Tom Vilsack
SAN ANTONIO — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said here today that he is running out of patience with Congress over inaction on the farm bill, but he declined to provide much direction on the dairy program issue that is delaying completion of the bill.

“My mom used to caution me to have patience,” Vilsack told the American Farm Bureau Federation annual convention. “My mom never met the 2013 Congress. She would have to redefine what patience means.”

“It may be necessary for us to have a wider audience of folks who understand that this farm bill does not just work for producers but for everyone in this country,” Vilsack said.

“One half of the land mass of the United States is impacted by farming and ranching,” he said. “Farming and agriculture represent nearly 5 percent of GDP and 10 percent of American jobs. Sixteen million Americans are employed as a result of what farmers do and 14 percent of manufacturing jobs are related to agriculture.”

“It involves directly the water supplies that Americans depend on in the western United States,” he said.

The new farm bill would provide disaster assistance, he said, adding that it has been “painful” to watch the way producers have had to suffer through drought and other natural disasters since these provisions expired.

Vilsack also warned that if Congress does not act soon, the Congressional Budget Office will re-evaluate the baseline spending levels for agriculture, which could further complicate attempts to finish the bill.

“This is a bill that is important to the country and it needs to be done,” he said.

Vilsack made statements on a wide range of issues today:

Dairy policy

Vilsack did not address the dairy issue in his speech. But at a news conference afterward he signaled he is sensitive to congressional concerns about Obama administration intervention in development of the farm bill.

“We don’t want to dictate to folks what they ought to do,” he said, but added that Congress “ought to be concerned [that we] have lost 50 percent of [dairy] producers.”

Some of that loss of farmers has been due to efficiency, Vilsack said, but he added that it has also been due to the volatility of pricing, which is worse in dairy than in other parts of agriculture.

Vilsack said he believes that the government needs to “kick in and provide assistance” when “the differential” between the cost of production and dairy prices gets too tight.

He said such a system would, like other farm programs, make the risk of agriculture “reasonable.”

Dairy processors have, however, objected to a provision in the Senate-passed proposal that would encourage producers to cut production when prices get too low in relationship to production costs, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called that provision Soviet-style economics.

Vilsack said today that Congress should look for ways “to get the processors out of that mix.”

He noted that when tart cherries get too expensive, the Agriculture Department uses the Commodity Credit Corporation to buy the surplus and stabilize prices.

“There have got to be ways to get there,” Vilsack said, adding “You cannot let one piece of this, as important as it is, overshadow what else will happen.”

Crop insurance

Vilsack said crop insurance and the “flexible revenue protection program” in the new bill will reduce risks for farmers to stay in business.

“Americans generally benefit from that safety net because is a risky business and can be a very expensive business.”

“Farmers have to make a business decision,” Vilsack said. “If farmers do not have the farm bill programs to reduce risk, more and more land will be used for expanding cities and suburbs and more and more food will have to be imported from other places.”

Research

Congressional farm leaders have not released details of the new bill, but Vilsack signaled that they have decided to include a new private agricultural research foundation that was included in the Senate-passed bill but not in the House-passed version.

Brazil and cotton

The new bill, he added, would provide new revenue protection programs and the STAX cotton program that will hopefully stop Brazilians from retaliating over the old U.S. cotton program.

The United States lost a case over the cotton subsidies to Brazil in the World Trade Organization, and Brazil has the right to retaliate.

Brazilian retaliation could be one of the adverse consequences of not passing the bill soon. The Brazilians, Vilsack said, have threatened to go beyond the usual practice of increasing tariffs on the products of a country and release U.S. intellectual property to the world even though it is patented.

The Brazilians are arguing, he said, that they “could seize a formula and make it available to the world. It would be a first-ever situation. This would be a horrible outcome and strain relations significantly.”

King amendment

The amendment sponsored by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, that would forbid a state from banning the sale of a food produced in another state is “not well drafted” and is “confusing” Vilsack said, and if passed as part of the farm bill will be subject to many legal challenges.

“I won’t be secretary” when that amendment would go into effect,” Vilsack noted, adding that the challenges would take years.

Farm bill implementation

Vilsack said he has put Agriculture Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden in charge of implementing the new farm bill.

Although the 1938 and 1949 farm laws are now technically the law of the land, he said “I asked our team to move away from thinking about permanent law to implementing new law — a much more pleasant task.”

Vilsack said he asked Harden to put together a steering committee that will look over all the titles in the bill and set priorities for implementation. The issue, he noted, is that once agencies start writing rules they all send them to the Office of the General Counsel, to USDA’s policy officials and to the Office of Management and Budget.

“Our focus is not on permanent law and won’t be until it appears obvious to me we are not going to have a farm bill,” Vilsack said.

Harden is also in charge of a program to encourage young people to stay in or enter agriculture, he said.

Immigration reform

Vilsack said he has seen “the sad state of producers producing and not being able to harvest. Adding he is also “sad” that some farmers have moved production offshore, he said Congress needs to pass immigration reform to secure the U.S. borders and shore up the Social Security system.

Export promotion and trade negotiations

As a way to emphasize the impact of congressional inaction, Vilsack pointed out in his speech that the Agriculture Department’s authority to promote the export of U.S. food products will expire at the end of January if Congress does not pass a new farm bill by then.

“All of of us appreciate the need to promote exports around the world,” Vilsack said in his speech. “I won’t able to send a trade promotion team out of the country.”

The Obama administration will focus on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, Vilsack said at his news conference. “We will do it in a way that is helpful not harmful to agriculture,” he said.

“If we open our markets others have to open their markets,” Vilsack said, adding that Obama needs trade promotion authority.

Biotech labeling

“People are having a 20th century debate on a 21st century problem,” Vilsack said.

People want to be able to assess whether they want to buy a product, he said, but, “Our concern is that the label may convey a different message, one of uncertainty.”

Multiple state initiatives on labeling also create confusion, he said, adding that he will ask the Food and Drug Administration if it can create a system using production information codes.

Vilsack also said he rejects complaints from the Biotechnology Industry Organization that the Obama administration has been slow with biotech approvals. The administration, he said, cleaned up a backlog of applications from the Bush administration, and charges that other countries have faster approval processes are not true, he said.

“That is a 3-year-old talking point,” he said.

China and GMOs

On his recent trip to China, Vilsack said, he discussed the issue of China’s rejection of U.S. corn shipments and other issues related to genetic modification.

Vilsack said while he emphasized that genetic modification science is beneficial to China, Chinese officials said they are not worried about safety but have to deal with a populace that is suspicious of Western technology. The secretary said he offered to to help the Chinese educate their general population.

He also said he urged that the two countries “synchronize” their regulatory processes At the present time, he said, the United States has to finish its regulatory approval process before the Chinese start theirs. Vilsack said there may be a project to start the two processes simultaneously, although the United States would have to finish its process before the Chinese finish theirs.

Of the rejected shipments, Vilsack said he was told that there was “a significant issue” between the company and the government of China.

Vilsack noted that the Chinese had issued several approvals since his visit, but added that U.S. officials cannot force the Chinese to act.

Water regulation

The Agriculture Department is “engaged in conversations” with Environmental Protection Agency officials about EPA’s proposal to increase the waters of the United States that it can regulate.

Vilsack said it was unfortunate that a draft proposal had been lacking, and said the draft “does not necessarily reflect the position of the EPA.”

Farmer self-image

Vilsack used much of his speech time to make a case that Americans should be grateful to the nation’s farmers — and a case that farmers have to make the rest of the country aware of their contributions.

Farmers need to remind urban and suburban people of how fortunate they are that the United States produces most of its own food, he said, and that consumers have extra flexibility in their paychecks because food is so cheap.

Farmers of all sizes and types, Vilsack added, should have “a common understanding of the connection to the earth, respect for that capacity to grow, and a common wonder every year about how Mother Nature helps or hurts production.”

Noting that he has recently become more interested in his adopted family’s history, Vilsack used his family’s experience to demonstrate why Americans who don’t farm should be grateful to farmers.

Vilsack said he recently learned that his great-grandfather, Jacob Vilsack, was a farmer, apparently in Pennsylvania, who had a son successful enough establish a brewery and other businesses in Pittsburgh.

His son, Vilsack’s father, went into real estate, and his success allowed Vilsack to go to college, become a lawyer and move to Iowa where he practiced and went into politics.

The secretary said he is very aware that “it all started with agriculture” and if it had not been for the productivity of modern agriculture most Americans would still need to be on the farm to produce their own food.

Because farmers — now about 1 percent of the population — produce enough “to feed ourselves and feed the world,” Vilsack noted, “everyone else has the option to live anywhere else and “do what we want to do.”

American farm productivity, he said, “is more than food security, it is more than paycheck flexibility, it is the extra opportunity in this country that you can be what you want to be not just because you have big dreams, but also because farmers are producing food.”

For that freedom, Vilsack said, “farmers should be celebrated and thanked.”


The trade show at the annual American Farm Bureau Federation convention is known for its displays of new tractors and pickups, but this year it also includes a "cyber gray metallic" 2014 Corvette Stingray. The manufacturer's suggested retail price for the all-new sports coupe starts at $51,000. (The Hagstrom Report)