NORTH LIBERTY — U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack envisions the farms of the future looking like subdivisions.
“You'll have a portion of the farm that will grow traditional commodity crops,” Vilsack predicted. “You'll have a section of your farm that will have identity preserved crops that are going to a specific purpose. They may be going to a pharmaceutical company to make the plastic that goes into injection systems, or it may be corn specifically for sustainable aviation fuel.”
Another section may be reserved for pasture or planting trees for which a farmer might receive a federal tax benefit for reforestation expenditures. A few acres also may be dedicated to growing a specialty crop sold through a farmers market or farm-to-school program.
“You may have a portion of your farm that's got a solar panel or windmill,” Vilsack added, lowering energy bills and expanding access to clean energy. “You might have some livestock as well” — the manure from which might be placed in a digester that produces methane that is sold to a nearby processing facility to make renewable natural gas.
“So it's a multi purpose, multiply diverse farming operation where the farmer is not necessarily working harder … but the farm is working harder and working more properly,” Vilsack said. “And I think the goal here is for the USDA to make sure that model is adequately supported.”
Vilsack, a former Iowa Democratic governor, held an “Investing in America” town hall Thursday in North Liberty where he highlighted efforts by President Joe Biden’s administration to create additional income opportunities for producers and entrepreneurs by building more and better markets, providing more options for consumers to buy healthy and local foods, investing in infrastructure and strengthening local and regional supply chains.
$2B in Iowa to develop new markets
Vilsack opened his big picture look at the state of American agriculture with a throwback to the 1970s and the transition of U.S. agriculture from government supply regulation to free markets and encouraging production. The ensuing “fencerow to fencerow” response of the American farmer led to a tripling of production.
The boom in large-scale commodity farming, though, has hurt rural communities, Vilsack said, as on-farm employment, topsoil levels and rural populations have shrunk over the last 50 years. He said the country lost nearly 545,000 farms over the past four decades and 151 million acres that is no longer being farmed.
Vilsack said that’s equivalent to the combined land mass of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland and most of Virginia.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing climate challenges and Russia-Ukraine war, the United States brought in record farm income. Yet, input costs rose significantly, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that roughly half of U.S. farms made no profits over the last three years.
He said America’s agriculture system benefits big businesses above all others, leaving small and mid-sized farms behind — weakening rural economies and threatening supply chains and food security.
Operations with more than $500,000 in annual sales received 89 percent of farm income in the last three years, while 1.7 million farms shared 15 percent of that income, according to Vilsack.
“And the question is, are you OK with that?” he asked the crowd.
He said the USDA is taking a new approach to support smaller, more diverse food and agriculture businesses, giving rural Americans the opportunity to succeed.
Vilsack said the Biden administration has invested roughly $2 billion in Iowa to help farmers generate new markets and income streams through the development of “climate-smart” products, developing “ecosystem service markets” that pay farmers to hit water quality, biodiversity and soil carbon benchmarks, and more.
He said the USDA has invested more than $1 billion in 30 projects in Iowa that pay farmers for using climate-smart practices to produce crops and agricultural products that can be sold at premiums for the subset of consumers seeking sustainable production and willing to pay for it.
Vilsack also touted federal investments and initiatives to boost domestic fertilizer production; offset the costs to grow certified organic foods; and strengthen farm-to-market, farm-to-school and local food purchasing efforts that give farmers a fairer price and increase access to fresh, nutritious food.
The Biden administration has also worked, he said, to expand independent processing facilities to shorten the path from producer to consumer, giving farmers and ranchers more options and the ability to keep more of each food dollar while making the supply chain less reliant on a few, large-scale processing companies.
CO2 pipelines ‘one of many strategies’
Beyond the push for new and better markets, Vilsack said the USDA is helping create new industries.
The federal government is in the process of establishing new tax credit guidelines issued for producers of sustainable aviation fuel made from ethanol and biofuels made from soybean oil. That, Vilsack said, could provide a substantial opportunity for farmers and renewable fuel producers in Iowa.
Sustainable jet fuel has been around for years, but only accounts for a fraction of all jet fuel. It costs more than twice as much as traditional jet fuel. Federal tax breaks aim to lower the price enough for companies to invest in the fuels to boost production to curb emissions from commercial airplanes and meet climate targets. To qualify, sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, must cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least half compared with conventional jet fuel made from oil.
Getting sustainable aviation fuel to take off, though, will take years and large private investment. And it cannot be fully realized without carbon dioxide capture and sequestration to reduce the emission footprint of ethanol production, according to industry experts.
The Iowa Utilities Commission this week granted a permit to Summit Carbon Solutions to build a pipeline using eminent domain to capture carbon dioxide at ethanol plants across the Midwest and store it deep underground. However, construction in Iowa cannot begin until the Dakotas also grant approval.
The pipeline has been opposed by landowners and state lawmakers who argue that eminent domain — the involuntary taking of land with compensation — for its construction is not warranted. Environmentalists contend the project will do little to combat climate change and opponents have challenged safety standards.
Vilsack, whose son serves as general counsel for Summit Carbon Solutions, was asked during the town hall by an opponent of the pipeline if he would organize a panel “where voices like ours, Iowans who are passionate about our people and our towns and our communities, where we can have a chance to be heard and to bring the research forward and hear also from industry leaders … so that we can all meet together and try to identify the best way forward on this issue?”
Vilsack said he views the pipelines as “a technology that has some benefit” for Iowa’s ag economy, but it’s up to states and communities — not the federal government — to decide pipeline routes and if eminent domain should be used.
“I don't feel comfortable interfering, because carbon capture and storage is one of many strategies necessary to be thought about and to be utilized in order to get our economy to a place where we're not continuing to add to the climate challenge,” Vilsack said, adding he views eminent domain as “an important tool” that needs to strike a “balance between individual and community.”
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com
