(Radio Iowa) – Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will have served 12 years for two American presidents when he leaves his role as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in three weeks.
Vilsack, who moved to his wife’s hometown of Mount Pleasant after finishiing law school, says his legal work representing farmers during the Farm Crisis gave direction to his life — and it ultimately led to him serving as the country’s top ag official. Vilsack says one of the recent highlights at the U-S-D-A was an uptick in the number of farms in Iowa. The U-S-D-A conducts a census every five years.
The last census in 2022 found the number of farm units in Iowa had increased by about one percent the number of farmers had increased seven percent from 2017.