Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., in separate speeches today urged members of the United Fresh Produce Association to tell Congress to end the shutdown and pass the farm bill and immigration reform.

Vilsack told the produce growers and executives, who are meeting in Washington this week and headed to Capitol Hill later this afternoon, that it is their patriotic duty to speak frankly to members of Congress.

“Have you had enough of this?” Vilsack asked, adding, “It shouldn’t be just polite conversation. As patriots you have a responsibility to knock some sense into folks up there.”

After speaking of the need for immigration reform, Vilsack added, “We need certainty of workforce but also certainty of policy. That requires Congress to get its work done.”

“It’s time to say the silliness is over,” Vilsack said. “This uncertainty, this ideological tussle they are having has real-life consequences.”

Wedding ceremonies in the national forests and parks scheduled for this weekend will have to be rearranged, parents who are expecting packages under the special nutrition assistance program for women, infants and children known as WIC won’t get them soon, and farmers cannot sign up for the Conservation Reserve Program, Vilsack noted.

Adding that the preservation of the rural value is system is at stake, Vilsack said, “Cabinet secretaries, presidents can only do so much — it is time that you assume that responsibility to make sure that government works.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Vilsack that “it is very frustrating” that the farm bill has expired and the shutdown has occurred on the same day. He added that his mother had taught him the serenity prayer — God, help me to change the things I can, accept the things I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference — but that he knows that farmers will have more of an impact on Congress now than he will.

If the produce growers “think of themselves as patriots they damn well need to go up to the Hill,” he said. His message to Agriculture Department workers, who are on the job today only to tidy up their work and put on messages that they are not available during the government shutdown, is that “we value you.”

Stabenow, after detailing all the work done on the farm bill over the last three years, said, “I hope you will go forward and express that we need to get back to governing and we need to get things done.”

Of the budget impasse and the shutdown, Stabenow said, “It is difficult to understand what is happening even for me and I am in the middle of it,” but that it is her analysis that “a group of folks came to Washington, a minority of the minority who really have come here to shut government down. They are happy they have done it.”

She noted that Congress is “arguing” over a six-week agreement to fund the government, “not a full budget, not the larger issue of full faith and credit” of the country.

She said the Senate has already compromised by being willing to making the agreement a month long and by making the dollar amount in the extension of the budget the amount requested by the House majority rather than the larger amount the Senate wanted.

“As someone who negotiated to pass a farm bill with a two-thirds majority,” Stabenow said, she knows “This is not the way to do things.”

As Vilsack left, United Fresh President Tom Stenzel said, “It’s time for us to be patriots.”

Stenzel also warned the members, who visit Capitol Hill every year, “to be prepared for a different type of feel today.” But he also urged them to try to bring up immigration reform.

Stenzel also noted that the shutdown has forced United Fresh to move its Fresh Festival later today from a Capitol Hill cafeteria to the Hyatt Regency. The event, which showcases fruits and vegetables produced by members, is usually attended by some members and hundreds of congressional staff.