Governor Reynolds, the USDA, Disaster Relief, and the Farm Bill

Oh, the drama...

Sep 14, 2024

The Conflict

A column in the Des Moines Register by Donnelle Eller on August 21 troubled me. The headline sets up a conflict that should be easily resolved—”Iowa leaders say USDA can boost help to disaster-stricken farmers; USDA says they’re wrong.”

Eller offers key points:

She also has a refresher:

Six Iowans died in tornadoes that slammed through the state, one in April in Minden and five in May in Greenfield and near Corning. In northwest Iowa, a man died in June flooding.

Eller does a great job setting the scene with the personal stories of how the disasters have impacted Iowa farmers, and how one county supervisor has been advocating for them.

The Challenge

According to Eller:

Last month, Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa’s congressional delegation, all Republicans, accused U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democrat and former Iowa governor, of refusing to use his power to make zero-interest loans available to farmers hit by disaster, unlike the financing offered to help small Main Street businesses get back on their feet.

The USDA says it can’t do that.

…the USDA says it’s not Vilsack who can ensure farmers get the financial assistance they seek. It says that power lies with the state's six federal lawmakers, who along with the other members of the House and Senate decide the agency’s budget and authority. USDA says it sought “additional flexibilities for producers in need of emergency loan assistance, but Congress chose not to provide them.”

At least one farmer wants the USDA to offer zero-interest loans like the Small Business Administration has offered in past disasters.

“Why aren’t we looking at ag producers as businesses?” he asks.

Good question, but it seems that it’s a question our Republican leaders should be asking the Small Business Administration not the USDA, who says:

The agency says it's providing as much flexibility as it can. But the loan program has finite funding, and it must balance the needs of farmers hit with disasters with those of other financially stressed growers.

The USDA also responded:

“We encourage the governor to work with these members of Congress to ensure they are doing their jobs to provide USDA with adequate resources and statutory authority” to meet the “increasing number of natural disasters that producers are facing across the country.”

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks released this statement:

"We iterate our simple request to our fellow Iowan, Secretary Vilsack: Use your existing authority and funding to help the hardworking people of the Hawkeye state get through these challenging times."

So let me get this straight. Governor Reynolds and other Republican leaders insist the USDA offer disaster recovery programs like the SBA has in the past, when the USDA assures them they don’t have the authority or the funding to do so.

Let’s ask ourselves why? Why aren’t they making inquiries to the SBA? Why troll the USDA and Vilsack?

Vilsack Town Hall

I learned that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was coming to North Liberty on August 29th for a town hall meeting, and I decided to go and ask him about the Republican allegations. Tom Barton with the Gazette has the story.

Here’s a nice summary paragraph of the town hall by Tom:

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.

If you notice the slide behind Vilsack, it summarizes the investments the USDA is making in Iowa. Here it is:

Vilsack Press Gaggle

I always like to let press with deadlines speak first at gaggles, but when there was a break in the questions, I asked Vilsack about the allegations. Here is the audio, with a transcript below. My comments/questions are in bold, Vilsack’s in italics.

1×

0:00

-3:48

Would you like to respond to that allegations that the governor has made and representative Miller-Meeks about the USDA not doing enough for farmers in western Iowa that were hit by disaster (I had forgotten that it was the entire Iowa Republican delegation had written to Vilsack, not just Miller-Meeks).

Let me respond this way...we have a tool on our website called disaster at a glance. And farmers can go on that website and they can take a look at that tool, and they can type in the nature of the disaster that occurred, drought, flood, tornado, whatever, and it will give you a list of the programs that we have at USDA, that are in fact available to farmers who have suffered damage from a disaster.

You can then go on line and type in your name, the location of your farm, the nature of the disaster and what will pop up is all the programs with contact information for people that can help you qualify for whatever the benefits are.

I think they're wrong.

They're actually flat out wrong—there's been a tremendous amount of help.

But the one program that they're focused on is a loan program, and they're suggesting that we ought to be able to offer the same level of low interest or no interest loans that the SBA offers.

The problem with that is that if we were to do that for, Iowa, then it would mean that a significant number of loans in other states could not be made, because there's a subsidy rate involved in everything we do that impacts and effects how much money you can loan out. And if you essentially alter that subsidy rate you limit the number of overall loans you can provide.

So to me the best way of dealing with this is to encourage farmers to use the disaster programs that exist. So, for example, I saw one farmer who said I need fencing—EQIP. An EQIP grant can give you the resources to do the fencing. There are a multitude of programs that these farmers are in fact using, and if you talk to Matt Russell (State Executive Director of the Farm Service Agency), he'll tell you that many of the, even the farmers that were suggesting concerns, have already received help. So, that's just not true and it's unfortunate that they decided to focus on one, on one program. So, let me show you this. Here it is.

Vilsack opened up his binder and pointed to several pages of disaster relief programs available for farmers.

All right. Tell me what are we talking about—we talked about drought or flood. What are we talking about?

The floods, that was the main the main one, and the piece I read about their concerns or allegations whatever you want to call them.

There's the EQIP Program. There's the Emergency Watershed Program. There's the Livestock Indemnity Program. Crop Insurance. The Conservation Reserve Program. Emergency Conservation Program. The Emergency Forest Restoration Program and, Farm Loans.

So there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, programs. They focused on one. Seems to me in fairness gotta focus on all eight.

As we wrapped up the press gaggle, Vilsack pulled the pages from his binder and handed them to me. “Here, take this,” he said.

The Reynolds’ False “Drama Triangle”

I presume that either a farmer or a local elected official shared a concern with Reynolds, or with a member of Congress. I also presume the farmer(s) and local official(s) were/are acting in good faith. Since the letter to Vilsack came from Reynolds’ office, and was signed by the members of Congress, I also presume it was initiated by Reynolds.

This was a conversation that could have been held behind the scenes with interagency communications. It’s done all of the time. Instead, Reynolds blew it up such that the press picked up the story.

Reynolds created a fake drama triangle, where the farmers are the “victims,” the USDA the villain, and she cast herself in the role of the hero, “saving” the farmer from the USDA. It was all performative.

But why?

Reynolds trolling the USDA wasn’t about disaster relief at all. Instead, it’s an election-year ploy to cast doubt on Democrats in general, the historic Biden/Harris investments in Iowa and rural America in particular, and the USDA was merely a convenient target. And Reynolds used the farmers as pawns.

If her narrative sticks, it could be helpful for Republicans in local elections and in congressional races. Miller-Meeks is in a tight race with Democrat Christina Bohannan, and that she leaned into the issue in the Eller column isn’t surprising, even though, as Vilsack argues, she and our other Republican representatives aren’t doing their jobs in allocating disaster-related resources effectively.

Governor Reynolds and our Republican Congressional delegation, Ernst, Grassley, Hinson, Nunn, Feenstra, and Miller-Meeks see farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans as pawns in political theater.

Hinson, Nunn, Feenstra, and Miller-Meeks face the ballot box in November. Their challengers are, respectively, Sarah Corkery, Lanon Baccam, Ryan Melton, and Christina Bonannan.

Who would you rather have negotiating the next Farm Bill, Republicans who see farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans as pawns in a political theater or Democrats who, along with Secretary Vilsack, see a future where investing in farmers, keeping them on the land, helping them innovate, and encouraging them to develop the solutions we need is a smart investment? Even Republican leaders in business and industry recognize a second Trump administration could prove disastrous for rural Americans. In following Trump, our congressional delegation isn’t serving the best interests of Iowans. It's time to vote them out of office.

Republican criticism of the USDA over disaster recovery is a fake issue while there are real issues at stake. Women’s rights to make decisions about their own bodies, the funding of our public schools, the Farm Bill, environmental issues, and much, much more. Oh, and saving democracy.

Don’t be distracted.

Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture

Discussion about this post