INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — During his fifth day on the job, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue sat down for about an hour to speak with FFA chapters across the country via livestream video about challenges facing the agriculture industry.

 

Mark Poeschl, CEO of the National FFA, acted as moderator. “We are always honored when we have officials of that caliber that want to engage with FFA, particularly when they want to interact directly with the students,” Poeschl said.  “We’ve had really good relationships with USDA and former secretaries of agriculture, but for Secretary Perdue to agree to join us just five days into his tenure is an indication that he has a commitment to young people in agriculture.”

 About eight FFA chapters participated in the May 1 Q&A session from the National FFA Center in Indianapolis, while five others participated from Virginia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado.

 Topics ranged from recent issues of the U.S.-Canada dairy trade dispute to broader topics of global climate change, food waste, problems in agribusiness, infrastructure and STEM education. 

 

Perdue said he has great respect for the FFA and believes students can do much to better the industry. “I think as we build a better demand base here domestically, FFA students can be very helpful in telling the great story of agriculture,” he said.

 

“I told the President last week that United States agriculture is the best example I know of the productive manufacturing capacity of small businesses. If you look at what has happened in the last 75 to 100 years, it’s been amazing to see, with the numbers of farmers we have, that we feed much of the world.”

 

He also emphasized the importance of telling ag’s story to those outside the industry. “Unfortunately in agriculture, many times we tend to speak to ourselves in an echo chamber. I love to see FFA chapters all over the country create speaker bureaus to communicate the great messages of agriculture to society at large. I’m telling you, when you do, you are always more effective than I am.”

Perdue said FFAers who did not grow up on a farm have an important role. “I think one of the great things about agriculture is that it is very open and very inclusive, as far as having people that didn’t necessarily have the advantage of growing up on a farm,” he noted. “Not having grown up on a farm does not disqualify you from learning about and telling the story of agriculture. Not being a farm kid yourself, you might be more effective in going out and telling others.”

 

Perdue encouraged them to tackle key issues such as food waste. “What I am going to do is challenge you and all the smart FFA members across the nation to help me solve that situation,” he said. “It is really a tragedy that we would have such a nation where we can waste so much food, whether it be at our schools or our homes or our restaurants.

“I would love for that to be a national FFA project, to figure out how we can deal with food waste. And I can assure you that as national secretary of agriculture I will deal with that seriously, and it would be tremendous if we could resolve that issue in the next few years.”

 

Another main issue covered was the environment: global climate change, natural habitats and natural resources.

“My father said, ‘Whether we own it, or we rent it, our responsibility is to leave the land better than we found it,’” Perdue said. “Isn’t that our responsibility for the Earth as a whole? The best kinds of farmers are those people who take just what they need to produce what they can.”

 

Questions included the U.S.-Canada dairy dispute. “I think President Trump is quite a negotiator, as evidenced this past week in talking about renewing NAFTA,” he said. “I think NAFTA has been very good for agriculture, but there are some areas where we can improve, there are some adjustments to be made based on different products and different technologies and things like that.

 “Sadly, Canada changed some of the rules of pricing mechanisms that occluded a group of our Wisconsin dairymen in the ultra-filtered milk market. The USDA has some capacity to purchase milk and cheese for our school programs and other nutritional programs, so we’ll use every opportunity, every tool at our disposal to take care of that.

 

“The anxiety forming in families not having a place to go with their milk is very real, but the President sent Canada a strong message that if they want to discriminate against our dairy farmers in that area, then we will slap tariffs on your timber that is coming into our country,” he said, adding he hopes both countries resolve the dispute soon.

  

Poeschl said the students were lucky to have gotten the chance to speak to the secretary directly.

 

“I think that this is a great opportunity for young people to participate in the process where leaders engage with them,” he explained. “Regardless of political affiliation, these folks do a tremendous job in establishing policy for agriculture and setting the tone for what the future of agriculture is going to be.”