Vilsack Talks Issues

Last Friday at the close of the 2013 National Association of Farm Broadcasters Convention, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke about some of the recent issues that USDA has been working on including the National Drought Resiliency Partnership.

VILSACK: Nearly 32% of America's landmass today is still in drought conditions. That's obviously down from where it was last year but it's about 12% more than the normal. So we're still dealing with drought in a number of parts of the country. And this new partnership is a collaborative effort between the Department of Commerce and NOAA, Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Army Corp of Engineers, EPA, FEMA and USDA.

They hope this effort will help officials be more prepared for drought conditions.

VILSACK: What we hope to do in 2014 with this partnership is first and foremost create an initial point of contact. If there is a drought, who do you call? Where do you go for help? If there is a tornado - if there is a flood it's pretty simple you pick up the phone and call FEMA. We didn't have that.

Finally Vilsack talked about the EPA announcement.

VILSACK: It's unprecedented because what EPA has done is essentially said we are very interested in maintaining this industry and we need information from the industry as to policies and programs in addition to the RFS that would allow this industry to be more sustainable and more profitable. So it's inviting the industry to weigh in on what policies do we need to change? What policies do we need to adopt? What policies do we need to consider to make sure this industry continues to be viable.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.