Three days after canceling participation in a farm bill “listening session” called by the the House Agriculture Committee in Texas, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue will launch a Midwestern “Back to Our Roots” tour of five Midwestern states to gather ideas for the 2108 farm bill and rural prosperity. The five-state tour has seven sessions with farmers and one, a visit to a Milwaukee-area farm that donates food to the poor, that deals with hunger in America.
The tour begins on Thursday at the Wisconsin State Fair and ends at the Indiana State Fair on Aug. 8 after stops in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. “USDA will be intimately involved as Congress deliberates and formulates the 2018 farm bill,” Perdue said in a statement. “We are committed to making the resources and the research available so that Congress can make good facts-based, data-driven decisions.”
Congress traditionally takes the lead on farm bills, with USDA providing analysis of policy proposals. It has been a decade since USDA has published a package of farm bill proposals. Perdue plans a second tour later in the summer. A spokesman was not immediately available to say where that tour would go or what themes it would address.
Farm bill discussions typically are dominated by crop subsidies, crop insurance and land stewardship although the legislation is panoramic, ranging from exports and ag research to rural economic development, farm export promotion and public nutrition programs. By far, food stamps are the largest element of the farm bill but few members of the House and Senate Agriculture committees give it first-rank attention.
Perdue’s itinerary calls for a variety of listening sessions and roundtable discussions with farmers, farm group leaders, local officials and members of the agriculture community in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. After a farm bill discussion at the Wisconsin State Fair, he is scheduled to visit a 208-acre farm run by Milwaukee’s Hunger Task Force. The farm, 15 miles south of downtown Milwaukee, grows up to 1 million pounds of fruit and vegetables a year for donation to food pantries and soup kitchens. “We work to prevent hunger and malnutrition by providing food to people in need today and by promoting social policies to achieve a hunger-free community tomorrow, ” says the task force. Perdue is to tour the farm and help harvest sweet corn.