Under Secretary Northey speaks at Commodity Classic sorghum meeting

U.S. Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey answered questions from members of the National Sorghum Producers board of directors Feb. 26 at the 2020 Commodity Classic in San Antonio, Texas. 

Northey, a native of Iowa and former board member for the National Corn Growers Association, is no stranger to Commodity Classic, a meeting of NCGA, American Soybean Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, NSP and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.

He said what drew him to be a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and work for Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue were his thoughts on how the department works for its customers, the farmers.

“We need your help anytime that that’s not working the way that it needs to,” Northey said. “It is a challenge to stand up all these programs in a way that works in western Kansas and also Maine and also works in Washington state. So we don’t always get these right, but we need your help and understanding what that is.” 

He welcomed comments and questions in that regard. Northey is also getting a lot of questions about the Market Facilitation Payments.  President Donald Trump even tweeted about it this week—MFP 3.0. 

“We’re still of the mindset that we want to give this a chance to work and see what happens,” Northey said. “I think the president tweeting and responding the way that he did acknowledges trade has a huge economic impact to agriculture.”

Northey will continue to keep an open mind, whether or not there’s a continued trading path or not.

“I would say that MFP is based on trade impact,” he said. “That’s how we  constructed because it couldn’t be an ARC/PLC [Agriculture Risk Coverage/Price Loss Coverage] clause. It couldn’t be a crop insurance—it couldn’t be a disaster program.” 

Congress is in charge of those kinds of programs. 

“It needs to be responsive,” Northey said. “As of now we’re going to let this play out and see what it looks like later in the year. Certainly the president’s going to be watching it. Be paying attention as well, as obviously you can see whether they trade out.”

U.S. traders are also keeping track of what products the Chinese are buying.

“We use the market as a scorecard, and hopefully, that market is going to respond more than it has so far,” Northey said. “It needs to or there would be a very good argument for continuing trading.”

NSP Chairman Dan Atkisson, Stockton, Kansas, asked Northey about Perdue’s comments on sustainability made last week following his involvement with the Agriculture Innovation Agenda. Perdue spent time in Europe during the last month seeing firsthand their challenges in agriculture and the rate of innovation there. 

“The premise here is, first tell the story of how we have innovated,” Northey said. “And he will use this to talk about how much innovation there’s been, and how much we’ve improved the way that we’re operating our farms out there.

Northey said one of the ways American agriculture is going to produce even more in the future is through innovation, and the federal government will have a hand in regulating such innovation.

“Certainly in the research that we did, we got to encourage that innovation as well. And there’s certainly tension about that, around gene editing other kinds of things within our own government and certainly overseas,” he said. “This premise is agriculture, like everything else, should innovate.”

Producers need to be able to understand what’s happening in private industry and how it’s paired together with the federal government. They also want to find a way to measure it.

“Our Office of Chief Economist is going to try and do a better job of measuring what we’re doing out there so that we can take credit for the good things that are happening,” Northey said. “We have a lot of great things that are happening out there. But right now the public just wants to many cases, charge us with.”

Even though greenhouse gases from agriculture are less than 5%, agriculture is still getting it wrong according to the public, but yet they’re still eating.

“We need to be able to make sure we’re getting credit for those good things that we’re doing,” he said.

He hopes that bringing different groups together will create more interest in innovation in agriculture. Groups might include USDA, the Agricultural Research Service, universities and private industry. 

“You’re going to see more noise about that. I don’t know that it changes a lot, but I hope it changes some of the dialogue,” Northey said. “And certainly it argues that agriculture is part of the solution for those that are looking for carbon in the soil/climate change concerns. And I think that we have a great case to make. We want to build it on science and innovation.”

NSP board member Craig Meeker from Wellington, Kansas, explained that telling the story to the public and getting them to embrace agriculture is challenging. He said it’s akin to expecting a physician to treat a modern medical ailment with the methods of one’s grandparents.

“We can’t farm and we can’t produce the kind of nutritious food, sustainable food the same way that my grandparents farmed,” he said. “I think they can put it in terms and see how we’re innovating. I think it might be a whole lot easier for the stomach to swallow.” 

Northey agreed.

“There’s so much of our life we accept innovation in,” he said. “And yet then I also hear the opposite of that, that the ag never innovates, why don’t farmers change anything?” 

He often hears that from someone who wants somebody else to do the work. Farmers are notorious for changing things in their day-to-day operations, Northey said. 

“I might change the planter depth. I’m going to put a new adapter on my planter. I’m going to use a different hybrid. I’m going to change the color of my tractor,” he said. “There’s thousands of things.”

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].