USDA is standing up for American producers

As World Food Prize events kicked off to highlight agricultural innovation, efforts to address hunger, and the importance of global trade, the Competitive Enterprise Institute published an op-ed in The Gazette calling for spending reforms at USDA to “protect farmers and taxpayers.”

The op-ed specifically attacked the Biden-Harris Administration’s use of the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), which is one of our nation’s most time-tested and flexible tools to address emerging needs of farmers, and to stabilize markets. Days after the op-ed published and while attending the World Food Prize’s Borlaug Dialogue, I had the honor of announcing a $2.3 billion investment from the CCC to promote U.S. agricultural trade and shore up America’s capacity to address hunger crises overseas. The investment was a bipartisan request by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and John Boozman (R-AR), who are the chair and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

However, CEI called CCC, “a means to get around the important farm bill process in order to push programs that can’t get Congressional support.”

In reality, CEI’s op-ed was a thinly-veiled complaint about USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) initiative, which was created through CCC at the request of America’s leading farmer and agricultural organizations. With 141 projects underway, PCSC has gained tremendous support from farmers and businesses across all U.S. regions and the agriculture supply chain.

Some members of Congress may disagree with that use of CCC, but America’s farmers are on the front lines of the climate crisis, and intense demand for PCSC demonstrates how hungry they are to seize on new revenue streams in response to their adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. There is hardly a more responsible use of government resources that I can think of, than promoting our nation’s ability to produce food and thrive amid a changing climate.

Policymakers are welcome to put forward proposals as they see fit, but the public deserves a transparent dialogue about what’s on the table. Besides PCSC and the investments announced this week, the Biden-Harris USDA has used CCC to purchase U.S.-grown food for schools and food banks, alleviate supply issues for farmers and boost access to nutritious foods; to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to support poultry farmers affected by avian influenza and African Swine Fever; and to put $900 million toward growing domestic fertilizer manufacturing, shielding farmers from global market disruption and creating new jobs in rural communities. That’s not to mention helping farmers recover from flooding, drought and other natural disasters spawned by an undeniably changing climate.

Finally, CEI made a tepid reference to the Trump administration’s record-breaking use of CCC, but they glossed over that for the first time in history, that administration threatened to put CCC in the red and required Congress to refill it not once, but four times.

Separately last weekend, Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, summed up this debate in a media interview, saying: "Everybody wants it (CCC spending authority) in place when they've got their guy in the White House and not when they don't."

With all the uncertainty created by wars overseas, climate change and lingering impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers can’t afford for CCC to be the victim of reactionary politics. Nor can we afford to sit tight on this flexible tool rather than using it as intended. Farmers, school nutrition professionals, and emergency food providers seem to agree with USDA’s latest approach.

Tom Vilsack is U.S. secretary of agriculture.