Tom Vilsack On Democrats’ Rural Woes: ‘you Gotta Be Selling A Vision’

Tom Vilsack has much to say about Democrats and rural America. And for good reason.

He’s the longest-serving Democratic agriculture secretary in history, having claimed the office tucked along the National Mall for eight years under former President Barack Obama and now concluding four more years in the post in the Biden administration. Before that he was a two-term Iowa governor, state senator from eastern Iowa and mayor of his wife’s hometown, Mount Pleasant.

Frustrated with the Democrats’ defeat, and what he sees as the lack of attention and credit for what his department has done for America’s farmers, Vilsack invited me to the USDA shortly after the election.

Rural communities have grown in population in recent years, Vilsack wanted me to know. There is a good news story to tell about innovations in the ag economy.

So why haven’t Democrats received political credit for it, only seeing their losses across rural areas deepen in the last four years?

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What the heck has gone wrong for Democrats in rural America? 

I think the challenge that we have in rural America is that we talk a lot about programs and not about vision. And I will, if you don’t mind, take you all the way back to my first race for governor in 1998. I ran and I was way behind and nobody thought I had a chance of winning. And I went out and I talked about making Iowa the food capital of the world. And I had a media guy who at the time was not well known [David Axelrod]. He and my pollster were not very happy with me for talking about the food capital. They basically said, nobody understands what it is and you should be talking specifically about class size reductions, property tax relief and expanding access to healthcare. I continued to talk about it. I won that race by 6.5 to 7 percent. I’m pretty sure that 7 percent were the people I was talking to who knew the vision. They didn’t quite understand what it was, but when you have a vision, it is what a leader does. A leader takes you from here to there, tells you where you’re going to go and allows you to fill in the detail.

We just haven’t had the vision to explain to folks in rural places, what has happened to them and why. In the 1970s, the decision was made by the Nixon administration to transition from a supply management system of agriculture support to a market-based system. When that occurred, we became a commodity producer. And by the very nature of commodities, small profit margin if any, which means you have to grow quite a bit of it, a lot of it — to grow a lot if it, you have to get bigger and bigger and bigger farming operations, which meant that you needed fewer and fewer and fewer farmers. And if you had fewer and fewer farmers, you had fewer and fewer farm families. You had fewer kids going to rural schools. You had fewer customers at the small business and downtown, fill in the blank. You had fewer folks going to the hospitals and supporting the doctors. And your community over time, began to shrink. We didn’t address that, until now. We’re addressing it now in this department, in this administration, we’ve begun that conversation to change the model.

Your party gets the lyrics right, but there’s no music. 

I don’t know about that. First of all, not enough of us spend time in rural places. Not enough of us spend time there.

How many times did the VP travel with you the last four years to a rural place? 

A couple times.

But not remotely enough. 

I don’t know … I’m not in the camp of criticizing the vice president.

She was thrown in the deep end with three months to go. 

She had Tim Walz. And Tim Walz understands this. And she spent more time as a candidate and he spent more time as a candidate in rural places than previous efforts.

There wasn’t the foundation that was built. We’ve begun to build it. But after 50 years of one approach, you can’t do this in a matter of a couple of years. You have to build the foundation. Now, the foundation has been built. The economic model is changed by virtue of the investments we’ve made in this administration. At least 10,000, probably more than that, investments have been made just in this department, in creating a different model so that small and mid-sized farming operations have an opportunity to stay in business.

But Democrats find a way to keep doing worse in rural America. Where is the bottom?

Well, I would disagree with you on this, because you’re discounting the efforts of a number of governors who have been successful.

I’m talking about the national ticket. 

This is about what to do now. Bill Clinton understood this. He communicated with folks. Barack Obama was sort of an aberration. He was like a unicorn. You have to set those folks aside and you have to say, "How about the rest of us who are human?" It’s hard work. And it’s consistency and it’s presence. And it’s promotion. And it’s saying, here’s the vision. The vision is, you don’t have to get big or get out. You can actually have diversity within your agriculture and in your national resource base in your rural economy and that can create enormous opportunity. And we’re investing in it. We should continue to invest in it.

What I’m saying is, the temptation of the Trump era in Democratic politics, ‘16 to the present, has been to say: He’s so alienating to the suburbs, that we can drive up the score in suburban America and we can take a hit in rural America. That clearly was not the case this time around.

I don’t know if anybody intentionally made that equation with suburbs and rural. What I would tell you is that the party itself for a long period of time — this is not a current, last couple of months kind of thing — this is a 50-year thing, with interruptions, but nevertheless a 50-year thing. To me, the most important message coming from this meeting today is change is going to happen. Change is occurring. It just hasn’t resonated with people like you. Or people in this city.

How so?

Well, we’ve invested nearly $20 billion in this new model and you’re going to continue to see it over the course of the next several years. You’re going to continue to see people who run for governor and who run for state legislature and who run for mayor and who run for United States Senate and House races, you’re going to begin to see people embrace this notion . . . You gotta understand the economics of this. You don’t. Nobody in your business understands it which is the frustrating part for me. When you have a ‘get big or get out’ mentality, when you have an economy that is commodity-based, the big guys do really, really well. To give you an example, in 2022, it was the best year in farming income in the history of the United States. It bested 2014 when I was secretary before. Best year ever. But if you went out and talked to folks in rural places about that best year ever in farming income, that’s not how they would have seen it.

Why not?

It was a record year for a relatively small number of folks. So what happens, these folks are on knife’s edge, bad year comes, they have a hard time. Who is in a position to buy their farm? The larger farm or investment banks. It’s not China that people need to be worried about, it’s folks in Wall Street who are buying most of these farms up. So you’ve got this model that we’ve had for 50 years that has slowly eroded economic opportunity in rural places.

The Biden-Harris administration comes along and says you know what, there’s a different way to do this. The way we’re going to do it is we’re going to create different revenue streams so instead of 88 percent of American farm families having to work off the farm to keep the farm, we’re going to have the farm work harder. Not the farmer. We’re going to create opportunities for that farmer to get a better price for climate-smart agriculture commodities. We created a whole new commodity classification. We’re going to basically reward folks for the opportunity to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or their carbon footprint by allowing them to participate fully in the carbon markets which is a new revenue stream. We’re going to convert their agricultural waste into something more valuable.

Which leads me to the question you’re going to hate, which is, do you worry that the next guy’s going to get credit when the improvements come because it’s really full flower when they’re in power?

No, because there will be people who have been the recipients of these grants and these opportunities that understand precisely, and you’re going to have folks like me talking about the importance of this to the party and to the country.

Look, here’s the other reason why people should be concerned about this. You can shrink the rural population and maybe people don’t care about that because they live in the suburbs or they live in a city, here’s the problem. A disproportionate number of our military come from those rural communities. If you shrink the population, you’re shrinking your capacity to serve your military needs.

You don’t think that’s an issue? Go take a look at The Washington Post about a month, two months ago,

What’s your message to your successor, whoever that is, when it comes to these reforms? 

If you care about 100 percent of the farmers, then you need to make sure that you continue to look for ways in which you can create additional revenue streams and better revenue streams. More new and better markets. Because if you don’t, if you go back to the old way, and you’re only concerned about reference prices and only concerned about the large-scale commodity producers, you’re going to continue to see a shrinkage of farms. You’re going to continue to see stress on rural communities. And you’re going to continue to see us not taking full advantage of this natural resource advantage we have in rural places. And you’re going to continue to relegate rural communities to an economic opportunity that’s not as bright and not as hopeful as it could be.

Let me ask you a question that you’ll appreciate because you’re a small-town politician and obviously a statewide politician before becoming a national figure. And that’s my industry. And this is not self-regarding, it’s just a fact. How much of a challenge in communicating what has been done or what you are doing, flows from the fact that media has collapsed? 

Well, you’re the first guy that’s asked me about this. You’re the first guy in four years from the Washington hierarchy of broadcasting and so forth that’s asked me about this. Why is that?

We’re in denial?

Or ignorance.

Or because the problem is not here.

It is here.

There’s plenty of press here. You go up to the Capitol, it’s crawling with reporters. 

There’s plenty of press here, but there’s not a sensitivity to the importance of this department. And the work that this department does. You’re interested in the State Department. You’re interested in Treasury. You’re interested in the AG’s office … But you’re not coming down here.

And this department has probably the broadest portfolio of any department in the entire government. It’s like, well, that’s Ag. No. It’s rural America. It’s 15 percent of the population. It’s 75 percent of the land mass. It’s the entire feedstock for all the energy we produce in this country. It is most of the food we produce. It impacts virtually every drop of water you consume and we need. It’s a really important place.

And it doesn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserves. Not for lack of trying, man. We tried. Can’t tell you how many folks at your level that I talk to about this and it’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting. This is really important to the country.”

You make an important point about the lack of cultural awareness among the big city press corps when it comes to this department and what you guys do for the country broadly. I guess I’m talking about a separate issue which I think is just as acute, if not more so — which is the collapse of local and regional press, which would be a way to get your story out. Look, The Des Moines Register is now a shadow of what it was because Gannett, like in a lot of cities, has shredded these papers.

Wait a minute. Stop. Stop. That’s bullshit. And I’ll tell you why it’s bullshit. You’re correct that The Des Moines Register is a shadow of what it was. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t cover what it should cover.

I can tell you that The Des Moines Register has 85 articles about athlete of the week. Eighty-five articles about who scored the touchdown in the 5A game between Waukee and Ankeny. They got plenty of coverage for that. Fair enough. That’s a choice that they make. They could just as easily have two or three people covering agriculture or rural communities or small towns or the conversion of agricultural waste into energy. Or renewable energy. Or local and regional food systems. They choose not to do so.

Why?

You’d have to ask them.

Should President Biden have done more to spotlight what you’re doing?

He did. He gave a major speech in Minnesota. But again, it’s just hard to get people like you to cover it. If you covered it, then folks up there would all of a sudden be interested and start asking about it in hearings.

[Changes topic]

The farm bill conversation. The farm bill conversation — I’ve been out there talking about how we need the farm bill for the many and the most, not just the few. But up there [points toward Capitol] it’s all about reference prices. The reference prices are about half a dozen commodities out of 100 some commodities.

Jonathan, what we’ve done with climate smart agriculture is we’ve created an opportunity in all 50 states, over 100 commodities. We’re paying farmers to do this. We’re giving premiums for what they’re growing and raising. It’s a brand-new concept. It’s really innovative. And it creates not only a better value for the farmer, it creates the ability to get that ecosystem market credit, to transform their waste into something more valuable. It’s a small town, local and regional food systems. It’s an amazing amount of stuff. I’ve been talking about it for four years. And I’ve gone out and I’ve talked — good lord, how many whiteboard speeches have I given? A number of them.

People out there are beginning to get it. I’ve had people come up and say, you know, for the first time, I see my kind of operation at USDA. For the first time, I see some change. I see some investment in small and mid-sized farming operations. You want to ask about legacy? That, to me, is the most important legacy.

The vice president was put in a very tough spot. But you had a nominee who was from San Francisco, who had lived in cities her entire life, who obviously traveled with you some and did some events, but that’s a challenge for your party when you drop somebody in who has no grounding in rural America. Talk for a second about your experience with her these past three years. You did some trips with her. What did you try to convey to her about rural America? 

The importance of being there and during her campaign she was. The importance of speaking to rural folks, and she did. And Tim Walz certainly did. They didn’t have a whole lot of time. But she did. So I’m not in the blame game here. It’s not Kamala Harris. It’s Democrats, generally. We have not done a good job of understanding what rural folks do for us, acknowledging it, appreciating it and understanding what they’ve gone through as they’ve seen communities diminish over time. These people are incredible. They just don’t get the attention they deserve in this city.

Speaking of, how many Democratic senators, governors, have called you or come to see you and said tell me what’s happening in rural America, tell me how I can help. Tell me what I should know.

Well, I’ve given presentations — Senator Stabenow is a great example. She gets this.

Well, she’s chair of the Ag committee. I’m talking Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom. 

Oh. I haven’t talked so much to governors, as I have study groups and various caucuses up there [in the Capitol].

I guess what I’m saying is this. Have any of these folks sought you out and said, I’m an ambitious Democrat. I want to run someday for president. They wouldn’t say it like that.

This guy knows the Ag issues and the rural issues well. I’m going to seek him out. 

Well, a few people have done that.

Who?

[Sen.] Michael Bennet (D-CO) [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker. Shapiro didn’t do it directly but he did it through his Ag secretary.

To wrap a bow on that point, and you probably know where I’m going here, the nominating processes for your party, for 50 years, began in Iowa. Until this year. Should the caucuses once again start the Democratic process in Iowa?

I don’t think where it starts is as important as how it starts. I think you can do what needs to be done in South Carolina. You can do it in Nevada. You can do it in Iowa. You can do it in New Hampshire. Because all of those places have rural places. They have small towns. They have some of the same challenges. The problem isn’t where does it start. The problem is that we don’t start there with our messaging.

But if you have an urban politician and you force him to spend a year and a half going around the 99 counties of Iowa, they’re going to learn something about rural America. 

Well, they’re going to learn that by going to the rural counties in South Carolina. They’re going to certainly learn that if they go out in Nevada. They’re going to definitely learn that in New Hampshire. They’re going to learn that wherever they go because there is a rural place in every fricking state.

Well, you’re not getting the convention and visitors bureau award from Iowa. 

Look, the Iowa Democratic Party has a lot of work to do. And part of it is adopting an economic message, which we have not had. I’m talking about an economic message here. It’s the economy, stupid. It’s always the economy, stupid! But it’s basically, to this subset of America. Guys, we understand and appreciate that you’ve had this slow diminishment in terms of your capacity for the past 50 years. You know how many farms we’ve lost since 1981?

Tell me.

We’ve lost 544,970 farms. 1 out of every 6 farms that were in existence in 1981, is nonexistent. Now here’s another statistic. Do you know what else we’ve lost? We’ve lost farmland. Now, when I say we’ve lost farmland, I don’t mean that farms got bigger. They did. We’ve literally lost farmland. You know how much farmland we’ve lost? 155 million acres. You know how much land that is? That’s the landmass of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland and 60 percent of Virginia.

I don’t know if [the Democratic nominating process is] going back to Iowa. That may not happen. That ship may have sailed.

But again, it’s retail and it takes a lot of time and it’s expensive and all of that. But if you want to be president of the United States, if you want to represent this country and you want to do what everybody says they wanna do which is to bring the country together and end this us-and-them thing, you’ve got to be able to reach out and reach across and be credible. But you can’t be credible if what you’re selling is a program. You’ve gotta be selling a vision and that vision has to not be what you think but based on what you know about these people, you know matters to them. And what matters to them is the ability to say to their kids: you don’t have to leave. You can come back. And you can have a good life here.

I’ll be curious to see who, in these next two years, comes to look you up and take you up on the offer because that will be a tell as to which of these folks are interested in trying to get it right. 

Look, I know it’s a different world today, but I got my map out the other day, my 1998 map. I won 67 [of Iowa’s 99] counties.