Importantly, leaders have to rethink workflows so AI agents are meaningfully integrated, fully liberating employees from rote, manual tasks and freeing them to focus on more consequential, inspiring work like strategy and critical thinking. Ive found this leaves employees more energized, and the benefits continue to compound.
When people complain about a lack of work-life balance, theyre typically feeling that they are spending too much time working. They may be spending a lot of combined time at the office and commuting, or just putting in a lot of hours both at work and at home.
Fixing that problem cant be done abstractly, though. If youre going to address the balance of work and life activities, you have to start getting specific about where your time is going and where you really want it to go.
Think about how you’re spending your time. At work, youre spending time in meetings, writing documents, engaging with clients, or doing particular technical tasks like coding. Similarly, your non-work life consists of other activities like going to the gym, spending time with family, going to concerts, or reading a novel for pleasure.
Start by taking a look at where your time is going right now. If you keep a good work calendar, then flip through a few weeks and track the hours youre spending on different tasks. If you dont have a good record of the time youre spending at work, then start logging the time spent on different work tasks.
How much of the time youre spending on work tasks is really necessary? Are there activities that are discretionary that you could replace with something else (potentially a non-work something else)? Are you wasting time shifting among tasks or doing other things inefficiently?
Perhaps more importantly, you also need to think more clearly about what activities should go in your life bin. What are the activities or hobbies you wish you had more time for? Who are the people you want to spend more time with? You spend time on specific work tasks, because those end up on your calendar. You have to define life specifically enough that it ends up on your calendar as well.
Then, create a calendar that includes both work events and life events. Dont just log your meetings, tasks (and commute time), but also time for working with your kids on their homework, going on a date with your partner, hanging out with friends, going to the gym, or reading a book. It may seem like micromanaging your life to start scheduling these personal events, but if you dont start doing things differently, the balance of the way you spend your time is not going to change.
This approach also helps you to recognize when your work responsibilities have become overwhelming. If you truly dont have the time to do any of your life activities, then your job may be asking too much of you. Sit down with your supervisor or a mentor and talk through what youre currently doing at work. Ask for help prioritizing tasks so that you have more opportunities to do other things that are important to you. Your supervisor might even change some of your responsibilities to make the load more manageable in a reasonable amount of time.
Ultimately, by scheduling the time for these life activities (and actually doing them), you are shifting your habits to include more regular life activities. You wont necessarily have to create a specific calendar for your life forever. As you start engaging in more non-work activities, that will shift the nature of your daily and weekly routine in ways that are likely to become self-sustaining.
TikTok agreed to settle a landmark social media addiction lawsuit just before the trial kicked off, the plaintiffs attorneys confirmed.
The social video platform was one of three companies along with Metas Instagram and Googles YouTube facing claims that their platforms deliberately addict and harm children. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum.
Details of the settlement with TikTok were not disclosed, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials KGM, whose case could determine how thousands of other similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury and what damages, if any, may be awarded, said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
A lawyer for the plaintiff said in a statement Tuesday that TikTok remains a defendant in the other personal injury cases, and that the trial will proceed as scheduled against Meta and YouTube.
Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum.
KGM claims that her use of social media from an early age addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Importantly, the lawsuit claims that this was done through deliberate design choices made by companies that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits. This argument, if successful, could sidestep the companies’ First Amendment shield and Section 230, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms.
Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue, the lawsuit says.
Executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the trial, which will last six to eight weeks. Experts have drawn similarities to the Big Tobacco trials that led to a 1998 settlement requiring cigarette companies to pay billions in health care costs and restrict marketing targeting minors.
Plaintiffs are not merely the collateral damage of Defendants products, the lawsuit says. They are the direct victims of the intentional product design choices made by each Defendant. They are the intended targets of the harmful features that pushed them into self-destructive feedback loops.
The tech companies dispute the claims that their products deliberately harm children, citing a bevy of safeguards they have added over the years and arguing that they are not liable for content posted on their sites by third parties.
Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies, Meta said in a recent blog post. “But this oversimplifies a serious issue. Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, and trends regarding teens’ well-being aren’t clear-cut or universal. Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research and the many stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges and substance abuse.”
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement Monday the company strongly disagrees with the allegations outlined in the lawsuit and that it’s confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.
José Castaeda, a Google spokesperson, said Monday that the allegations against YouTube are simply not true. In a statement, he said Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work.”
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The case will be the first in a slew of cases beginning this year that seek to hold social media companies responsible for harming children’s mental well-being. A federal bellwether trial beginning in June in Oakland, California, will be the first to represent school districts that have sued social media platforms over harms to children.
In addition, more than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it is harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. The majority of cases filed their lawsuits in federal court, but some sued in their respective states.
TikTok also faces similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states.
By Kaitlyn Huamani and Barbara Ortutay, AP technology writers
The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.
But an edited and realistic image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noems account posted the original image from Levy Armstrong’s arrest before the official White House account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis
However, the White Houses use of artificial intelligence has troubled misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or edited images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust.
In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White House officials doubled down on the post, with deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the memes will continue. White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking the criticism.
David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University, says calling the altered image a meme certainly seems like an attempt to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated media. He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems much more ambiguous than the cartoonish images the administration has shared in the past.
Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders. AI-enhanced or edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House uses to engage the segment of Trumps base that spends a lot of time online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm.
People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it as a meme, he said. Your grandparents may see it and not understand the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or grandkids about it.
All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral, said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White Houses social media team.
The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they are shared by credible sources, crystallizes an idea of whats happening, instead of showing what is actually happening, said Michael A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media literacy researcher.
The government should be a place where you can trust the information, where you can say its accurate, because they have a responsibility to do so,” he said. “By sharing this kind of content, and creating this kind of content it is eroding the trust even though Im always kind of skeptical of the term trust but the trust we should have in our federal government to give us accurate, verified information. Its a real loss, and it really worries me a lot.
Spikes said he already sees the institutional crises around distrust in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from official channels inflames those issues.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the Utopias podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for trustable information. AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence, he said.
Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, like policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to algorithmically privilege extreme and conspiratorial content which AI generation tools can create with ease weve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.
An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, protests, and interactions with citizens has already been proliferating on social media. After Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.
Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are likely coming from accounts that are engagement farming,” or looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular keywords and search terms like ICE. But he also said the videos are getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be watching them as fan fiction, or engaging in wishful thinking, hoping that they’re seeing real pushback against the organizations and their officers.
Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers can’t tell if what they’re watching is fake, and questions whether they would know “whats real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes are a lot higher.”
Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the best-case scenario would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying enough attention to register the use of AI.
This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will only become more commonplace.
Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a solution.The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has developed such a system, but Carrasco doesnt think that will become extensively adopted for at least another year.
Its going to be an issue forever now, he said. I dont think people understand how bad this is.
Kaitlyn Huamani, AP technology writer
Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.
Sales reps, business owners and recruiters are documenting their cold calls online and cashing in on the viral content.
Cold calling has existed as long as the telephone: Its a sales technique where a representative for a company calls an individual unsolicited to attempt to hook them with their sales pitch in the first 30 seconds or less. Some say cold calling is dead in 2026, as people pick up the phone less and less due to the increase in spam and AI bots on the other end of the line.
But these days, if your phone incessantly buzzes with endless sales calls, answer at your own riskyou might end up going viral on TikTok.
Across the social media platform, sales reps create compilations of clips from the weeks calls, complete with the headset, standing desk and lively salesperson energy. Some test out different openers live on camera to varying results. Others document the blunt interactions or unconventional strategies for viral content.
One content creator and life insurance salesman, Juliano Massarelli, who has gained notoriety online refers to himself as The Wolf of Insurance. The 18-year-olds most popular cold call to date has over 16.3 million views. In between hang ups, he bounces around his bedroom, embodying Jordan Belfort-esque energy.
In another video, with 5 million views, Massarelli is shirtless and flexing in front of the camera before hitting the call button. After the woman hangs up less than a minute in, rather than be disheartened, he hits play on the music and dances at his desk. Massarellis boundless enthusiasm is so infectious, some have since parodied his content.
Unfortunately this is the sales attitude you need, one person commented.
This is at a time when a lot has been made of Gen Zs general aversion to phones. Almost a third report having phone anxiety at work, according to recent research from Trinity College London. Still, for those who work in sales, mastering the art of the cold call is non-negotiable, even in the year 2026. Other sales reps online choose to lean into the funny side of the incessant rejection that comes with the job.
Would it absolutely ruin your day if I told you this was a cold call, one sales rep opens with in a viral video. Yes, the person responds. OKthen I just wont tell you its a cold call, he swiftly replies.
Quick question: do you wanna hear what Im selling, or no? he tries in another video. The answer this time, is surprisingly yes.
Its an undisputed fact: most people dont enjoy getting unexpected phone calls and many simply wont give cold callers the time of day. Still, over 50% of B2B leads still originate from cold calling in 2025, according to a recent report from lead generation company Martal.AI. Almost half of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted via phone first, and 82% accept meetings from cold outreach, the report found.
And for the times cold callers get rejected, posting the clips online creates a feedback loop for promoting their products, businesses, or just themselves, to an audience of millions, whilst simultaneously cashing in on the viral content.
Here, every no really is one step closer to a yes.
When Stephen Smith started NOCD 11 years ago, he wanted to build an app for people like himselfone of the nearly 3 million Americans with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)to track their symptoms and time their therapy exercises.
Since 2018, NOCD (pronounced “No-CD”) has provided virtual appointments with therapists specializing in OCD-focused exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. With more than 140 million people able to access NOCD through their insurance, the company currently provides at least 1 million therapy sessions annually.
Now, NOCDlast valued at nearly $270 million in 2024, according to PitchBookis making an acquisition and forming a parent brand that will position it as the largest telehealth provider of specialty therapy.
The company on Tuesday announced its acquisition of Rebound Health, a self-guided mental health platform focused on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma. The dealthe financial terms of which weren’t disclosedtook place in November 2025.
Starting today, both companies will operate under Noto, a parent brand that takes its name from the AI-powered software platform that has fueled NOCD’s growth.
Rebound’s specialized focus on PTSD and trauma care will be integrated into Noto’s platform, which Smith says will help both companies reach more patients and expedite the process of getting them support.
A common pairing
In 2022, Smith and his team noticed there was a significant subset of NOCD users who suffered from both OCD and PTSD. Those individuals, he says, benefit from a treatment called prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, which asks patients to confront memories in order to process them.
Like ERP, PE is an exposure-based method of treatment, so NOCD trained about 100 of its 1,000 therapists to specialize in PE therapy.
By 2025, Smith felt confident that PE had proven effective and useful for NOCDs patient base. We saw that that segment [of therapists] was delivering best-in-class outcomes, he says. Given the results, he felt a need to scale the treatment as quickly as possible.
That’s where Rebound Health comes in. Founded in 2023, the company focuses on PTSD and trauma, and has primarily supported patients when a therapist is not immediately available to them due to timing or cost.
Under Noto, it will launch Rebound Therapy, a live therapy offering that will be available in the next two months. Noto is in the process of working with payers to enroll patients in Rebound Therapy, and the service should be available to most Rebound and NOCD users as a covered benefit sometime this year.
Revving a growth engine
With the Rebound acquisition expanding NOCD’s scope, Smith wanted to create a parent brand that highlights the technology that has helped the company grow to the point that it logged its first quarter of positive cash flow last year.
Noto is essentially the engine of the NOCD vehicle, he says. Through awareness campaigns that target both consumers and providers, Noto is able to identify patients who have OCD but may have been misdiagnosed and miscoded in a medical system, then enroll them in a NOCD care plan.
Noto’s data also showed that offering PE therapy to NOCD patients experiencing PTSD resulted in long-term improvement in their mental health.
When looking for the right business to help scale NOCD’s PE capabilities, Smith says Rebound stood out because CEO Raeva Kumar has personal experience with PTSD, and her cofounder and chief product officer, Erin Berenz, has clinical experience treating the disorder. Smith says the two saw the acquisition as an opportunity to get live therapy to their users.
“With Noto, we’re able to easily work with payers, enroll hard-to-engage members, and disseminate gold-standard trauma therapy,” Kumar said in a press release about the acquisition.
[Rebound] realized that they could offer scale therapy in a much shorter amount of time on the Noto infrastructure, because we already had it all built, Smith says, suggesting Noto may add more therapy areas as it grows. “We built this incredible foundation serving a complex, hidden, but treatable population. In the future, we realize there could be more.”
For decades, the discussion around organic farming has centered on important tenets of sustainability, environmental health, animal welfare, and a vision for food that heals rather than harms. But in Americas fields today, a different conversation is taking root and is grounded in profits. With new economic data and over 40 years of side-by-side comparisons between organic and conventional systems, we can now confidently say that organic is no longer just a values-driven choice; its the most profitable model available to U.S. farmers.
At Rodale Institute, the latest Economics of Organic report examines farm-level data across crops, regions, and production systems. The findings show diversified, certified organic farms consistently outperform conventional operations on net income, even when organic yields are modestly lower. In a sector squeezed by volatile input prices and climate risk, organic offers what farmers rarely get: predictable premiums and stronger long-term margins.
How is this possible? Organic corn, wheat, and soybeans earn price premiums ranging from roughly 145% to 250% over conventional counterparts, according to FINBIN data gathered between 2016 and 2020. Even after accounting for higher labor and management costs, organic producers net significantly more income per bushel. In many cases, conventional production results in a net economic loss, while organic systems remain profitable.
ROOTED IN RESEARCH
This is grounded in more than 40 years of side-by-side research from Rodale Institutes Farming Systems Trial, the longest-running comparison of organic and conventional agriculture in North America. Over time, organic systems yield results comparable to those of traditional systems for crops like corn and wheat, while reducing exposure to increasingly volatile fertilizer and chemical input costs. That cost stability matters when synthetic inputs swing dramatically in price, as they have in recent years.
The market now exceeds $70 billion annually in U.S. organic food sales and continues to grow faster than the overall food market, bolstering the business case for organic practices. Organic production generates nearly 3% of total U.S. farm revenue on just 1% of all farmland. More than half of organic food is sold through mainstream retailers like Walmart and Target, providing clear evidence that organic is no longer a niche category, but a core segment of the modern food economy.
In my new book, The Farm is Here, I explore what is driving this surge. A key aspect of this growth is the exploding demand for products with trusted certifications. In the past year, sales of Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) products rose 22%, according to SPINS CEO Jay Margolis, and other sustainability certifications are outpacing the rest of the market. For todays shoppers, certifications are symbols of trust that guide decisions in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Consumer demand is only part of the story. Capital is following returns. Impact investors, farmland real estate investment trusts, specialty lenders, and conservation finance groups have deployed hundreds of millions of dollars into organic and regenerative operations. These investors arent solely driven by ideology; but theyre responding to a business model that delivers durable margins, diversified revenue streams, and growing demand. Together, these numbers point to a simple conclusion: organic has crossed the threshold from specialty category to economically material market.
THE NEXT GENERATION OF FARMERS
Equally important is who is choosing to farm this way. USDA census data shows a 7% increase in farmers under 45, many of whom are rejecting the subsidy-dependent industrial model in favor of smaller, diversified, organic operations. An analysis of the USDA census data shows that 2,000 U.S. farms are currently transitioning to organic. For the next generation, organic is not a lifestyle choice, but a strategy for avoiding high-input debt, reducing exposure to price volatility, and building viable operations at smaller scales.
That doesnt mean the transition is effortless. The three-year certification period, when farmers adopt organic practices before earning full price premiums, can strain cash flow. But risk-mitigation tools are expanding. USDA cost-share programs, conservation incentives, organic-specific crop insurance, and emerging transitional labels are reducing financial exposure. When these tools are aligned, the economic risk of transition drops significantly.
The broader takeaway is that organic agriculture offers a viable economic pathway for rebuilding resilience in American farming. It reduces dependence on volatile inputs, aligns production with consumer demand, and opens the door for new farmers without locking them into unsustainable debt structures.
At a moment when policymakers are searching for ways to strengthen rural economies, investors are looking for climate-resilient assets, and consumers are voting with their dollars, organic agriculture sits at the intersection of profitability and purpose.
The question is no longer whether organic farming can scale economically. The data shows it already has. The real question is whether we will invest, finance, and design agricultural systems that will allow more farmers to succeed.
Jeff Tkach is CEO of Rodale Institute.
U.S. consumer confidence declined sharply in January, hitting the lowest level since 2014 as Americans grow increasingly concerned about their financial prospects.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index cratered 9.7 points to 84.5 in January, falling below even the lowest readings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A measure of Americans short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market tumbled 9.5 points to 65.1, well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. Its the 12th consecutive month that reading has come in under 80.
Consumers assessments of their current economic situation slid by 9.9 points to 113.7.
Confidence collapsed in January, as consumer concerns about both the present situation and expectations for the future deepened, said Dana Peterson, the Conference Boards chief economist. All five components of the index deteriorated, driving the overall index to its lowest level since May 2014 surpassing its COVID19 pandemic depths.
Respondents references to inflation, including gas and grocery prices, remained elevated. Mentions of tariffs and trade, politics, and the labor market also rose in January as did comments about health insurance and war.
Perceptions of the job market also declined this month.
The conference boards survey reported that 23.9% of consumers said jobs were plentiful, down from 27.5% in December. Also, 20.8% of consumers said jobs were hard to get, up from 19.1% the month previous.
The countrys labor market has been stuck in a low hire, low fire state, economists say, as businesses stand pat due to uncertainty over Trumps tariffs and the lingering effects of elevated interest rates.
Earlier this month, the government reported that employers added just 50,000 jobs in December, nearly unchanged from 56,000 in November. The unemployment rate is 4.4%.
Job gains have been subdued all year, particularly after Aprils liberation day tariff announcement by Trump. The economy gained just 584,000 jobs in 2025, sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024.
The dramatic drop on confidence is a direct result of the hiring recession, said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. The fact that 2025 was the weakest year for job gains outside of a recession since 2003 is not going over well with the middle class.
This is a warning sign to policymakers that they need to focus on affordability and reviving hiring in 2026, Long added.
The softening job market comes even as the U.S. economy keeps growing, often beyond projections.
Powered by strong consumer spending, the U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in two years from July through September, according to the governments latest estimate.
Matt Ott, AP business writer
Amazon will double down on the Whole Foods brand, killing two of its own physical retail experiments in the process.
The online retail giant said Tuesday that it will close all of its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores. In total, around 70 locations across the two sub-brands will close starting at the beginning of February, with some to later reopen under the Whole Foods brand.
Amazon Fresh stores served as a physical counterpart to Amazons online grocery delivery service by the same name while Amazon Go stores offered convenience store staples with a high-tech checkout twist.
After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, weve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon wrote in a blog update, adding that it gathered valuable insights during their operation.
The Amazon brand might take a back seat in its brick-and-mortar strategy, but the retail giants IRL ambitions remain. Amazon also announced plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores over the next few years. When the latest Go and Fresh store closures are wrapped up, Amazons network of Whole Foods stores will serve as the companys only physical retail footprint at least for now.
With the closures, Amazon is backing off of its long experiment with Fresh and Go physical retail stores, which tested emerging retail technology and pushed its brand into new shopping categories.
Amazon Go was known for allowing shoppers to pick up what they wanted and Just Walk Out instead of individually scanning items in a traditional checkout counter. That system, which relied on sensors and overhead cameras to track what shoppers purchased and linking it to their accounts digitally.
While Amazon once held an ambitious roadmap for a vast network of physical stores centered around its Just Walk Out technology, the company has scaled back consistently in recent years. In 2018, Amazon was reportedly planning to open up to 3,000 cashierless stores running the technology over the next three years. By early 2026, Amazon Go was down to just 14 stores.
The high cost of outfitting stores with a sophisticated array of sensors eventually dimmed those ambitions, with the company backtracking to a system that lets customers scan items to smart carts as they shop. Amazon now licenses the Just Walk Out technology out to third parties, including a number of merch, food and beverage locations in Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks.
Amazon is still tinkering around with ways to bring its digital storefront into the physical shopping realm. Even as it rolls back some smaller-scale retail plans, Amazon clearly still wants to take a bite out of the everyday shopping and grocery success that brands like Walmart and Costco enjoy.
As soon as next year, Amazon plans to open its first massive, big box-style store stocked with home goods, groceries and prepared food in the Chicago area. Its purpose-built for what we see retail customers demand today, an Amazon lawyer told local officials, who went on to greenlight the project last week.
