vilsack has experience.e was able to hit the ground running in a way that a new secretary may not have been able to do some wood because of his experience. through the obama administration , we dealt with the obama administration and sec. vilsack on a variety of issues. i think what we hate -- what we have seen from sec. vilsack and the biden administration is the recognition that the president has set environmental goals. and sec. vilsack acknowledges and supports the good work that agriculture's purdue -- agriculture's due in pursuit of those climate goals and healthy environments. there's a clear recognition because of his experience, because he knows what happens on the ground, that without cattle producers the biden administration would have a difficult time meeting these climate goals. not because we are looking at an emissions reduction, but because there is a potential for conservation across landscapes, for improving carbon storage and soil health and keeping these landscapes open and healthy and pr

vilsack has experience.was able to hit the ground running in a way that a new secretary may not have been able to do some wood because of his experience. through the obama administration , we dealt with the obama administration and sec. vilsack on a variety of issues. i think what we hate -- what we have seen from sec. vilsack and the biden administration is the recognition that the president has set environmental goals. and sec. vilsack acknowledges and supports the good work that agriculture's purdue -- agriculture's due in pursuit of those climate goals and healthy environments. there's a clear recognition because of his experience, because he knows what happens on the ground, that without cattle producers the biden administration would have a difficult time meeting these climate goals. not because we are looking at an emissions reduction, but because there is a potential for conservation across landscapes, for improving carbon storage and soil health and keeping these landscapes open and healthy and prod

person, that we recognize we need that position, and that actually i'm very happy with secretary vilsackcause we need somebody with expertise. obviously, having a governor of a rural state, having somebody that has done eight years as secretary of agriculture, is going to help enormously to put the usda forward, and i know he is coming to the position with bold ideas, but i keep saying we need a white house food summit, and we need this new national director of food and nutrition. this is imperative. if we don't do this, we are going to miss a lot of opportunities to maximize the potential of the many agencies coming and working together. i know some people are going to be telling me, is this fried rice? i'm a famous chef. i'm not famous. i'm jose, i am cooking at home, i am cooking for my friends. i am not superman, i cannot do an interview, controlling the fire, controlling the vegetables, controlling everything. so, is this perfect? no. is it going to be delicious? yes. ♪ jose: i cook because i love to feed my family, and i love to change recipes. i don't like to repeat recipes. i bar

vilsack will break with his ways of the past.e to confront these industries in order to be successful on climate. he says climate change and racial justice are among his top priorities but we have not seen those included in his agency strategies for addressing the biggest crisis that is affecting this generation. host: part of the issue is to talk about where the u.s. is philosophically on the topic of meat, and can you change that? chloe: sure. there are many americans who are wanting to eat less meat and incorporate less meat in their diets. the consolation of policies has a big effect on what ends up on our dinner plates every night. the majority of americans want to incorporate more plant-based proteins in their diet. almost nobody is eating as many fruits and vegetables as is recommended by the dietary guidelines. we don't even produce enough fruits and vegetables in order to give every american enough for the dietary guidelines recommendation. that is usda's own policy, its right hand on the production side policy and what

bipartisan coalition of 55 members of congress from across the country in writing a letter to secretary vilsack of the usda. this letter urged him to codify the efforts to continue to provide schools the option to offer low flat flavored or unflavored milk. the protein to help build and reparamusle tissue of active bodies are vitamin a to may tain healthy skin. dairy products are a natural nutrient powerhouse. that is why, mr. speaker, i urge my colleagues to sign on to my bill, whole milk for healthy kids act, during national dairy month and allow the students the option of consuming the type of milk that they love. and this month, when you poor a glass of milk, enjoy a cheese board or cool down with ice cream, remember the hardworking dairy farmers and farm families who made that possible. thank you, mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from illinois, mr. garcia, for five minutes. mr. garcia: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to honor the life of courtney ann neal. my office's press secretary and digital manager. cour

government with office of personnel management and other agencies on the department of interior secretary vilsack made a commitment and we really look forward to working with you in congress to address this issue. >> i don't want to take more time but i hope the members can see the differential a starting salary of 38500 as opposed to california forrester is being paid 70000 and the state where 58 percent of the forest is under federal jurisdiction those are the actual numbers and working to try to solve that. >> . >> . >> thank you for the invitation and what we are serving the american people i share how this lines up at that administration's highest priorities and dell to end the covid pandemic we will employ science to tackle climate change fight wildfires to sustain productive resilient. >> and doing our part to spur job growth and lastly to advance racial equity were every employee feels respected and valued i'm proud to say despite the pandemic as the natural disasters the for service rose to the challenge 200 percent more as a sought respite from the surge of the pandemic. the last fermen

and i was proud that secretary vilsack. this will direct the untrade p practices to continue at home and abroad. and allowed them to while our small farmers are struggling. this is what our small family farmers need to regain and make to farms. i hope my colleagues will join me and i yield back. . under the speaker's announced policy, the gentleman from illinois, mr. casten is recognized as the designee. mr. casten: i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five five legislative days on the subject of our special order. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. casten: i yield to the distinguished chairwoman, ms. castor from florida. >> we are in a climate crisis and going to take american leadership and independent to solve it but we can create jobs and a lot of opportunity. what we are seeing are devastating health and here all across america, flooding in the midwestern and extreme heat, we have got to act urgently guided by the a h and across the globe to provide a liveable climate for all americans and for

they are listening as vilsack says he is going to improve it. >> my concern is the proposal will added >> reporter: okay. and there's one last thing in california starting next year, if you want to sell pork in the golden state you have to give your sows more room farmers say they don't have time or money to do that in time. joe, californians may have to eat more chicken in 2022. >> i honestly thought that was your stomach growling. that is the great sound track that you've got going. i mean, i love hearing that. that's live, right, jane that's real. >> reporter: that is live. no, so some of them are actually snoring and it reminds me of my husband. >> during your report? it's impossible! >> reporter: i'm just telling you. they're happy than a pig in you know what. >> oh, my god, they are. we need shih tzu for that, the dog. i think you can get away with that jane wells, coming up, brand new consumer inflation data. we've got the numbers. esg into your investments? at pgim, the pursuit is on for outperformance. as active investors, to outdeliver with customized strategies, integratin

particular received of.45 billion -- 6.45 billion to offset losses, and just last week secretary vilsacknnounced resources to keep employees safe with pandemic response and safety grants. these the only help mitigate some of the the effects. many of the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic still exist. we were reminded of that in hay when a ransomware attack hit jbs' northern american processing. one attack on one company halted one-fifth of u.s. meat processing capacity. and the issue is only resolved, according to reports, after jbs paid $31 million in ransom. --11 million. many issues affect the industry. for example, usda packers in the stockyards division can data show that four companies account for 85% of fed cattle slaughter. with fewer companies and more foreign-owned companies controlling more of the marketplace if, there is a widennenning gap between those giant players and the small and medium-sized processers that many local farmers and ranchers count on. so what happens when farmers and ranchers are have fewer options? what are the immediate effects? and what are the uni

i interviewed secretary tom vilsack a few days after that happened and he said first of all good job having cyber security messengers in place because it could have been catastrophic for an extended period of time but his second point was how do you make it so that meat processing, there are more plants, there's more small-scale, more medium scale. we've lost most of that in this consolidation and how do you strike that t balance between resilience and diverse of fighting regionally diverse and how do you stress test that between efficient and affordable and i think there is attention there. when you do increase processing capacity and you do decentralize a lot of this stuff you are also decentralizing power and money frankly and market share and it's not uncontroversial. it is something that there are fights over here and there's a reason why it's hard to just start a small meat plant up and to have that processing capacity but i hear a lot of folks in local restaurants, there are foodies interested in building that back for part of that reason of being more, better able to withstan

secretary vilsack has made a commitment to bring leadership to this and we really look forward to working with you here in congress to address this issue. >> thank you. i don't want to take more time but i have the members of this committee can see this differential, a starting salary of $38,500, as opposed to california foresters being paid $70,000. and having a state where 58% of the forest is under federal jurisdiction. that is the situation and those are the actual numbers so it is a real problem. and i would hope that the committee would work with me and others to try to solve it. >> thank you, senator, for making that important point and we will now turn to opening statement for chief christiansen. >> chairman, ranking member, and members of the committee and others, thank you for the invitation and today i will highlight the work we are doing to serve the american people and the nation's forest. and i will share how this work lines up with the new administration's priorities. specifically i will detail how the forest service is backing the effort to end the covid pandemic and i wil

budgetary and i thank the chair for giving me ns opportunity to ask the budget questions so we can make vilsack is this be successful. you foresee the workload of blm over the coming years, are you going to see more jobs expanding in certain roles and will you need more biologist to study wildlife impacts and permitting cliff lee's tommy what you're going going to needed anything want to share with the committee about the renewable energy coordination office. thank you mr. chair. >> thank you. to start with i think the renewable energy coronation offices or something where starting on that something we are looking at the need for additional sources. as was mentioned before they need to be reestablished and we are looking at established then them in individual states and regionally that will require a significant amount of staffing. wonderful staff continue to work on renewable energy products -- projects it will require additional staffing to supplement right now and build on that in that will require renewable energy and particular planning and as you mentioned why bullets and its impact on wi

specifically, i guess by secretary vilsack, to terminate this program? ms. kennedy: i feel like in my experience, i wasn't able to access the food box program. so it didn't affect my business. i am at a scale that's a little bit smaller, so i wasn't considered as a producer. so like ms. cooper, i created my own food box program with my local constituency and we supplied our local pantries and our local food relief organizations. i think food relief is still needed. i think a program like the food box program should still exist. i think if i was to create a new program, i would make sure that small scale producers could participate. because right now, because the food box program has ended, small scale producers are picking up the slack, but we don't have the funding to support our efforts. mr. thompson: yeah. the farm to family food box seemed like it was a real win-win, right? first of all, with the disruption of the food supply chain, because well over 60% of meals were eaten in restaurants prior to this pandemic. and all of a sudden, there was a processin

i think that that's why tom vilsack, the agriculture secretary says that he is confident that you will to find. there is ample evidence historically of rank discrimination against black farmers in this country. and you know, i think it is even as late as 2017 for every dollar given in terms of loans and support to white farmers is less than 1 cent for the black farmers. you have to keep in mind 100 years ago 15% of the farms in this country were black-owned. today less than 1%. and you know, it's just -- if you look at the way that the usda gave out loans, the way that the banks gave out loans, it all played into our history of racial discrimination and segregation, i don't think that it is very hard to prove this case at all. >> sandra: what do you -- >> john: what do you think, jason? will the judge overturned the ruling? this is going through the courts, this is just a temporary suspension. >> the idea that you would discriminate based on your skin color based on ethnicity, i thought we were past that now that we are into 2021, if we are being what we should be, we don't discriminat

i think it's very important and we thank usda and secretary vilsack for his willingness to work on theseues. hein has stated that he wants to look at the packers and stockyards act and we definitely need these investigations into the antitrust theories to come out. one of the questions that eyes gets asked in the premarket system why aren't any of the big for packers trying to gain more market share if it's truly free market system? it's not antitrust so why are they trying to gain market share upon each other that something that eyes comes to mind that yes we definitely encourage and appreciate your work on that trying to get these antitrust legislation's work through. >> all right, thank you very much.th thank you everyone. >> thank you chairman and again welcome to all of our witnesses. my first question is for mark gardner. mark i would like you to share a little bit about the story of u.s. premium beef and what were the ag economics licuini made the decision to do that even if i recall it was basically cattle producers that informed us parking -- packing plant. >> thank you senator

griff: monitoring the situation closely agriculture secretary tom vilsack tweeted usda continues to workith the white house department of homeland security. jvs u.s.a. and others to mitigate any potential supply or price issues. this comes on the heels of last month's colonial pipeline ransomware attack led to panic buying and gas shortages. gas line hacks and that company paid the russian captors 4.4 million. all of this comes just weeks before president biden is expected to meet face-to-face with russian president vladimir putin. unclear exactly how he will handle that or how he will hold putin accountable for this latest attack. brian, lawrence, ainsley? brian: wow, thanks so much. so you look at this. you have got australia that's affected. canada is affected obviously brazil is affected. and we have the states that are affected. nebraska, michigan, pennsylvania, utah, texas and arizona. this is private industry. what good is government having a military if they can't protect private industry in america? we are so not -- being mocked. took down you east coast with power energy which

the senate ag committee worked closely with the agency, both under secretary perdue and vilsack to be sure that the bill provided the necessary quality checks to the folks certified under the program know what they are doing. the lee amendment keeps the website but strikes these requirements. this are is why groups like american farm bureau like senator lee's amendment would dilute farmers' influence in the composition of the bill's advisory panel. it also removes critical protections in the base bill. i urge my colleagues to oppose the lee amendment and to support the underlying bill. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: madam president, i rise today in support of s. 1251. i first want to thank my partner in this landmark legislation, senator braun, and my partner and ranking member on the committee, senator boozman, for his leadership and helping us improve this bill and getting it to where we are right now. our farmers and ranchers are battling the consequences of carbon pollution and other greenhouse grasses