Tom Vilsack, 73, has previously come under scrutiny for his close ties to agribusiness companies and organizations (Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch).
MADISON, Wis. — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who moved into a dairy lobbying position following his first go around as head of the USDA, did not reject making a similar move once his current time as secretary ends.
Speaking to reporters last week at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Vilsack was asked by Investigate Midwest if he would again join the rotation of federal regulators working in the agriculture industry.
“My plans are to be here today to talk about the dairy industry, because I care about the industry,” he said to a group of reporters after speaking at the Global Dairy Summit, hosted by the state’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
“That’s what I’m focused on today. That’s what I’ll be focused on tomorrow. That’s what I’m going to be focused on as long as I’ve got energy and breath.”
When pressed again, Vilsack said he couldn’t make promises because he can’t predict the future.
“Nobody can promise where they’re going to be tomorrow. I could be dead tomorrow,” Vilsack snapped, closing the press conference. “Good grief, man, what a question.”
Vilsack, 73, has previously come under scrutiny for his close ties to agribusiness companies and organizations. He’s also been criticized for taking part in what’s known as regulatory capture, a process where government officials, responsible for regulating an industry, later work for that same industry.
Previous Investigate Midwest reporting found that the “revolving door” between regulatory agencies and the agriculture industry is common practice for USDA employees.
Jeff Hauser, founder of the nonprofit Revolving Door Project, said the USDA has a history of promoting the interests of corporations in charge of the nation’s food supply, regardless of administration. The nonprofit group researches and tracks the relationship between officials working in the government and the industries they are supposed to regulate.
“You’re just unlikely to want to get into a feud and enforce a law strictly against an industry that you might be a member of very shortly,” Hauser said.
Soon after Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, left his first stint as USDA secretary in 2017 under former President Barack Obama, he took an executive position in the dairy industry where he received an annual salary of nearly $1 million, according to public records.
Vilsack became vice president of Dairy Management Inc., the trade association that manages the industry’s checkoff fund. He also served as the CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, an arm of the organization focused on international trade promotion.
Checkoff programs are federally mandated and require commodity producers, from dairy to watermelons, to pay into a pot of money used to market products. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found that the dairy checkoff program accounted for nearly half of all the nation’s checkoff spending, with expenses that included large salaries, private jet flights and Super Bowl trips.
Vilsack, who returned as agriculture secretary in 2021, and the USDA have been criticized by lawmakers for delays in publishing federally mandated financial reports from the dairy checkoff program. As of early October, the dairy checkoff program had not published the most recent two years of audits and missed its July deadline to do so.
Current Dairy Export Council CEO Krysta Harden, who also spoke at last week’s World Dairy Expo, highlighted the council’s push in the past two decades to grow the nation’s export market. She also said she was confident the nation’s dairy industry will continue to expand outside of the country thanks to a “government that supports dairy.”
Harden worked under Vilsack during the Obama administration, eventually becoming the USDA deputy secretary of agriculture. Prior to joining the USDA, she worked in policy and roles for seed and chemical heavyweights DuPont and Corteva. She now leads the export council after Vilsack returned to work for the federal government.
Despite growing markets for export, dairy farmers have only turned a profit three times in the past two decades. In Wisconsin — host of the annual World Dairy Expo since 1970 — dairy farms have declined by nearly two-thirds in that same time.
Joe Maxwell, co-founder of Farm Action, a nonprofit that works against agricultural consolidation, believes Vilsack is an example of the ways regulations have been delayed or stymied because of the close nature between the federal government and industry.
“The USDA has been in bed with the very people that they’re supposed to keep in line, either as a regulator or approval agency for checkoff funding,” Maxwell said.
“Government has a responsibility to put the safeguards in place so our economy works for people,” Maxwell continued. “When our agencies are hired by the very people they’re regulating, those safeguards go away and the people aren’t represented, and this economy works for the corporations and not for the people.”
This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.