Agriculture - Obama Presidency Oral History

Beyond these urgent crisis-response measures, the Obama administration also moved to reshape long-term trends in the agricultural and rural economies. Early in Obama’s first term, officials from USDA and the Department of Justice embarked on a cross-country listening tour to understand the local impacts of consolidation in the agriculture sector, and consider possible antitrust actions to punish and prevent anticompetitive practices. USDA supported farmer’s markets to create settings in which small producers could sell directly to consumers, and worked to make farming and ranching professions more accessible by creating programs to assist women, underrepresented minorities, and people from non-farm backgrounds in the industry. In 2011, Obama established the interagency White House Rural Council, which considered critical issues including urbanization, credit access, and the de-industrialization of rural areas. In project interviews, narrators reflect on the administration’s approach to these long-term trends, outline the impact of the financial crisis and recession in rural America, and discuss the agriculture-related provisions of the Recovery Act.

Central to the administration’s agriculture policy was its effort to improve American nutrition, especially for children. First Lady Michelle Obama made childhood nutrition core to her East Wing policy portfolio, and launched the Let’s Move! initiative with the bold target of ending the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation. To further encourage healthy eating, Mrs. Obama also planted a highly-publicized vegetable garden on the White House’s South Lawn, and visited Washington farmer’s markets. But the administration’s most powerful tool for shaping childhood nutrition was through USDA’s National School Lunch Program, which provides meals to tens of millions of K-12 students in public schools across the country. The administration reviewed and enhanced the program’s nutrition standards, restricted the sale of “junk food” on school premises, took steps to control the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids, and replaced the “food pyramid” nutritional infographic with a clearer new image, “MyPlate.” Along with other measures, the updated nutrition standards were codified in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which Obama signed in late 2010. The administration’s nutrition campaign is discussed further on the topic pages for the East Wing and Public Health. 

The federal government’s role in American agriculture is, in many ways, defined by “farm bills”—omnibus spending packages that codify agriculture, nutrition, and rural development policy, and fund USDA programs and activities. By the start of Obama’s second term, the most recent farm bill, from 2008, was nearing its expiration. After two years of negotiations, Obama signed a reauthorization, the Agricultural Act of 2014, providing nearly $1 trillion in funding over ten years. Farm bills combine conventional agriculture policies like crop insurance and commodity crop subsidies with nutrition support, primarily SNAP. These programs are supported by distinct coalitions in Congress and civil society. In their interviews, government officials remember the difficulty of the negotiations, and describe the importance of farm bills to USDA and Americans across the country.

Agriculture policy in the United States intersects deeply with energy, environmental, and climate policy. USDA’s Agricultural Research Service has conducted basic research about, among thousands of important questions, the impacts of climate change on crop yields, and the agency manages a wide variety of programs to require or incentivize environmentally-sensitive practices and the conservation of natural resources. In project interviews, narrators describe these programs, and speak widely about major issues including the administration’s biofuels policy; the intensification of drought and wildfire conditions in the American West; climate-change-driven updates to USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map; organic food standards and the regulation of genetically-modified crops; the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative and efforts to support local and regional food systems; and the reception of climate policies in rural communities.  

Issues related to agriculture, farming, and food production were also important to the Obama administration’s foreign policy and economic development initiatives. US exports of commodity and specialty crops were critical in negotiations of international trade agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, USDA officials promoted US agriculture on trade missions abroad, the administration launched a multi-billion-dollar initiative to combat global food insecurity, and American officials met with foreign farmers to encourage their adoption of productivity-enhancing techniques and technologies. These events and initiatives are discussed further in interviews found on the Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia Rebalance topic pages.