Tom Vilsack, US Agriculture Secretary nominee!
From an interview by the Storm Lake Times, “US Agriculture Secretary nominee Tom Vilsack of West Des Moines promised Monday to quickly ramp up efforts to make agriculture an integral tool in battling climate change”. The article goes on to elaborate “Vilsack envisions creating new markets that pay farmers and foresters to sequester carbon in the soil, … He said he will create demonstration projects that can be incorporated as full programs into the next farm bill in two years. He said USDA will help develop scientific standards for carbon sequestration.”
Addressing past wrongs to black farmers: “The reality is there are inherent, legacy barriers and practices that have prevented black farmers and socially disadvantaged producers from getting access to programs, and I want to do everything I can to remove those barriers,” Vilsack said.
He goes on to say: “ASKED IF THE USDA will be a retread of previous years, Vilsack opened the interview by identifying eight priority areas “that need significant work or even historic work:”
Covid relief
Equity and inclusion
Climate and regenerative agriculture
Rural economic development
Nutrition security and assistance
Open and competitive markets
USDA employee morale, and
Forest Service management in an era of climate-driven wildfires.
“Now, where would you like me to start?”
Most people have no idea that by changing our farming methods to include year-long cover crops, we can make a tremendous difference in removing the carbon in our air and storing it safely in our soils. You can read about current changes already being incorporated in my article “Kiss the Ground”. From that article:
“Netflix has a movie called “Kiss the Ground” narrated by the actor/environmentalist Woody Harrelson. The star witness is Ray Archuleta, employed by the NRCS (Natural
Resources Conservation), a division of the USDA, an original agency started by President Roosevelt (-originally the Soil Conservation Services).”
“This disruption of the soil also allows carbon to escape contributing to climate change. By keeping plants growing year-round and reducing tillage, the soil draws carbon and holds it in the soil. The movie goes into detail demonstrating how by the use of cover crops, we can inject more carbon into the soil than we inject in the atmosphere from the use of oil, gas and coal.”
If you go to You Tube and search for “Cover Crops”, you will find a number of articles by farmers who have been utilizing cove crops, some for years. Many are finding that they have been able to greatly reduce the use of fertilizers and herbicides reducing their costs. They at the same time have been able to maintain current yields and are able to do so without any loss of production as sometimes happens with organic farming methods.
Art Cullen’s (“Editor of The Storm Lake Times”) book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper, is a must-read for those who are involved with or interested in how the farmers have lost there way. “Storm Lake is a story of how the rural Midwest has been washed out over the past 40 years — family farms disappearing to the consolidation of industrial agriculture; small towns bleeding jobs and population; a once-comfortable way of life supplanted by low-wage meatpacking jobs, environmental degradation, and a cultural sense of loss and upheaval. It’s a story of how the Farm Crisis (“a 1980s rural depression that saw farmers hanging themselves in barns”)”.
The book addresses how agriculture runoff made the river flowing by Des Moines so polluted that it could not be cleaned up enough to drink. Other of my articles concerning this subject below:
“Tomatoes in the Woods!” part II”
Tomatoes in the Woods!
Herbicide drift on my Garden
“Kiss the Ground”
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