Tom Vilsack wants to save Rural America. Seriously.
Revitalizing small communities and getting agriculture ready for climate change is at the heart of Joe Biden's $2 trillion climate plan.
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At 70-years-old with two terms as Iowa’s governor and eight years as Secretary of Agriculture under Obama behind him, Tom Vilsack is nobody’s idea of a progressive. In fact, he is so not progressive that Sen. Bernie Sanders joined with a handful of Republicans to vote against his confirmation as Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture yesterday. Some activists complain that he is too cozy with the big agriculture companies. Others say he has been too tough on loans to black farmers.
Regardless, he is about to lead the most radical Washington reset of American farm policies in decades in an attempt to reverse the decline of rural America through a focus on sustainability and climate change.
“I think we are faced with a number of ‘why not’ opportunities and moments in agriculture and the food industry. There is an opportunity for us to create new markets, incentives for soil health, for carbon sequestration, for methane capture and reuse, by building a rural economy based on biomanufacturing, protecting our forests, turning waste material into new chemicals and materials and fabrics and fibers—creating more jobs in rural America, creating more farm income stability and also reducing emissions.”
Vilsack has pledged to meet the administration’s goal of a net-zero-carbon economy by 2050 and suggested that he might use the same authority his predecessor Sonny Purdue employed with the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corporation to funnel $50 billion in direct payments to farmers affected by trade wars with China, to instead encourage a transformation of agriculture and food systems based on sustainability and climate resiliency.
It won’t be easy. The next farm bill won’t be before Congress for another two years and the existing farm bill actually penalizes farmers who invest in conservation practices by incentivizing production over conservation. Doing the right thing for the environment can be costly at a time when farmers are already suffering because of low commodity prices and tariffs.
Vilsack has pledged to reverse that reality by using his authority to greatly expand payments to farmers for conservation and help create carbon markets in which polluters essentially pay farmers to plant grass or trees instead of corn or soybeans.
This is relatively new territory for Vilsack who seems to have had a come-to-Jesus moment on the subject of agriculture’s role in tackling climate change since he last held the role. The notions of carbon sequestration and resilient farming have come a long way in public consciousness over the past few years.
Farm country has been jolted by the pandemic and its severe impact on food processing plants, a Southwest drought, and more frequent extreme weather events. Midwest flooding claimed tens of thousands of acres in 2019. A 140-mph derecho roared through Iowa and Illinois last summer, destroying more than 14 million acres of crops.
At the same time, the big agriculture companies like General Mills, Kellogg and Cargill have discovered that their customers really do care about climate, and chemical-free farming and sustainable practices.
Vilsack has, at least for the moment, the blessing of the top agribusiness associations like the American Farm Bureau Federation, which is headed by the memorably named, Zippy Duvall who said in a statement:
“Advocating for the right policies—voluntary, market- and incentive-based solutions—will allow us to build on our sustainability advances and recognize farmers as partners in this effort while helping to prevent a move toward the punitive policies discussed a decade ago.”
Translated into plainer language, Duvall is serving notice that farmers expect to get paid for climate-change initiatives but not if it eats into their traditional crop subsidies. The USDA currently spends from $10 billion to $15 billion a year on farm supports, including $7 billion to $8 billion on crop and dairy subsidies and around $6 billion for land stewardship.
Chuck Connor, president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said it more directly:
“You cannot do climate on the backs of the American farmer. They just simply don’t have the resources for that.”
Vilsack’s challenge will be jumpstarting Biden’s agricultural climate agenda before there is a new farm bill—and new money—to pay for it. That’s where the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation may come into play.
One of the most interesting ideas floating around is to make direct payments to farmers for adopting carbon-capturing practices that might focus on five categories of practices that would generate collateral environmental and social benefits:
…conservation tillage; keeping roots in the ground all year (like using cover crops); using livestock for environmental services like managed grazing; adding crops into rotations; and producing renewable energy.
While acknowledging that the combustion engine is not going away immediately, Vilsack said that biomass stoking hydrogen fuel production or electricity could replace the 40 percent of corn acres now planted for ethanol—and farmers could earn at least five times as much. He sees technical jobs in wind and solar energy replacing mining and fracking jobs. He believes bringing battery production back from Asia to the U.S. could help save old manufacturing towns. He has a plan to bring more broadband into the heartland.
The political logic behind Biden’s choice of the moderate Vilsack for USDA secretary over the more progressive Marcia Fudge is obvious. Overwhelmingly white Rural America has grown overwhelmingly Republican over the past few decades as the perception has grown that Democrats are more concerned about issues like racial justice and equality for people of color, “socialist” ideas like paying off student loans, and nebulous notions about climate change they aren’t really sure exists than they are about the day-to-day struggles of the white majorities in small-town America.
There is just enough truth to those charges to make rural white Americans resist change even when what they’re doing now is clearly not working. Overcoming those perceptions and reinforcing the idea that all Americans matter—after four of the most divisive years in our history—will not be easy but building a public and private partnership that brings together citizens, politicians and businesses to tackle real problems is a job that Tom Vilsack has been training for all his life. Let’s hope he succeeds. Make moderation cool again.
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I had a senior moment and hit the "publish" button a little early on the Vilsack post last night. "Martha" Fudge is, of course, "Marcia" Fudge and Trump spent 50 "billion," not 50 "million" bribing farmers. You can view the corrected version at https://earthwatch.substack.com/p/tom-vilsack-wants-to-save-rural-america My apologies.