Vilsack Advocates for a Different Approach to Farm Policy

In a speech at a rural communities event at the White House, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack delivered a farm policy history lesson. The USDA leader said the United States moved away from supply management in the 1970s to a model that encouraged farmers to plant fencerow-to-fencerow. “Since 1981 when Bob Bergland of Minnesota was Secretary of Agriculture and raised concerns about this, we’ve lost 544,970 farms,” said Vilsack. “That’s every farm today in North Dakota and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado and in Missouri and Oklahoma.” Since the early 1980s, 151 million acres of land that was in farming has been lost. Vilsack said the Biden Administration created an entrepreneurial opportunity for farmers. It includes two components designed to bring more income to the farmer; climate-smart agriculture and local and regional food systems.