Successful Farming, April 2007
by Curt Arens
It’s been 30 years since Bob Bergland was at the helm at USDA, but the former Secretary of Agriculture, who served the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1981, has some advice for the authors of the new Farm Bill.
"It is highly unlikely that a ‘stay the course’ strategy is either possible or the wisest course of action," Bergland said in a phone interview from his home near Roseau, Minnesota. "The massive, record-setting federal deficits can no longer be ignored and spending cuts are inevitable, in my opinion."
Link to Nebraska Farmer MagazineDown to Earth: Celebrating a Blessed Life on the Land - Introduction and Book Excerpts Prayer for Farm Families Farm To Family - Curt's Weekly Column From Woolworth Avenue to the White House: For His First 16 Days, Gerald Ford’s Home was Omaha – Nebraska Life, July/August 2001 Ab’s Place: I Didn’t Know How Much I Appreciated the Old Farmstead until the Day it was Gone – Rural Voices: Literature from Rural Nebraska, Mead, Neb.: Dirt Road Press, 2002 Bergland Looks Back: Ag Secretary Who Served 30 Years Ago Has Very Modern Ideas - Successful Farming, April 2007 Strolling Down Privy Lane: Digging to the Bottom of Outhouse Lore – Living Here, Winter 2005 Lost Towns of the Missouri River: Searching for Tales and Ruins Along Nebraska's Northeast Border - Nebraska Life, September/October 2004 War Stories Select Articles and Publications 1996-2009 |
Bergland says the new bill must take into account sky rocketing energy costs and the rapid expansion of the ethanol industry. "The concentration in livestock production and the meat industry has been greater than expected," Bergland says. "Farm land rental rates are rapidly escalating, creating major problems for younger starting farmers."
"I was kind of the last caretaker of the remnants of the New Deal farm program," says Bergland, who served his northern Minnesota district in Congress from 1971-77, before serving as Secretary. "I wanted to eliminate the old crop allotments of the 1930’s, because farming had changed so much," he says. "They had served their purpose during the Depression, but had outlived their usefulness." While Bergland advocated more freedom for farmers to plant the crops they wanted, during his tenure, he still supported a strong safety net for farmers.
The politics of the Farm Bill has changed, says Bergland. "Commodity groups have emerged as power sources along with the traditional farm organizations, and each has its own ideas about the farm program." The emergence of bio-fuels, the expansion of public nutrition and school lunch programs, forest fires and the threat of livestock diseases and matters of contaminated fresh produce take most of the Secretary’s time these days. "But the job hasn’t changed," says Bergland. "It is still 85-percent caretaker."
He had some challenges in the early days after taking the post. In December 1977 in Pueblo, Colorado, Bergland listened as farmers - who had just initiated the American Agriculture Movement – complained to the new Secretary about national farm policy.
Four years earlier, the world had suffered two devastating crop failures, driving wheat to $5 per bushel and soybeans up to $10 per bushel. "Farmers were bidding against each other for more land in order to cash in," says Bergland. When crop production went back to normal, farm crop prices collapsed leaving many farmers in financial ruin.
"The farmers in Pueblo were demanding that I bail them out, which I could not do, and I was verbally lambasted by the audience," recalls Bergland. The well-publicized "tractorcades" to Washington, D.C. following that meeting brought the plight of the farmers to the limelight, but urban Senators didn’t always sympathize with farmers whose tractors clogged Beltway traffic. "Later on, we worked with leaders of the tractorcades and agreed to more modest changes," Bergland says.
In a defining action, Secretary Bergland commissioned a study on the structure of agriculture, with results published in the report, "A Time to Choose".
"For as long as I can remember, farm legislation highlighted as a stated goal, to save the family farms," he says. "We found out commodity programs had just the opposite effect. The fewer larger farms received most of the income and the much larger number of family-sized and smaller farmers had little or none. It destroyed the notion that one size fits all."
Bergland continues, "If we’re going to get serious about helping those other than the largest industrial farms, we must substantially re-direct the incentives." The landmark study was reinforced when President Clinton’s Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman, issued a follow-up report, "A Time to Act", in 1995.
Bergland didn’t lobby for the USDA top job. "Vice-President-elect Walter Mondale called me," says Bergland. "We had been friends forever. He asked if I would be interested in the job and if I would fly to Atlanta to meet President-elect Carter and his aides. The meeting with Carter went well and a few weeks later he offered me the job."
After officially joining Carter’s cabinet, one of the first calls he received was from outgoing Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz. "He and I had publicly differed on farm policy over the years," says Bergland. "But he was gracious and helpful to me in my new job. He tipped me off on some of the problems I was inheriting."
Bergland, now 78, is winning a fight these days that doesn’t involve farm policy. He just completed chemotherapy for lung cancer. In recent years, he has beat prostate cancer and a malignant tumor in his left arm has been removed. His doctors tell him that the lung cancer is in remission and his prognosis is very good, so he lives one day at a time.
After Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, Bergland left USDA to be chairman of Farmland World Trade, and then vice president and general manager of the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association. He retired in 1994, but was elected by the Minnesota legislature to serve a term on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
When he retired, he and his wife returned home to Roseau. "Family and friends have become very important," says Bergland. Several of their six children are still around Roseau and in Minnesota, so they enjoy visiting their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Bergland admits that he learned a lot in his Secretary’s post, because administering the USDA programs were quite different than legislating them in Congress. The practicality of the farm programs are truly tested from the USDA head office. And Bergland knows that as fact, because he’s been there.