The U.S. Department of Agriculture isn’t just for farmers. It also supports school lunches, broadband internet access in rural areas, and inner-city farmers markets. As Harvest Public Media’s Amy Mayer reports, that diverse mandate fits with the man running it all, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who’s now been on that job longer than anyone since the Nixon administration.
Transcript of audio story:
Amy Mayer: Tom Vilsack grew up in the city--Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Tom Vilsack: If my parents were alive today and knew I was the secretary of agriculture they would think that there was something seriously wrong with the country (chuckles).
Mayer: In college, he met his wife, and after he finished law school they settled in her hometown in rural southeast Iowa.
(train whistle)
As a small town lawyer here in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, during the farm crisis of the 1980s, Vilsack's commitment to rural American was born, and grew.
(whistle, fading out under track)
Early on, he raised money to build ball fields in Iowa. Now, he’s overseeing that kind of development across the country.
Vilsack: I’m very proud of the work that’s been done in rural development, the ability to create a strategy for rebuilding and revitalizing the rural economy.
Mayer: Vilsack has expanded USDA’s support for non-farm programs, such as rural broadband, micro-lending for entrepreneurs and telemedicine. Chris Merrett, director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, says funding for rural development projects started to grow in the ’90s...
Chris Merrett: And, then definitely in the 2008 and the most recent farm bill, we’ve seen, I would say, diversification of the programs that are in that rural development set of initiatives.
Mayer: Funding is still a tiny fraction of the overall farm bill. But in this climate of budget cuts, rural development’s getting a six-fold increase next year. Merrett says that reflects Vilsack’s priorities.
Merrett: He sort of believes in the importance of rural America, farming, yes, but more broadly rural America.
Mayer: Vilsack’s a Democrat, but he’s widely credited with rallying the support that ultimately made the 2014 farm bill one of the few major bipartisan successes in this Congress. That ability to work across party lines doesn’t surprise the folks who knew him back in small-town Iowa.
Paul Dennison: I'd rather he’d been president, quite honestly, and Tom and I are not members of the same political party.
Mayer: That’s Paul Dennison, owner of a local Mt. Pleasant radio station. Dennison has supported Vilsack’s political rise, including his first bid for governor.
Dennison: He needed some money, quite honestly, and I would have given him whatever he asked for.
Mayer: Dennison says of course he’d like to see more federal dollars coming into Mt. Pleasant. But Vilsack does maintain ties to this community.
(stoking the wood stove)
Near Mt. Pleasant, Kurt Garretson stokes a wood stove in the farm house on one of the oldest continuously operated family farms in Iowa. USDA programs have helped him put in a new pond and also support his interest in specialty crops like elderberries and grapes.
Kurt Garretson: I ran for political office two years ago and I mean, they donated to my campaign, I didn’t even ask them they just, you know they did that.
Mayer: Like the Vilsacks, Garretson’s a Democrat in Republican territory.
Garretson: And whenever he would come through they were always willing to do photo shoots and were always very friendly.
Vilsack: You really feel a bond and you feel a debt to the people who give you these opportunities. And so this position gives me a chance to continue to repay that debt.
Mayer: Still, it’s a partisan job. Vilsack has faced criticism, for example over new school nutrition requirements trumpeted by Michelle Obama. But he’s one of just two original cabinet secretaries in office since the beginning of the Obama presidency. And he’s led USDA longer than any other ag secretary since 1969.
Vilsack: When you have an historic opportunity you should relish it, you should cherish it and you should do the best you can at it.
Mayer: He’s got two more years with the current administration. Vilsack says he hopes to use them to focus more attention and resources on child poverty in rural areas. Amy Mayer, Harvest Public Media.
