Shifting from guest to host, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue will release the first episode of his own podcast today — a chat with former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who describes how much President Trump “loves America’s farmers and ranchers.” One farm lobbyist suggested that the monthly podcast might allow a bounce-back by the genial, staunchly conservative Perdue, who has been accused recently of being indifferent to the survival of small dairy farms.
Dubbed “The Sonnyside of the Farm,” the podcast debuts four days after Perdue helped Zippy Duvall, a fellow Georgian and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, launch a podcast. Farm groups, as well as the USDA and federal agencies in general, are active on social media. Perdue has nearly 63,000 followers on Twitter, where he posted an announcement about “Sonnyside.”
“I interviewed @SarahHuckabee … Talked about her time as Press Sec and how much @realDonaldTrump loves America’s farmers and ranchers,” tweeted Perdue. On an audio clip that accompanied the tweet, he said future guests will include Duvall and farm broadcaster Max Armstrong. “On the first Friday of every month, I’ll be talking to everyone … about the issues facing America’s farmers, ranchers, producers and foresters.”
A USDA spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to questions about whether Perdue’s inaugural episode was overly partisan — Sanders tells Perdue at one point, “The president is so lucky to have you out there fighting for him” — or to describe the USDA’s role in producing and disseminating the audio blog, as the format was originally known. Perdue apparently is the first agriculture secretary with a podcast.
While farm groups have followings on social media — the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has 116,000 followers on Facebook, for example, and the Farm Bureau has 73,000 Twitter followers — their frequent public-policy rivals, environmental groups, command significantly more attention. The Sierra Club has 1.05 million followers on Facebook, and the Environmental Working Group, known in farm country for its database of USDA subsidy recipients, has 171,000 followers on Instagram.
To at least one green-group leader, social media engagement is a way to offset the decline in newspaper readership or the loss of viewers by TV networks. You can amass an audience without having a mass audience, he said a few years ago, when the Washington “ag pack” of reporters was shrinking in numbers.
A party switcher who became the first Republican governor of Georgia since Reconstruction, Perdue grew up on a farm and is a veterinarian by training. His folksy personality and firsthand knowledge of farm life sit well with rural audiences and farm state lawmakers. He has recently drawn criticism for having a tin ear as a public speaker. At a farm show in August, he repeated a joke whose punchline, “a whine cellar,” was used to describe two farmers in a basement. And on Tuesday, Perdue said at a dairy show in Wisconsin that dairy farmers may have to get bigger to survive. “What I heard today from the secretary of agriculture was there’s no place for me,” responded dairyman Jerry Volenec.
“Sounds like he decided he needs a ‘Sonnyside’ comeback after he dissed America’s small and midsized family farms,” said a farm lobbyist when asked about the podcast. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said Perdue’s remarks carried echoes of the “get big or get out” mindset of the 1970s, a time when exports were booming and before the punishing agricultural recession of the mid-1980s, the hardest times for farmers in two generations.
“The dairy industry is a vital contributor to Wisconsin’s economy, and free and fair trade is key to the success of the American dairy farmer,” Perdue wrote in an essay published in the Wisconsin State Journal on Thursday.