Washington, DC — Out-going U.S. Ag Secretary and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack has some suggestions for farmers and others who will lobby Congress about items in the NEXT Farm Bill.
Vilsack says, as a result, corn and soybean farmers from the Midwest were “pitted against” southern farmers who raise cotton and produce sugar as the 2014 Farm Bill was written. Vilsack is urging groups in the farm sector to be more vocal advocates of federal crop insurance subsidies and other U-S-D-A programs that provide grants for rural development. Key members of congress say negotiations on the 2018 Farm Bill could begin later THIS month.
Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, has been the nation’s top ag official for the past eight years. In 1889, Grover Cleveland was the first president to include an agriculture secretary in his cabinet. There have been 30 ag secretaries since then, five of whom came from Iowa. “Tama Jim” Wilson served three presidents, from 1898 to 1913. Edwin Meredith, the founder of the Des Moines-based Meredith publishing company, served a year in President Wilson’s cabinet. Henry C. Wallace and his son, Henry A. Wallace, also did stints as the country’s agriculture secretary during the last century.
