President-elect Joe Biden has tapped former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because Vilsack filled the same role during the Obama administration.
The move comes as a surprise after months of widely reported speculation that former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was at the top of Biden’s list for secretary of agriculture. Vilsack’s appointment, however, falls in line with Biden’s tendency to choose Obama-era officials to populate his cabinet and staff.
But while some have called Vilsack a “safe” pick with an “ideal set of qualifications,” Vilsack’s nomination comes as a major blow to both progressives and family farmers alike, with many criticizing his record on race and his close ties to corporate agriculture.
“Tom Vilsack wasn’t the right choice for secretary of agriculture in 2008 when Obama nominated him to serve in that role, and he isn’t the right nominee now, either,” said Krissy Kasserman, factory farm organizing director at Food and Water Watch.
“With Vilsack, we’re guaranteed another four years of corporate agribusinesses calling the shots—even as our family-scale farms sink deeper into crises,” Kasserman added.
Vilsack has long enjoyed the support of the Democratic establishment. Between 1999 to 2007, he served as governor of Iowa. From there, he was one of President Obama’s longest-serving cabinet members, along with then-Vice President Biden, serving from 2009 to 2017. He was reportedly on the shortlist as a potential running mate to candidates John Kerry and Hillary Clinton in 2004 and 2016, respectively.
Even now, Vilsack is still considered one of the Democrats’ foremost experts on rural America. He was tasked with leading Biden’s rural campaign in this year’s election, which People’s Action’s George Goehl called “unimpressive.”
A spotty record on race
Among the major criticisms levied at Vilsack is his dubious record on racial justice. During his tenure as secretary of agriculture, Vilsack forced Shirley Sherrod, a Black woman, to resign from her post as the Georgia director of rural development at USDA. The move, which has now been widely criticized, came in response to a doctored video published by Breitbart.
Additionally, Vilsack touted USDA’s work to improve conditions for Black farmers under his leadership. An investigation by The Counter, however, revealed these claims to be patently false.
“These myths obscured the ways the department continued to discriminate against Black farmers throughout the Obama years. They depicted a renaissance that didn’t exist, making it harder for Black farmers to get the financial help they needed, often with devastating consequences.”
According to The Counter’s findings, USDA was six times more likely to foreclose on a Black farmer as it was on a white farmer.
John Boyd, president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, stated in a press release, “While Black farmers had legislative successes during the Obama administration, far too little was done during his tenure to address the long legacy of discrimination against Black farmers.”
Boyd encouraged Vilsack to “level the playing field and right these historic wrongs.”
Failure to deliver on antitrust enforcement
The other major criticism against Vilsack is his failure to stand up to Big Ag. As Blue Tent has written, Big Ag consolidation is one of the biggest concerns for small and family farmers.
During his campaign and early on in his presidency, Obama, along with Biden, vowed to “fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over production decisions, and transparency in prices.”
Additionally, and perhaps most crucially, he promised to “strengthen anti-monopoly laws; change federal agriculture policy to strengthen producer protection from fraud, abuse and market manipulation; and make sure that farm programs are helping family farmers as opposed to large, vertically integrated corporate agribusiness.”
But however sincere these intentions may have been, USDA, under Vilsack’s leadership, failed to live up to these promises. Progressives and family farm advocates called for USDA to strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act.
According to USDA, the Packers and Stockyards Act serves several purposes, including assuring fair competition and trade practices, safeguarding farmers and ranchers, protecting consumers and protecting livestock, meat and poultry industry members from unfair, deceptive, unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices.
Though the Packers and Stockyards Act was passed in 1921, its enforcement has been lax in recent decades. Following the dissolvement of the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), the Packers and Stockyards Act is now regulated under the Agricultural Marketing Service.
Shortly after taking office, Obama announced that several of his administration officials and cabinet secretaries, including and most prominently Vilsack, would embark on a “rural tour,” a series of discussions on how to help strengthen rural America. One of the biggest concerns rural voters brought up was corporate consolidation in agriculture and the havoc it’s wreaked on the nation’s family farms.
In an interview with The Fern earlier this year, Wisconsin dairy farmer and rural sociologist Dr. Sarah Lloyd said, “The Obama administration came out swinging and said they were going to get the DOJ to dig into the issue and try to create a level playing field. Nothing happened.”
Lloyd criticized the Biden campaign for sending Vilsack to farms, saying, “He’s not offering anything new. He’s all about export markets and supporting consolidation, not anything that would actually support farmers and their families.” (Note: This interview took place months before Biden nominated Vilsack to run USDA.)
Dairy industry ties
Progressives have also pointed to Vilsack’s ties to Big Ag as a cause for concern. After leaving office in 2017, Vilsack was named president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), a nonprofit membership organization that represents the “global trade interests of U.S. dairy producers.” Vilsack came under fire for his salary at USDEC. He earned a whopping $999,421 in 2018, even while dairy farmers continued to struggle and go out of business.
Many progressives have argued that Vilsack’s ties to the dairy industry make him unsuitable for the position. In a press release, Geohl said, “We’re getting a revolving-door appointment. If this is not the fox guarding the henhouse, it’s pretty damn close.”
Progressives came out against Heitkamp’s potential nomination, citing her close ties to Big Ag as the main factor for their opposition. Things are a little different when it comes to Vilsack. While his ties to Big Ag, particularly the dairy industry, are called into question, the fact that he already served in this role offers unique insight into the kind of ag secretary he would be. And the picture is, if not bleak, certainly not what progressives want.
Food and Water Watch’s Policy Director Mitch Jones stated in a press release, “Much like Senator Heitkamp, Vilsack has made a career of catering to the whims of corporate agriculture giants—some of whom he has gone to work for—while failing to fight for struggling family farmers at every turn.”
Angela Huffman, executive vice president at Family Farm Action, said that Vilsack “has favored industrial agriculture giants and further consolidated the food market at the expense of America’s farmers, food workers and rural communities.”
“We need a secretary with a forward-looking vision, like Congresswoman Fudge, not someone pushing the same old failed policies,” Huffman added.
A missed opportunity to build bridges
Earlier this year, when it became apparent Biden was considering Heitkamp to lead USDA, a coalition of about 160 progressive and family farm advocacy groups signed a letter encouraging Biden to nominate Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) as secretary of agriculture.
In an interview with Politico, Fudge, who has served on the House Agriculture Committee and the Nutrition Subcommittee, made her case for her nomination for the position, citing Black women’s support of Biden during the election and her own personal work to help Biden win.
Most notably, Fudge lamented that Black politicians are limited to certain cabinet positions. “As this country becomes more diverse, we’re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in,” she said. “You know, it’s always ‘we want to put the Black person in labor or HUD.’”
In a bitterly ironic twist, the same day Biden nominated Vilsack for secretary of agriculture, he also nominated Fudge to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Fudge has since said that she’s “excited about the opportunity.”
A sign of things to come?
Despite what its name may suggest, USDA does not deal exclusively with agricultural matters, though that is, of course, a crucial part of its role. In addition to overseeing the nation’s farms, the secretary of agriculture’s work also involves policies to address climate change, worker safety, food safety, nutrition programs (including SNAP) and rural development.
So while the president’s pick to run USDA is a key cause for concern for farmers, it also significantly affects rural voters writ large. USDA, for example, could tackle problems such as the digital divide and access to healthcare in rural areas, both of which organizers have cited as some of the biggest concerns for rural Americans.
While some have praised Vilsack as an improvement over the current Ag Secretary and have vowed to work with him, other critics fear Vilsack’s nomination will push already-disenchanted rural voters away from Democrats.
For advocates who have been fighting for greater equity for rural America, Vilsack’s appointment suggests things at USDA will likely remain the same.
“President-elect Biden passed up an opportunity to change the direction of USDA by appointing a secretary with a new vision—someone who would prioritize all areas of USDA’s mandate, who would right the agency’s wrongs around social and environmental justice, and who would prioritize people over corporate profits,” said Kasserman. “Tom Vilsack is not that person, and his nomination shows an astonishing lack of vision as well as utter disregard for the wishes of the voters who elected Joe Biden.”
