Food Safety

In the wake of a series of outbreaks of food-borne illness, Vilsack was a key player in plans to improve the safety of the U.S. food system. He appointed food safety adviser Adele R. Ramos and said he supported the creation of a food-safety agency.

Energy and Climate Change

Vilsack's commitment to ending climate change may be one of the reasons President Obama chose him for a cabinet post, according to Time magazine.

While his advocacy of ethanol and other biofuels was controversial, Vilsack also lobbied for clean wind energy, and is in favor of offering subsidies to farmers for producing it. Iowa is among the leading states in producing wind-generated electricity.

At the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, Vilsack announced the USDA would add $90 million to its climate-change research budget over four years, bringing the total budget for such programs to more than $320 million over four years.

"There are significant consequences that are already occurring as a result of climate change, and they are only liable to get worse if we don't take action," Vilsack said.

Cap-and-Trade

The Obama administration wants to create a cap-and-trade program to limit harmful industrial carbon emissions, but farms will be exempt from these carbon caps.

Vilsack has been a strong voice on behalf of the administration, explaining to farmers that the legislation would exempt them. In fact, Vilsack has said farmers could profit from a cap-and-trade system by instituting programs to reduce carbon emissions and selling these "carbon offsets" to polluters on the carbon market.

Ethanol and Biofuels

Both Vilsack and Obama are supporters of using corn-based ethanol and other bio-derived fuels to ease America's reliance on oil. Vilsack has pledged to create jobs and pffset climate change by producing clean fuels, an idea that fits well with Obama's green-job stimulus ideas. Iowa is the nation's leading producer of corn and ethanol.

But some scientists and environmentalists argue that biofuels are doing more harm than good. One environmental blog called the use of ethanol "an absurd idea. For starters, it takes almost a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol." Time magazine, went a step farther, calling the use of cropland to grow fuel "an environmental and economic catastrophe."

Civil Rights

In 2010, Vilsack said he wanted to make civil rights a top priority for the USDA, a department that had been nicknamed "the last plantation" by black farmers.

His announcement came in the wake of a slew of complaints from minority farmers and ranchers. In a 1999 class-action lawsuit known as Pigford, 16,000 black farmers said they had been denied farm loans due to their race. The case, which had settled for $1 billion, was reopened in 2008 when thousands more black farmers said they should have been a part of it. At the time, Hispanic and female farmers were also suing the USDA seperately.

When Vilsack took over the USDA, he discovered a backlog of 11,000 civil-rights complaints going back eight years that had not been investigated. By February 2010, Vilsack's USDA had done a preliminary investigation of all of them, and in some cases had to ask Congress to grant an extension on the statute of limitations.

Big Agriculture

As the former governor of one of America's major farming states, Vilsack has deep ties to major agricultural businesses, especially to corn and soy producers. As governor he allowed businesses to expand feedlots, which critics say are a major pollutant. Vilsack's appointment was praised by agribusiness heads and the National Farmers Union.

But proponents of sustainable food have criticized large-scale agricultural production as unsustainable and unhealthy for consumers. Author and sustainable food advocate Michael Pollan told NPR that Vilsack's nomination means "agribusiness as usual."

Time reported that Vilsack was a middle-of-the-road pick when compared with hard-core "aggies" such as House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) or former ranking member Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas). Time noted that Vilsack's positions - promoting farm-conservation programs, clean-water regulations and a cap-and-trade plan to reduce climate change - prize the environment above business. "He's not really an aggie," Time quoted a lobbyist involved in food and agriculture issues as saying.

Foreign Aid

Vilsack took the USDA into the realm of foreign policy in January 2010, when he offered to give Afghanistan $20 million to rebuild their agricultural system after years of war. Vilsack offered to send USDA experts along with the money to help the war-torn nation achieve "reconstruction goals," including irrigation and job-creation.

"The United States recognizes the importance of Afghanistan's agricultural economy in creating jobs, helping the nation achieve food self-sufficiency, and drawing insurgents off of the battlefield," Vilsack said in a press release.

Vilsack's pledge came less than a week after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration intended to make international aid and development as important as diplomacy and military power, and only a few weeks after President Obama pledged a renewed focus on the war in Afghanistan, then in its eighth year, including a major troop surge.

Biotechnology

When nominating Vilsack, Obama praised the former governor for "promoting biotech to strengthen our farmers in fostering an agricultural economy of the future that not only grows the food we eat, but the energy that we use." The Biotechnology Industry Organization named Vilsack governor of the year in 2001.

Proponents of biotechnology say foods could be genetically modified to be healthier, tastier and longer lasting, effectively ending hunger and disease. Critics, however, call genetically-modified foods unsafe and untested.

Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the Organic Consumers Association said in a press release, "Vilsack's nomination sends the message that dangerous, untested, unlabeled genetically-engineered crops will be the norm in the Obama administration."

Show less