#vilsack

[sabrinawhill]

Growth Energy Honors Ag Secretary Vilsack with Award

Growth Energy Honors Ag Secretary Vilsack with Award

Growth Energy last week awarded former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack with the organization’s highest honor, the America’s Fuel Award. (more…)

View On WordPress

[scottbcrowley2]

Clinton VP search said to be focusing on Kaine, Vilsack, Perez - Wed, 20 Jul 2016 PST

Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential search is centering on three main contenders, with an announcement expected as soon as Friday as the Democrat prepares for her party’s national convention next week ... Clinton VP search said to be focusing on Kaine, Vilsack, Perez - Wed, 20 Jul 2016 PST

[farmsteadmedia]

Sec. Vilsack at UK

[exerciseanddiet]

New Post has been published on Weight Loss Review News

New Post has been published on http://weightlossreviewonline.net/social/tom-vilsack-speaks-out-on-school-meals-and-nutrition/

Tom Vilsack speaks out on school meals and nutrition

Tom Vilsack speaks out on school meals and nutrition. You may control the playback using this player control, changing the volume or moving ahead or replaying an earlier portion: Flash Player upgrade required. Click in the square area above to Pause or …

[gadgetgurus]

The whole signing of the "Monsanto Protection Act" into law by the President may be surprising to many, but I fully expected something of this nature to occur after he appointed Monsanto's buddy, Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture when he took office. Vilsack has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for large industrial farms and GMO's; as Iowa state governor, he originated the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, effectively blocking local communities from regulating where genetically engineered crops would be grown; additionally, Vilsack was the founder and former chair of the Governor's Biotechnology Partnership, and was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industry lobbying group. This article said a lot to me: USDA Watch

Let your opposition to Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture be heard!

#GMO #Obama #Vilsack #Monsanto #Crony #Corporatism #Agriculture

[rootcellarmo]

The Milk Cliff and the Farm Bill: or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Congress

Kidding. Of course. The 112th Congress was one of the least productive and most polarized in history, and we couldn’t be happier to see it go. We hope the 113th Congress, substantially more diverse and a bit more progressive than the last, will advocate for working families and small businesses (like our farmers!) rather than standing in the way of progress in order to protect low taxes for the wealthy.  We wouldn’t have time to get to them all, but we wanted to take an opportunity to talk about one of the more absurd parts of the machinations that culminated in our fall off the fiscal cliff and and the subsequent scramble back up. The “milk cliff,” as a were, was a result of the Farm Bill of 2008, which re-established subsidies for dairy farmers across the country that had been in place for the last quarter-century and kept milk prices relatively low. It was set to expire Jan 1, and would’ve legally required the Secretary of Agriculture to set a floor for milk prices for about two times what it is now. On the edge of the wire, Congress reauthorized certain parts of the 2008 Farm Bill, but failed to pass any comprehensive reforms, keeping dairy prices low and farmers frustrated. (Had we gone over the milk cliff, smaller farmers would have actually benefited from higher prices.) All of this makes for fairly scintillating talk--when dominating topics on A1, week after week, were about complicated possibilities like sequestration, it was both easy and a bit of a relief for journalists to write about the idea that your slow-churned ice cream may get a bit more expensive, especially when inundated by press releases from Big Agriculture that made the story much more sensationalist than it was. But we at the Root Cellar implore both journalists and media consumers not to be uncritical producers and consumers of the news. If we take a closer look at the policy cobbled together at the last minute to avoid the cliff, it’s not the idea that your weekly crème brûlée would have put a bigger dent in your pocket that’s worth getting up in arms over (though, if you are, that’s understandable).  The deal ushered through the House and Senate left an astounding number of policies in suspension. There was no commodity subsidy reform, no disaster assistance in the middle of a yearlong drought, and no extension of funding for farmers markets, rural microenterprise assistance, beginning/minority farmers, or organic research. Particularly heartbreaking, we feel, is the fact that Congress was on the cusp of passing a five-year comprehensive plan--it had made its way through the Senate and the House Agriculture Committee--that was scrapped in favor of a nine-month extension that was, itself, and extension of antiquated policy. “It's not just farming. As important as that is, that's a part of this bill. Really what we're talking about is a strategy, a vision, a plan for rural America,” says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack of the comprehensive plan. “And rural America provides and contributes so much to the rest of the country that it's the reason why this should be a priority, and it hasn't been.” The fact that Congress chose short-term satisfaction over long-term reform is disappointing, but not particularly surprising. The fact that this is all happening as journalists choose to make “Mooooove over, fiscal cliff” puns instead of focusing on what’s going on? Even worse.  Further reading. Questions? Comments? Let us know.  

[eatingaboutwriting]

What has happened? Why is this the first time in recent memory that bill passed through the Senate, through the agricultural committee, and yet was stymied and didn't get done.  Whether we like it or not, I think we have to address and have to acknowledge that the political clout that rural America once had, it doesn't have as much today.

- Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. Has the Republican party shunned its rural base? Do the "job creators" not care about "food creators"?

[eatingaboutwriting]

But I also know that we've got to make a case to the young people of this country that there is unlimited opportunity in rural America. That it is the place to be, it's the place to do, it's the place to make a difference.  If I were talking to a young person today, I would say – are you interested in accepting the moral challenge of our time? Are you interested in figuring out how not just to feed us in America, but to feed the world? Are you interested in eradicating hunger? Well, then you can help do that in rural America.

- Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack