“His understanding and experience with many of the pressing issues facing agriculture today will serve him well in his new position,” Stallman said.

Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, which represents small communities and small farmers in the Midwest, said, “I think he’s a good choice to implement the vision for rural America that President-elect Obama put forth in the campaign.” Hassebrook had applied for the job himself after growing discouraged with the reported list of possible nominees. “There were people on the list who weren’t very interested in the things we care about. He is.”

Vilsack, as Obama noted, is a strong advocate of ethanol as an energy source, wants to enact a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system to combat global warming and generally gets good grades from environmentalists.

Craig Cox, now the Iowa-based Midwest vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said Vilsack will bring a much broader view of agriculture to the Cabinet.

“It’s encouraging that the White House understands that the Department of Agriculture is about much, much more than farm subsidies,” he said.

The fruit and vegetable industry also welcomed the appointment. Robert Guenther, a senior vice president at United Fresh Produce Association, said he hopes Vilsack also concentrates on other nontraditional Agriculture Department issues such as visas for farm workers.

The role of the secretary is “really to evaluate what the department does not just for the farming community but for the rural community, the consumers. What does agriculture mean to different people? Most people think it’s about farming and ranching,” Guenther said.

John W. Boyd, Jr., president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association — who was interviewed for the Agriculture post — said Vilsack is a “great pick to lead USDA at this challenging period in our nation’s history.”

Advocate for Small Farmers

Vilsack, an attorney with the firm Dorsey & Whitney, has long rallied behind small farmers. At an Iowa farm bill forum in 2005, he advised the Bush administration and Iowa lawmakers to ensure budget constraints do not interfere with funding for rural development, such as expanded access to high-speed Internet.

He asked that the legislation ensure small family farms and producers are granted equal bargaining power with large food processors over price negotiations.

“In a day and age where we are seeing a consolidation of purchasing from large chain and grocery stores putting pressure on processors, it may be appropriate and necessary for producers to find a way to align themselves together so that their purchasing power is as strong as those that they are negotiating with,” Vilsack said. Such a provision made it into the farm law (PL 110-246).

In addition, he called for the farm bill to promote conservation efforts nationwide that have been fruitful in Iowa, such as buffer strips and wetland restoration. The government should “treat conservation as if it were a commodity and support it as such,” he said, adding that viewing conservation as a commodity also would aid the nation in negotiations over crop subsidies with trading partners. The law included money to expand a wetland program, but some conservation provisions were downsized.

Obama emphasized Vilsack’s populist streak on Wednesday.

“When President Lincoln established the Department of Agriculture nearly a century and a half ago, he called it the ‘people’s department’ for it was meant to serve the interests of those who lived off the land. And I know it will be the people’s department once more when Tom is at the helm,” Obama said.

School Lunches Rewrite

The law that governs school lunches and other child nutrition programs (PL 108-265) is up for reauthorization in 2009, and the new Agriculture Secretary will play an integral role in writing the legislation.

During the last reauthorization process in 2004, Vilsack wrote a letter to lawmakers and the Bush administration about challenges that still linger five years later, including the growing epidemic of obesity among American children and snack foods in vending machines competing with school foods. He recommended expanding a fruit and vegetable snack program that, under the new farm law, has since received a $1 billion dollar boost.

Vilsack also suggested controversial limits on the types of snacks and beverages sold to students outside the lunch line — so called “competitive foods.” Nutrition activists want junk food out of schools altogether, but many schools use the revenue from sales to help cover the rising costs of regular meal services. Current USDA school nutrition standards exempt most snack foods, because they aren’t a part of subsidized lunches.