Opinion: Vilsack finally acknowledges UDSA's failings, but seems not to recognize that there are two rural Americas

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, left, at a beef processing plant
in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Josh Funk, The Associated Press)

While this year's Farm Bill debate takes shape, commentators Bryce Oates and Jake Davis take Deparment of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's "sales pitch" to task in their opinion for The Daily Yonder.

"Vilsack says he will help make the case for additional local food, climate change, and conservation investments," Oates and Davis write. "His advice is to frame the debate around a basic question: 'Do we want a system that benefits the few, or do we want a system that benefits the many and most? . . . There’s got to be a system in which the many and most have a fair shot.' . . . While there are certainly strong points to Vilsack’s public-relations strategy — particularly the acknowledgment that USDA has done a poor job of supporting anyone but the largest and most wealthy row-crop and livestock operations — the rhetoric fails to resonate with the realities of life in the trenches for many of us doing farm-and-food-system reform work."

The lack of policy depth is a problem, they write: "Vilsack’s 'We support farmers of all sizes' balancing act fails to address the very real and interrelated issues of corporate control over markets, manure pollution from industrial livestock factories, continued increases in climate emissions from agriculture, and massive economic inequities between government support of farming operations. Vilsack is talking a big game but failing to deliver the actual policies that will get to the root of key farm and food system challenges."

In the meat of it, they opine: "After a decade of experience on the job, Vilsack finally gets the problem right. But once again, he is getting the politics for the solutions all wrong. Whether he wants to admit it or not, there are two rural Americas. There are the chosen few in every community currently thriving in the corporate-dominated system — primarily those same commodity producers that continue to be propped up by federal farm policy —and then there is everyone else."

What are some solutions? "Without serious reforms, Wall Street investors will continue to press for more giant farms dependent on low-wage workers increasingly difficult to hire," Oates and Davis write. "The rural places we love in farm country will continue to hollow out until little is left of community identity, local institutions, or public services.  . . . Like the thousands of advocates and organizers we regularly work with on farm and rural policy and analysis, it’s time we admit that the Vilsack approach is a political loser."

Oates and Davis offer some final thoughts: "There are, of course, many provisions in the Farm Bill we support that could help the majority of rural America, but that would mean reshaping who has the power in our food system. That would mean funding the right tools and opportunities so that rural people have a better life and some kind of vision of a potential economic future. That would mean taking on the Farm Bureau and their allies in the Agribusiness C Suites, the exact kind of place where Secretary Vilsack spends his time between presidential appointments."