Senate confirms Jewel Bronaugh as USDA Deputy Secretary

May 14, 2021

She served as Virginia’s 16th commissioner of agriculture

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

The American ag industry now knows who will serve as the deputy secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Senate confirmed Dr. Jewel Bronaugh for the position on Thursday with a bipartisan voice vote. Her confirmation means she’s the first African American woman to hold the role.

🎉 Congratulations to Dr. Jewel Bronaugh who was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of USDA! She will serve as the first Black woman and woman of color to serve as Deputy Secretary. pic.twitter.com/8Yc3liIodR
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) May 13, 2021

Bronaugh is just the fourth woman to be deputy secretary.

She joins Ann Veneman (1991 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush), Kathleen Merrigan (2009 to 2013) and Krysta Harden (2013 to 2016). Both Merrigan and Harden served In President Obama’s administration.

As deputy secretary, Bronaugh will be responsible for day-to-day USDA operations.

President Biden nominated her for the position prior to his inauguration in January.

Bronaugh became Virginia’s 16^th ag commissioner in 2018.

In 2019 she launched the Virginia Farmer Stress Task Force to increase awareness and support for mental health challenges in the ag sector.

Her industry experience also includes serving as the Virginia State Executive Director for the Farm Service Agency and as a 4-H extension specialist with Virginia State University.

Bronaugh’s colleagues welcomed her to the USDA.

Her experience will serve her well in her new role, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

“Dr. Bronaugh has a long, distinguished career as an educator and champion for farmers and rural communities,” he said in a May 13 statement. “Most recently as the 16th Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services she worked to expand opportunities for small and midsized farmers and ranchers to obtain infrastructure and processing capabilities, and developed strategies to meet environmental and water quality goals for the Chesapeake Bay.”

Farm groups look forward to working with the new deputy secretary.

The support she received from both parties indicates the confidence lawmakers have in her, said Zippy Divall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“AFBF congratulates Dr. Jewel Bronaugh on her confirmation as USDA Deputy Secretary,” he said in a statement. “Not only is the confirmation historic, the bipartisan vote is an acknowledgement from both parties that she is focused on the needs of America’s farmers and ranchers.”

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators