President Joe Biden spoke via a recorded message at the American Farm Bureau Federation annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday. He said farmers and ranchers are “the backbone of the nation.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke in person at the convention and hit on several topics.
Among those topics, he discussed trade:
He also spoke about congestion at the ports.
Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall
AFBF President Zippy Duvall spoke at the opening ceremony on Sunday. He discussed some of the stories he’s heard from farmers around the nation.
“To name just a few, in Louisiana I saw firsthand how regulations like WOTUS can impact farms. Farmers in Arizona made it clear how H-2A visa delays are hurting agriculture,” he said. “The shocking realities of the border crisis became very real when I visited our southern border states. In Kansas, farmers weren’t shy about sharing their concerns around livestock markets. And in Puerto Rico, the power of farm bill programs to strengthen farmers was on full display.”
Duvall said farmers and ranchers should be proud to share the story of agriculture.
“The American farmer is one of the most trusted professions today. That may not always feel true when you see negative headlines, but our polling shows that 87 percent of Americans trust farmers and ranchers,” he said. “The proof is in the response to stories you all shared through #StillFarming. In an age when social media can be a negative place, this positive campaign of sharing farm stories took off, reaching over 110 million people. You showed the American people that you have their backs. And as you did that, trust in farmers went up when trust in just about everything else seemed to plummet.”
The farm bureau annual convention wraps up Tuesday with delegate sessions. Policy on cattle markets is expected to be one of the major debates within the group as different regions of the country have opposing views on issues such as mandated levels of cash trade.