Inside D.C.

Relevant advice, Mr. Secretary

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack presented a pretty good speech to the Farm Journal Forum here in Washington, DC, last week. Buried within the cheerleading for newly reelected President Obama and the recounting of USDA’s achievements of the last four years were a couple of nuggets in need of further discussion.

First, Vilsack says rural America and its dwindling “relevance to the politics of this country” is a major reason we don’t have a 2012 Farm Bill ready to go come the New Year. By “relevance” the Secretary cites the 16% of the U.S. population living in rural communities, and using USDA math, translating that to 16% of elected representatives represent rural America; 84% don’t.

I don’t think the fate of the 2012 Farm Bill is so much a factor of “relevance” as it is numbers, as in cost. In my mind, not since now-Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS), then Rep. Pat Roberts, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, force fed “Freedom to Farm” to his colleagues, have we had a Farm Bill in either chamber so chock-a-block with significant change in conventional thinking. I contend we’d have a Farm Bill with a presidential signature affixed had House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) laid his own personal opinions of farm bills aside, gotten out of the way – taking Majority Leader Eric Cantor with him – and let the House work its collective will last summer.

Vilsack also said, “We’ve got something to market here. We’ve got something to be proactive about.” And then he called for a “good fight, a strategic fight and one that’s worth fighting for,” chiding those who criticize “strategic” decisions like the UEP-HSUS alliance on egg layer cage sizes – obviously he believes this is a good idea – and wrapping all of it under the rubric of “embracing diversity” of opinion and acknowledging “that guy has got a point.”

I agree generally with the Secretary’s statements. Broadly, diversity has value in bringing the new and different to the table, so embracing that value makes sense. However, there are no absolutes in diversity, and just as with conventional thinking folks come up with a whole lot of bad ideas, diverse as they may be.  Such diversity requires both objective and subjective evaluation.  And, let’s not forget, it’s rare that opinions 180 degrees apart wind up reconciled.

Agriculture is trying, in its own scattershot way, to be proactive, and fundamentally it’s for the very same reasons Vilsack cites in his remarks. Quite rightly, farming/ranching, processing and retailing are trying to rebuild consumer appreciation for food production and the folks who do what they do as well as they do for the benefit of the rest of us. However, those messages aren’t resonating as they should because they’re not focused, get deflected by critics, drowned out by the issue of the day, and not echoed by the trusted powers that be, including USDA.

Later in his speech, Vilsack restated his premise: “I want you to think about this, a proactive message, fight strategic fights, not fighting agriculture, one kind of agriculture against another.”  Are you listening, my friends in organics?

Perhaps someone’s trying to redress their perception of an imbalance, but it’s apparent to me that based upon the amount of time, manpower, ink, paper and electrons USDA expends promoting organic production, natural production, farmers markets, local production, unpopular school lunch mandates, and just about any system that isn’t conventional agriculture, the majority of U.S. farmers and ranchers also may lack certain relevance within USDA’s and the Administration’s “proactive” messaging agenda.

I understand USDA’s constituency includes all of the American public, no matter their dietary habits or philosophy. I also understand some believe USDA is all about Big Ag, but when push comes to shove, food production of all stripes is what the department is primarily about. That proactive messaging the Secretary wants to hear to keep young people in rural America is needed, but equally needed is as much and the same kind of USDA cheerleading for conventional agriculture – if only an echoing of rural community messaging – as there is for “buy local,” organics, broadband access, biofuels and the priming of the export machine.

There’s nothing more relevant to every man, woman and child in the U.S. than food or the lack thereof. USDA can help farmers and ranchers remind folks of that fact.