Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says Congress must pass a new federal budget that does not “significantly underfund the important work of USDA” in making all farmers more profitable and environmentally sustainable.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Black Growers Council in Memphis, Tenn., Vilsack said the issue isn’t just about helping Black and small and mid-sized farmers: “It’s a matter of national security.”

He also catalogued the history of Black and other minority farmers in their dealings with USDA, particularly the discrimination in USDA farm loans and the loss of land. (While there were more than 1 million Black farm operators in the U.S. in the 1920s, there are less than 50,000 today.)

“I don’t want you to think I don’t understand in some small way the incredible challenges that you all have faced and continue to face,” he said. “But we at USDA are committed to an effort to write a different story for the Agriculture Department and for Black growers.”

Future of Black farmers

Vilsack’s comments drew applause from the audience of more than 500 attending the annual meeting of the National Black Growers Council, whose leaders said they want to focus on the future of Black farmers in the U.S. and not on the past.

“Today, we not only gather to celebrate our achievements, but also embrace the infinite possibilities that lie before us,” said P.J. Haynie, NBGC chairman and a fifth-generation farmer from Burgess, Va. “As we set our sights on the future, it is imperative for us to articulate our vision, a vision that recognizes the vital role Black farmers play in agriculture and the unique challenges they face.”

Related:National Black Growers look to the future

Congress has passed a continuing resolution that funds the federal government through early 2024. Four of the appropriations bills in the continuing resolution passed back in November expire on Jan. 19 and eight expire on Feb. 2.

The House earlier failed to pass a spending bill that would have funded the Agriculture Department in FY 24 after 27 Republican moderates joined the Democratic minority to defeat the bill 191-237. The dissenters said the bill made too many cuts in USDA programs, including the Women, Infants and Children or WIC food program.

Speaking with reporters after his speech, Vilsack said he had been critical of the House Agriculture Subcommittee’s budget proposal because he felt it was “punitive, and that it was significantly underfunding the important work of USDA.

“I’m pleased that a majority of the members of the House, both on the Democratic and Republican side, rejected that budget, and I’m hopeful that folks will continue to work hard to get a budget. It’s very disruptive not to have certainty in your budgeting process or in terms of farm bill policies.”

Related:Black farmers honored at national event

WIC funding

Vilsack noted he had talked about the WIC program during his speech to the NBGC. “It would be underfunded under the proposals pending before Congress, which would mean that potentially thousands of women and young children would be denied access to nutritional food in the wealthiest nation in the world. That’s unacceptable.”

Besides being detrimental to poor families, Vilsack said many small and mid-sized and minority-owned farms have begun selling produce and other products to USDA’s suppliers for its food programs.

During his speech, Vilsack used a white board with nine squares drawn on it to outline the efforts the Biden administration has been undertaking to address the impacts of climate change and other environmental and sustainability issues for farmers and other segments of the U.S. economy.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden in 2022, contains $3 billion that is now funding more than 100 pilot “Climate Smart” agriculture projects. The National Black Growers Council received one of those for a regenerative agriculture project.

Related:Program helps Black farmers recover from discrimination

Vilsack noted that in the 1970s and early 80s Congress changed the way USDA had been doing business. “The New Deal supply management system that provided some level of support for farms of all sizes was replaced by a market-driven system, and farmers were encouraged to plant commodity crops fence row to fence row.

“Bob Bergland, the Secretary of Agriculture in the Carter administration who was leaving office in 1981, said he wasn’t sure the new system would work because it would encourage larger and larger farms. If you’re selling a commodity with a small profit margin or sometimes no profit margin at all, to make a living you have to sell a lot of it. That meant more crops, bigger equipment and bigger farms.”

Reduced numbers

Since 1981, the U.S. has lost 437,300 farmers or the total number of farms in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. The country has also lost 141 million acres of farmland that is no longer being farmed.

“The question for those of us who are concerned about agriculture in rural places is ‘Are we OK with that?’” he said. “My predecessor as secretary of agriculture (Sonny Perdue) was asked that question in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2019, and his answer was “in America you have to get big in farming or get out.”

The last three years have been the best three years of farm income in U.S. history, he said. “Normally, when a secretary of agriculture said that there would be applause, but there’s a reason you’re not because you don’t feel that.”

Currently, 150,000 farms out of the more than 2 million in the U.S. or about 7.5% of the total receive 89% of farm income, he noted. “I’m not great at math but I know that means the other 92.5% of farms had to share 11% of the income. That explains why in a year of record income nearly 50% of farms didn’t make any money.

“The other 40% made money, but the majority of the money they made came from off-farm income. I’m here today to tell you what we’re trying to do about it and figure out ways you can take advantage of a different model.”

Vilsack said he understands the importance of production agriculture and the importance of feeding the U.S. and the world.

“But it seems to me we ought to be smart enough and creative enough that if you want to be small or mid-size you should be able to do that,” he said. “And you should be able to farm and to pass your farm on to the next generation. But this notion of continuing to lose farms – I don’t want to get to the day when we have six farms in a county, and I don’t think you do, either.”

It’s also a matter of national security, he said. “When you diminish rural areas as we have over the last 40 years, you are reducing the number of people who live, work and raise their families in small communities. That’s important to national security because while they represent 15% of the population, residents of rural America make up 30% of the military. If you continue to squeeze the rural areas, you will continue to squeeze our capacity to have an all-volunteer military.”