Thanks to Trading Post Paul for calling our attention to this. Comments, as always, welcome. -bg
New Secretary of Agriculture Reveals New Attitude Towards Small Family Farm Sustainability, Civil Rights, and Rural Development with Address to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives
http://www.ssawg.org/Newsletters/SSAWGnewsMarch2009.html
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund hosted U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on February 21, 2009, as he addressed more than 300 farmers and agriculture professionals at the Federation’s conference, held annually in Albany, Georgia. “When our first African-American president raised his hand and took the oath of office, wemade a huge step in this country. It’s now our job at the USDA to take the next step,” Vilsack stated. He said that if President Abraham Lincoln, who established the USDA in 1862, came back and wondered how the department is doing in supporting farmers, he would learn that “some folks refer to USDA as the last plantation, and it has a pretty poor history of taking care of people of color,” adding that he chose the conference as the place to make his first speech outside of Washington because he wants to send the message that they are serious about civil rights.
Vilsack took the opportunity to acknowledge the fact that the conference program began with sustainable agriculture topics, saying that it is a very important topic, and it’s going to be increasingly important. After acknowledging other topics that he considers key, such as food assistance programs that are included in President Obama’s stimulus package, he spoke
about the trends in agriculture that they see at the USDA.
“The first thing that popped out to me was the dramatic growth in the number of small farms–small income farms,” he said, referring to the recently released results from the Census of Agriculture. “In the last five years there have been 108,000 new farms started with sales of less than $1,000. These are very, very, very small operations. But that is a significant start for people in agriculture and a significant connection to the land–108,000.” He described the other end of the spectrum where the trend is the very large income farms that generate $500,000 or more, which grew by about 41,000 farms. The third trend, which he identified as the challenge, is that the farms in the middle, making more than $10,000 but less than $500,000, have decreased by 80,000. He pointed out two more trends: Sixty percent of all farms have less than $10,000 in sales, with 900,000 of 2,200,000 farmers having to work off-farm over 200 days per year to make it. The last trend that he brought into the picture is the fact that the average age of farmers has increased over the last five years from 55 to 57.
“Small farming increases; large farm increases; farms in the middle decreasing; aging farmers; farmers having to work off the farm,” he summarized. “So what does the USDA do about this? What should it be doing in the next four years?”
The Secretary said that the President has been very specific with him about renewing and replenishing rural areas across the country. Vilsack noted a number of things that need to be done to make that happen, including the development of strategies to make the small income farms into mid-income farms and become more profitable, as well as to maintain the existing mid-sized farms.
One of the ways he sees this happening is through a major push to focus on nutrition, including “fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, things that are good for you. And it can start this year with the reauthorization of the school lunch and school breakfast programs.” Vilsack sees this as creating real opportunities to produce fresh vegetables and fruit and get them into schools and institutions locally. He also stressed that we need to develop regional distribution systems to encourage the growth.
In addition to strengthening the infrastructure for local and regional
mid-scale production, he talked about other rural development issues,
including new crops for biofuels, resources for bio-refineries, and
conservation stewardship.
Vilsack’s closing remarks focused on his commitment to seeing that the civil rights issues of the USDA will be addressed and put in the past, andto making sure that all of the offices are “fair to black farmers, and fair to women farmers, and fair to Hispanic farmers, and fair to people from all walks of life who want to get into farming. We have 108,000 new farmers with less than $1,000 in sales. That’s a lot of people who want the opportunity to work the land and we want to give them that opportunity.”