Joe Maxwell, who leads Farm Action Fund, said Biden’s picks for other USDA jobs were solid, especially the nomination of Virginia Agriculture Secretary Jewel Bronaugh, who is Black, for the No. 2 job at the department. And he credited Vilsack for engaging with his critics since his nomination.
It would benefit the country immensely, and it could help the Democrats win back rural voters.
“There’s definitely a trust problem there,” Huffman says of the consequence of Vilsack’s time working for the USDEC. She cited additional concerns about Vilsack’s poor record on civil rights and market consolidation in his first two terms at the agency. “Why would he be better this time after having worked the last four years for the industry?”
President-elect Joe Biden plucked Tom Vilsack to serve as agricultural secretary, a former Iowa governor who filled the role under President Obama. But some farmers are sure to be outraged by the decision…
The new president can remake agricultural and food policy even if Congress refuses to do anything about them.
Rep. Marcia Fudge had lost her patience with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue by February 2019. At a hearing nearly two years earlier, in May 2017, the Ohio Democrat had let Perdue go on at length describing his goals for reorganizing the Department of Agriculture. Running it like a corporate CEO would bring better results to rural America, he’d said.
As Biden forms his cabinet and prepares to govern, a new paper, commissioned by the Farm Action Fund Alliance, makes a strong case that Big Ag consolidation actually harms working-class and farmer livelihoods in rural areas.
The agriculture industry, which has weathered economic blows over recent years from the coronavirus pandemic and trade wars, needs “a new vision,” said Joe Maxwell, a lifelong farmer and president of Farm Action Fund.
As the Biden-Harris transition pushes forward, without cooperation from the defeated incumbent, speculation is swirling over future leadership of the US Department of Agriculture, which executes food and farm policy.
Progressives within agriculture are mounting an aggressive push to keep former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp from being selected to serve as Agriculture Secretary in a Biden administration.
Wisconsin dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd believes she has the answer to a question that has convulsed the Democratic Party for the past four years. “People from the coasts are always like, ‘What’s going on with Wisconsin? How could they have possibly voted for Obama and then voted for Trump?’”
Political conventions traditionally feature an orgy of corporate lobbyists and big money courting public officials. You’d think such displays wouldn’t factor into a convention-at-home setup in 2020. After all, where would the lobbyists and hangers-on congregate? The answer is, apparently, on Zoom.