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ACTUALITIES – Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Meets With Rural Leaders
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with rural leaders at the White House to hear their ideas and concerns.
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ACTUALITIES – Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Meets With Rural Leaders
INFO: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with rural community leaders at the White House to talk about strengthening rural communities and promoting economic growth. The meeting was part of the White House Champions of Change series that recognizes ordinary Americans who are accomplishing extraordinary things in their communities to help the U.S. compete globally. (July 6, 2011)
1- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that many of our nation’s important values come from rural communities. :20
Rural America represents sixteen percent of the country’s population, but forty four percent of the people who serve us in the military come from rural America. And the reason they do is because the people around this room instill in young people in your communities a value system and that value system comes from our understanding of the land and agriculture.
2- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that their communities need to know what the Federal government is doing and can do for them. :10
We will do a better job of integrating the Federal programs to provide critical mass. We’ll do a better job of explaining to folks what we’re already doing.
3- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that Federal officials value their advice. :11
My challenge today is to make sure that you have enough time to visit with us, to give us a sense of what we should do more of and what we should probably do less of.
4 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that government officials want to know how they can better help rural communities. :26
Now there are folks who also appreciate the important role that investment, capital and credit play in helping to create economic opportunity and we are really interested in learning how we can do an even better job of ensuring investments both on the credit side and the debt side to be able to, and on the equity side, to be able to grow new businesses and to be able to see them flourish in the rural communities.
5 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that USDA is looking at ways to expand production of biofuels made from a variety of feed stocks and at how farmers can provide those feedstocks. :24
We’ve got five different regional research centers looking at different feed stocks. We are now providing resources for bio-refinery construction in a variety of places around the country using different feedstocks. We’re helping to promote the production of these new feedstocks through our b-cap program and we’re also working to encourage farmers to actually look for ways in which they can incorporate renewable energy and fuel into their own operations.
6 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told rural leaders that USDA is promoting the use of locally grown food. :23
We have teams going out to schools across the country trying to encourage schools to think about where they purchase their food. We are putting resources into food hubs, local food hubs, so that farmers can then aggregate, and ranchers can aggregate enough quantity to be able to meet the needs of the local institutional purchasers, hospitals, schools, prisons, colleges, things of that nature.
