Agriculture showcases recent successes to mark its 150th birthday

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack may have been slightly upstaged by the mock-competitive banter of MSNBC Morning Joe stars Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough as they led nearly 1,000 Agriculture Department employees in a ceremony on Tuesday marking the 150th anniversary of USDA’s creation.

The TV stars performed gratis following Vilsack’s appearance on their show earlier in the day, emceeing remarks by top officials representing each of the department’s disparate missions and joining with former Washington Redskins football stars Art Monk and LaVar Arrington to lead the crowd doing jumping jacks.

“This country has many shortcomings, but it has freed more people and fed more people than any other country in the world,” Scarborough said, praising the department for having “done so much for economic growth.”

Brzezinski said, “It’s not often that we get to celebrate an institution that has been around since long before television and other technology.”

Vilsack, speaking in front of a huge portrait of President Lincoln to the packed-to-capacity headquarters cafeteria, remarked on the 16th president’s signing of three key pieces of legislation from May to July of 1862 -- the Department of Agriculture Act, the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act, which created land-grant universities.

“Lincoln encouraged research,” Vilsack said, which is why today’s department maintains such a “close relationship with universities to create new seed and food safety technologies while also working with the private sector.” He noted how farm production of key crops has grown exponentially during his lifetime and how exports have expanded, particularly during the past three to five years. The newly signed treaties with South Korea and Colombia, he added, will help knock down trade barriers.

The average age of farmers today, the secretary said, mirrors his own, 61, so Congress should review the estate tax with an eye toward removing barriers to transferring farm property to the younger generation.

Opening the ceremony with prayers from a Native American tribal leader and a Catholic nun, the hosts introduced officials from Agriculture’s divisions devoted to nutrition, the Forest Service and conservation. The audience included 4H Club members and jacketed Future Farmers of America as well as Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa.; and Del. Gregorio Sablan, a Democrat representing the Northern Mariana Islands. Also on hand were a costumed Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl (famous for delivering the “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute” slogan).

Audrey Rowe, administrator for the Food and Nutrition Service, reviewed the department’s programs to feed children and the elderly, praising the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act for “trying to surround school children with healthy food” by upgrading lunch menus and vending machine offerings.

NFL stars Monk and Arrington described their endorsement of the Fuel Up to Play 60 Program, a joint effort by USDA and the nation’s dairy farmers to combat childhood obesity and promote 60 minutes of exercise daily. Monk confessed to a fondness for yogurt, which his wife considers “lady food.”

Stephen Gage, an emergency management specialist at the Forest Service, described his staff’s sudden assignment, on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to travel to the Pentagon and put out fires. “We did what millions of Americans wanted to do on 9/11, which was come help,” he said.

Maggie Rhodes, a USDA employee who volunteered for an assignment in Afghanistan, described her work on a reconstruction team providing technical farming assistance and aid to Afghani women seeking an education.

Jessica Shahin, associate administrator for the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, recounted her group’s work on the Gulf Coast just after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The emergency required SNAP to create its first eligibility policy for evacuees, and her team supplied 1.4 million households with more than $688 million in food, she said.

Dave White, chief of the department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, described his team’s work in the Gulf Coast following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Seeing that the human-made disaster coincided with a drought in the Southeast, he worked with scientists and farmers to create, in just three months, 500,000 acres of “instant wetlands” to host migratory birds whose patterns had been disrupted. “We turned what potentially was an environmental catastrophe into an environmental success,” White said.

Also speaking on conservation was musician Chuck Leavell, who, when not playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers, is a tree farmer in Georgia. “USDA has made a tremendous difference in the stewardship of land,” he said before sitting down at a piano to perform the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” and Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues.”

Cecilia Munoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council and assistant to the president, praised the department as a job creator, noting the farm industry’s $137 billion in exports in 2011 before introducing a 30-second video thank-you from President Obama. On Monday, Obama signed a proclamation, which said, “The USDA has stood shoulder to shoulder with the American people for generations.”

The celebration will continue Wednesday, according to a USDA spokesman, when Vilsack travels to Penn State to mark the law creating land-grant universities and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan does the same at the University of California at Davis.