USDA Deputy Secretary Lays Out Plans to Help Farmers, Promote Health

In the final session of The WSJ Global Food Forum, Stephen Vaden, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture deputy secretary, offered up his insights on a variety of topics, from aid for farmers to the MAHA movement’s nutrition goals, in a talk that even got a little politically tense at times, with Vaden occasionally citing policies and strategies of the Biden Administration that he claimed did no favors for agriculture.

Vaden ticked through the list of aid for farmers and small businesses present in the One Big Beautiful Bill and also discussed how farms can be successful without government aid as long as innovation around yield improvement continues and the current administration continues to maneuver policy decisions wisely. When asked about trade deals with China, he mentioned that agriculture was important to any trade deal, and that the administration expects China to hit its commitment to purchase U.S. crops this year as it did last year.

A question about tariffs and their impact on food prices led to a quick answer that multiple inputs and factors were causing prices to rise, which then led to a longer discussion on the challenges around fertilizer and heavy criticism for at least one fertilizer company for its actions, which was a continuation of accusations published earlier this year in several agriculture-focused publications.

When asked about the Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement and nutrition, Vaden said that step one would be to make the products landing on American plates sourced from America again. He further stated that if the food comes from America, it’s guaranteed safety and healthy. In response to the moderator asking about particular foods/crops that could not be grown in the U.S., Vaden said it was a fallacy that the U.S. could not feed its people without imports.

The MAHA movement will be successful on nutrition, he said, once the need for healthy eating, affordability and gold-standard science were all taken into account and integrated together into a solution. With regard to school nutrition, Vaden said the new Dietary Guidelines was the start of getting students to “eat real food.” Here, too, affordability and nutrition science were critical, as regulators don’t want to foist additional expenses on already-taxed school budgets. He said to expect more whole-food items, pre-seasoned and also already-processed, and less pizza and foods like that. Whole milk and flavored (chocolate) milk would be OK, since students simply won’t eat or drink healthy foods that they don’t like because they don’t taste great.

Lastly, he talked about the struggles caused by the low U.S. beef cattle supply, saying the USDA has put forth a plan to gain control of as much grazeable land as possible, working in conjunction with the Dept. of the Interior to make that happen. He said rulemaking proceedings should be out before the end of the year that would level the playing field and make the transition of those lands smoother.