U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue made five stops in Michigan Feb. 1, meeting with Michigan farmers, agribusiness and farm lobbyists to hear their priorities and concerns as work continues on drafting a new farm bill before the current one expires this fall.

He also brought with him the launch of a new website, farmers.gov, to help growers be more efficient. The announcement was made at his first stop, a breakfast roundtable with Michigan Farm Bureau at Robinette’s Apple Haus and Winery near Grand Rapids.

The new website is designed to provide farmers better access to USDA programs and tools, combining the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Risk Management Agency.

Perdue, a veterinarian and former governor of Georgia appointed by President Donald Trump last year, said, “It ought to be the portal to everything a producing farmer needs to know. We want it to be a dynamic website where we can respond to farmers over the questions they have, and where they can go to one spot, click and find the information they need.”

Town hall discussions were coordinated at Robinette’s as well as Zoetis, a global animal health company based in Kalamazoo, and Farm Logs, an ag technology company in Ann Arbor. Perdue also made stops at Heeren Brothers Produce and the Michigan Turkey Producers processing facilities in Grand Rapids.

“We come to listen to concerns of growers and processors here in Michigan,” he said, “and to learn about specialty crops. As we consider the farm bill that Congress will be writing shortly, they will look to USDA to advise and provide counseling on how we can make sure we have a safety net for our specialty crops. I’m here to get a good “flavor,” literally and figuratively, of the great length of Michigan agriculture.”

The website is live, but new functions are planned to be added, including an interactive calendar, farming success stories, an online appointment feature, digital forms and a business data dashboard. Additionally, when the 2018 Farm Bill is signed into law, there will be plain language program descriptions and a tool to determine eligibility.

Ag concerns
Among the top concerns voiced by farmers and agribusiness professions were the net neutrality and broadband access, infrastructure, crop insurance, the North American Free Trade Agreement, labor shortages, ethanol, food quality and safety, dairy policy, and the Section 199A tax code affecting agricultural cooperatives.

Broadband will be a huge push in rural America, Perdue said at his last stop at FarmLogs, where roundtable discussion encompassed more than a dozen agribusiness professionals.

Perdue explained that he saw precision firsthand at the Farm Progress show this past summer. “Being able to rip in the fall, putting the fertilizer down there … coming back in the spring, placing that seed right over that rip area and seeing a 20-bushel increase in production — that’s real productivity, but it depends on access to technology,” he said.

In regards to infrastructure, he said USDA wants to work more closely with the states. He cited Trump’s goal to streamline and shorten the permitting process.
Things are taking five, seven, 10, 15 years,” he said. “The goal is to strip it to two years or less. Time is money.”

Federal assets need to be corralled, he said, with a lead agency being responsible to work with other agencies.

Entrepreneur Jesse Vollmar, who founded FarmLogs in 2012, gave a short presentation, explaining that his company looks beyond agronomy and focuses on assisting growers by helping them better market their crops.

FarmLogs is being used on 50,000 farms covering 80 million acres. “Our software is focused on helping farmers become better marketers of their crops. Only 20%  [of growers] are using risk management tools. This software removes some of the complexity and shows in a simple way what the opportunities are to protect the value of production,” he said, underlining the need to first establish the real cost of production.

The slow-moving NAFTA negotiations with Mexico and Canada were a concern by many, as those countries have already started to seek out other suppliers. Perdue seemed to minimize the concern by saying it wasn’t uncommon for countries to look for other alternatives if there’s anxiety regarding trade disruption.

“No other country can compete logistically with what we do here in America,” he said. “We’ve got the logistics; we’ve got the highways, the railways to get into the interior of those markets. Frankly, we’ve got the corner-store location. There’s no doubt that they might try and source from other places; we don’t believe those will be competitive. We will stand up for America. Trade negotiations are important, but America first.”

With a new farm bill in the works, producers were concerned with crop insurance. “We recognize that both dairy and cotton didn’t fare as well in the 2014 Farm Bill as we had hoped they would,” he said. “Ag needs a safety net. Producers can continue to protect themselves through their purchase of crop insurance. Farming and agriculture are risky businesses. You can do everything perfectly and get thrown a curve ball that’s devastating if there is no safety net.”

In regards to biofuels, Perdue said it is the goal to grow the Renewable Fuel Standard. However, he also said, “The industry, corn growers, RFA, ethanol and biodiesel people need to have a little longer vision of what’s happening in the industry,” noting he was disappointed in a recent meeting with corn growers. “I understand the ethanol industry has been on the defense for years of people trying to nibble away at that. But it’s time that they look forward to the vision when there’s no volume mandates, and you’d better be winning some friends and fellow conservatives in that process to move it forward and grow E15, 20, 25, 30,” he added.

Perdue wrapped up the day praising farmers and others in the ag industry for their creativity, resilience and optimism.