Trump Ag secretary speculation expands
By Jerry Hagstrom, The Hagstrom Report
Nutrition-RFP-012322
| Speculation about who President-elect Trump might pick as agriculture secretary is expanding and, in the absence of an announcement, becoming a bit wild. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., is now among those under consideration, E&E News by Politico reported today. Thompson’s chief of staff, Matthew Brennan, told E&E reporter Marc Heller in a statement that the congressman is “humbled by the prospect” but hasn’t given the position much thought because he’s been working on a five-year farm bill and helping Trump win Pennsylvania. “President-elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration soon. Those decisions will be announced when they are made,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign press secretary, told E&E. Joel Salatin, a Virginia producer who calls himself “the lunatic farmer,” said in a blog post last Wednesday — the day after the election — that the Trump team had already offered him a position at the Agriculture Department as a senior adviser to the secretary and that the secretary would be Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who has a regenerative farm. But Massie on X said he had not been offered a position, and Fox News published a story about the situation. A person close to the Trump transition team called the Salatin blog post “odd.” Marty Irby of Competitive Markets Action and Josh Balk, CEO of the Accountability Board, told The New York Sun that the frontrunner for agriculture secretary is Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who was with Trump at the Butler, Pa., rally where Trump was shot in the ear. Both Irby and Balk once worked for the Humane Society of the United States. Irby lobbies in favor of retaining California’s Prop 12, which says that pork sold in California must come from animals raised under certain conditions. “He’s antiestablishment. He’s not afraid to break some kneecaps and twist some arms — figuratively, of course,” Irby said of Miller. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been run by the swampiest of swamp rats for the past four years, and another eight years prior to that, with Tom Vilsack, and we need a major overhaul very quickly.” Other previously mentioned candidates: Kip Tom, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations food agencies in Rome. Ted McKinney, the agriculture undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs in the first Trump administration and now CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. Former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas. Greg Doud, chief agricultural negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the first Trump administration and now president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation. Charles Herbster, a Nebraska cattle producer and agribusiness executive who has been a longtime Trump supporter. |
| Much of the speculation centers on how the nominees would fit in with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. Kennedy appears to be more focused on health than on food, but Trump has said he will let Kennedy “go wild” on food policy. Kennedy has long been a critic of pesticides, herbicides and ultra-processed foods. |
