Remarks Prepared For Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman Release No. 0008.97 Remarks Prepared For Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman The National Press Club Washington, DC -- January 15, 1996 INTRODUCTION Thank you Sonja. I want to congratulate you for the effective job you've done since I had the privilege of saying a few words about you at your induction as President. I'm not sure there was cause and effect, but since you've done such a fine job for the Press Club, I'd like to take credit. I know how proud farmers all over the country have been to watch Sonja on C-Span at these luncheons. They're always calling the Farm Journal -- usually at incredibly early hours -- to compliment her handling of speakers as diverse as Benjamin Netanyahu and Carol Channing. I guess I fall somewhere in between. I don't know how many of you know that Sonja, who's of Norwegian ancestry, was born on Norwegian Independence Day, and her father was so excited he decided to name her after the state where the family settled -- so she's Sonja Dorothy Hillgren, named for the state of South Dakota (where I understand it's about 200 below zero.) Thank you Sonja, for what you've done for journalism and what you've done for agriculture. It's a pleasure to be here today. It's also an historic event. The last time a Democrat was elected to a second term as President was 60 years ago, when Franklin Roosevelt set the admirable precedent of keeping agriculture secretaries for a second term. Fortunately for me, history repeats itself. There's a man in the audience today who probably knew Secretary Henry A. Wallace: Bob McMillan -- the first full-time Washington editor of the Farm Journal. He used to work at USDA, and I understand he's met almost every Secretary of Agriculture since Calvin Coolidge was President. We're happy to have you with us today. Secretary Wallace, my counterpart in FDR's second term, was an Iowa farm editor, geneticist and the son of another Secretary of Agriculture. I've been a lawyer, member of Congress and my Dad owns a scrap metal company. But in some ways, we're alike. Secretary Wallace developed the first commercial high-yield hybrid corn. My mother's cousin developed one of those little corn-on-the-cob holders. But we live in very different times. FDR was President in desperate times when there was broad public support to use government programs to deal with economic and social issues. Bill Clinton is President in a time of peace and prosperity and his mandate is to balance the budget and reign in bureaucracies that have gotten unwieldy and disconnected from the people they're meant to serve. FDR worked to strengthen a depressed domestic market for agriculture products. We work to build and assure markets abroad. The New Dealers brought electricity to the countryside. We are bringing the Internet, the information superhighway. Our circumstances have changed, but not our commitments. Based on those commitments, I have 3 pledges to make today: On my watch as Secretary of Agriculture, I will use the full extent of the law to make sure no child goes hungry. On my watch as Secretary of Agriculture, I will do whatever is necessary to ensure equal economic opportunity in small-town America. On my watch as Secretary of Agriculture, I will use whatever means are necessary to protect our land and water. And I pledge to do all this while continuing to reinvent the Department of Agriculture. The President will balance the federal budget, and that means less money for some government programs. I'm sure USDA will not be immune from more cuts, and that's probably the way it should be. We can't do everything. But what we do, we will do well. As President Clinton said, the era of big government is over, but not the era of big challenges. The role of the government in meeting those challenges has changed, but it remains a critical role. President Clinton has defined our role as working to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives. USDA will help the President meet his goal of preparing Americans for the 21st century, of getting them the tools they need in some critical areas. And we're tenacious. We'll do it until we get it right. It reminds me of the story about the duck who goes into a supermarket and asks the manager if he has any duck food. "Get out of here," says the manager. "We don't want ducks in here." The next day the duck comes back and asks the manager if he has any duck food. "I told you I don't want ducks in my store. Get out!" The next day, the duck comes back and asks the manager if he has any duck food. "If you come back here again, I'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the floor!" The next day the duck comes back, finds the manager and asks him if he has any nails. "No," says the manager. "Well then, do you have any duck food?" I. HUNGER There's no place for us to be more tenacious than in making sure that no child in this country goes to bed hungry. This is the richest nation in the world. There's just no excuse for one single hungry child -- in our own country or outside our borders. At home, implementing welfare reform is one of the biggest challenges we face. The effects of the new legislation are focused in the Food Stamp Program, but they're being felt in all our food assistance programs. We are working with states to provide an orderly implementation of changes. We are also supporting the President's efforts to soften the effects of the welfare reform bill's most severe cuts in food stamps. I will responsibly use all of the resources available to me under the law to make sure we fulfill our obligations to the hungry. The President has said, and I repeat, we have a national guarantee of nutrition for poor families and children. To end hunger in America, we will keep our commitment to providing food stamps to struggling families, healthy school lunches to hungry children, and nutritious meals to pregnant women and their infants. And we plan to go even further in preventing health problems before they start. We're working on a new human nutrition research initiative to help us reduce many common but preventable diseases. We have been working for the last couple of years not only to safeguard our federal programs but to act as a catalyst and clearinghouse for private feeding programs. In this rich nation, thousands of pounds of perfectly good food is thrown out in restaurants, grocery stores and farm fields. It's appalling. Gleaning -- or recovering -- that surplus food can make a real difference in the fight against hunger. We've made a lot of progress, but the job is far from over. Government can't fight hunger in America alone. Nor should we expect private charities and volunteerism to solve this enduring problem by themselves. We have to work together. You can learn about some of our efforts tonight on the Fox TV Show, "Party of Five." I've been sworn to secrecy on what happens between Charlie and Grace on tonight's show but I can tell you that after the show ends, Charlie will tell viewers how to get involved with food recovery in their community. We have a Water 2000 program to make sure that no American is without clean, running water. I will actively pursue setting up a Hunger 2000 program to make sure that no American is without safe, accessible food. Safe is a key word here. All the food in the world is no good if it's not safe. Our goal in the second term, as in the first, is to ensure that Americans have the safest food supply in the world. It's hard for us to imagine what it's like in other countries ... in Russia they sell food on the black market and you don't know where it came from or what's going to happen to you when you eat it. Frankly, we take safe food for granted. But we're not sitting still. Our inspection system has been essentially the same for the last 100 years and it's no longer adequate to the task. We've been living in a high-tech world with a no-tech inspection system. So finally, we are bringing the nation's meat safety inspection system out of the days of poke and sniff into the era of modern technology and good science. On Jan. 27, the first phase of this program takes effect. To be successful in food safety and everything else we do, we have to modernize our research. We have one of the most productive research operations in government, but we have to keep up with the times. We are already becoming a government leader on many issues of the technological revolution -- terrestrial applications of space age technology (called precision farming for you non-sci-fi types), technology transfer, and rural economic development. We have to do even more. Feeding the world without scarcity means the research pipeline must continue to provide breakthroughs that maintain productivity growth. I was recently at the World Food Summit in Rome where the U.S. committed itself to enhancing global food security. A conference is planned this spring to follow up issues from the summit, and USDA will continue to serve as the secretariat of the interagency process. GOVERNMENT ROLE IN FARM PROGRAMS We can do nothing to fight hunger either here or abroad if we don't keep our farmers competitive. If we can't grow the food and sell the food, there's no food to eat. The government's role in this respect is changing. In today's market-driven environment, the government assumes less risk and farmers bear more risk. But this doesn't mean we think farmers should be left to fend for themselves. Through subsidies and tight control on supply, FDR was able to keep many farms from going under. Today, as we move into an era driven by demand, we're letting markets run a freer course to ensure farm prosperity. But our guiding principle remains the same: Government must help shoulder the risks inherent in agriculture and protect the livelihoods of those who feed our nation and the world. Our greatest challenge coming out of the new farm bill is to find new ways to help farmers thrive in an increasingly risky environment, and yet not be involved in the micromanagement of agricultural decisions. That is why risk management has become a top priority. Better risk management means many things: more and better market information; better access to information; producer education, and development and use of mechanisms to share or transfer risk. There is a role for a government-private sector partnership in helping producers use market information and in developing insurance products and other risk management products to deal with variabilities in agriculture. To further ensure productivity, we must continue and strengthen our efforts to liberalize trade. Trade is booming and agriculture is America's #1 exporter. But while markets are open, they're still not open enough. And we have to keep fighting the phony science barriers some countries hide behind. It also is government's role to assure a level playing field at home. As agriculture becomes more dependent on the market than the government, the forces of competition must work. We will continue to combat unfair practices in concentrated domestic markets. And we will keep encouraging farmer cooperatives as a way to improve the marketing position and profitability of farm businesses. There will be proposals in the budget the President sends to Congress geared to providing farmers better tools to market their own crops, as well as proposals for other ways to deal with the fluctuations in the market place. II. EQUAL ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY My second pledge for President Clinton's second term is to ensure that people who live in the country have the same opportunities for economic growth as people who live in the city. FDR promised to "abandon the policy of rural neglect." We're still working on that. We still want to keep farmers on the land. And we want to bring young people back to rural America. I'm optimistic. Last year, 1 million more people moved in to rural America than moved out. And for the first time in my public life, I see young people who are once again excited about agriculture, and see a future for themselves in it. We need to attract more of them. And we need to ensure that all farmers are treated with dignity and respect. I'm sure many of you saw the op/ed I wrote in yesterday's Washington Post recommitting USDA to strict civil rights enforcement and minority outreach. One way we're going to do that is through a new program this Administration fought hard for in the Farm Bill. The Fund for Rural America was set up to make significant change in rural America. I want to emphasize that the Fund will benefit minority and socially disadvantaged farmers. The Fund also will provide resources for research and rural development. We will announce the specifics in the next few days. The Fund is not the only source of help for minority and socially disadvantaged farmers. Our Water 2000 initiative is designed specifically for low-income residents who don't have drinking water in their homes or have problems with water quality. The single family housing direct loan program is designed to help very low-income families become homeowners. The farm labor housing loan and grant programs assist migrant farm workers who are among the worst-housed families in the country. The socially disadvantaged farmer technical assistance program provides outreach and technical assistance to help farmers develop their farming operations. And the technical assistance for empowerment zone/enterprise communities is available to help disadvantaged communities. III. NATURAL RESOURCES We can plan all sorts of beneficial programs for rural development, but none of them will matter if we don't protect our natural resources. When Henry Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture, dust storms blew 300 million tons of topsoil from Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma into the Atlantic Ocean, and President Roosevelt established the Soil Conservation Service, recognizing that, as he said, "the nation that destroys its soil destroys itself." Today we have millions of acres of land enrolled in conservation programs. No other Secretary of Agriculture has decided the fate of more farmland than I will over the next term. Just this year, we will decide what happens to 21 million acres that have been retired from crop production for a decade or longer through the Conservation Reserve Program. We're about to release new CRP guidelines and expect enrollment to begin by March. The focus of the revised CRP will be to conserve and improve our natural resources. We will enroll land that will yield the highest environmental benefits and return to production less erodible land better suited for planting crops. Controlling soil erosion -- whether from water or wind -- is still the top priority of the CRP. USDA is the single largest conservation organization in the world. More than half the Department's employees work for the Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. And the passage of the 1996 farm bill marked the transformation of USDA from an agency based on commodity programs to one based on conservation programs. One of my top priorities for the second term of this Administration is implementing the farm bill's conservation programs, working together with farmers, ranchers, and private landowners across the country to protect our soil and improve the quality of our air and water. I want to emphasize that word together. We accomplish infinitely more for the environment, for farmers, and for future generations by working together. So you'll see a continuing shift toward greater cooperation and private-public partnerships -- in everything we do. In the second term, we also will focus more attention on all aspects of our forest policy -- not just harvest levels. National forests contribute more to the nation's economy through recreation and tourism than through any other goods or services we provide. We're not getting out of the timber business. We're just striking a greater balance in our use of the national forests to achieve President Clinton's goal of managing all forests in a sustainable manner in the year 2000. CONCLUSION As I said when I began, times have changed but our goals have not. We still believe that our children shouldn't go hungry, that hard work should bring rewards, that the air should be clean, that people should have a roof over their head and running water in their house. And it remains the role of the federal government to make sure they do. From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt to the modern era, government still exists to help people do what they can't do themselves. But our agenda will only be as effective as the apparatus that implements it. So another challenge we face in the second term is to leave USDA a better place. And we have to start by treating everyone -- our employees and our customers -- with the utmost dignity and respect. I spent 3 days last week at listening sessions in rural areas and small towns throughout the country hearing complaints about discrimination and lack of service to minorities in USDA farm loan programs. These are the same criticisms that have been made repeatedly over the past 60 years. We've got a problem, and we're working very hard to fix it. Today, 60 years after FDR and Henry Wallace, we again have the opportunity to forge a new approach, to find new solutions. They presided over the development of what was then called "the new Department of Agriculture." Now, 60 years later, we are once again putting together a "new Department of Agriculture." And we're doing what FDR wanted -- bringing government closer to the people. President Roosevelt took a very personal approach to governing. One of his first orders after becoming President was that if people in trouble telephoned the White House for help, someone on his staff was to talk with them and figure out some way of helping. Today, government agencies have whole staffs working to stay a month behind in answering mail. When Abraham Lincoln founded USDA he called it "the people's department." In the next few years, we hope you'll call us that again. Thank you.