WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2024 — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack provided the following declaration today, following the release of the 2022 Census of Agriculture
“Today’s Census of Agriculture Report highlights it’s essential that we continue to provide farming policies that produce several streams of earnings and brand-new, more competitive designs for little- and mid-sized farms. A mix of trade wars, the pandemic and policies that advanced a ‘get huge or go out’ mindset pressed more individuals out of farming in the 5 years because the last Census, than in any other Census duration this century. America, and particularly our rural neighborhoods, can not manage this trajectory towards bigger, however less, farms.
“In reaction to those difficulties, the Biden-Harris Administration has actually carried out historical efforts to grow independent meat and poultry processing capability in almost every state, to boost regional and local food systems so that farmers can offer straight to clients within their neighborhoods, and to produce brand-new income streams through renewable resource and community markets, the effects of which are not yet recorded in today’s report. All of these actions are making it possible for America’s farmers to be less reliant on a couple of big, combined monopolies, making farming more practical for the next generation, and making our food system more resistant for everybody who consumes.
“There are some early indications that this technique is working: over the very first 3 years of the Biden-Harris Administration, the United States experienced the greatest net farm earnings on record, and we’ve likewise seen development in the rural population for the very first time in a years. There is more work to do to guarantee we keep strong momentum in regards to farm earnings, and to make certain that earnings is equitably dispersed amongst farms of all sizes so more can remain in service and add to their regional economies. Today’s report is a wake-up call to everybody who contributes in farming policy or who shares an interest in maintaining a growing rural America– we are at a turning point, in which we have the chance to hold tight to the status quo and diminish our country’s farming sector even more, or we can pick a more extensive, more recent design that develops more chance, for more farmers.”
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