BOONE, Iowa — The Iowa Democratic Party started a series of events this summer with former Iowa Governor and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack, now the CEO of the World Food Prize Foundation, has had three farmer forums now where he explains his vision for growth in rural communities through farmland. “Grow Iowa” is what the Iowa Democratic Party is calling it, looking ahead to how the party plans to expand economic opportunities in the state.

“It’s just important for this message to get out so that people feel educated, that they understand that there is a set of choices that could potentially be made,” said Vilsack. “It does impact and affect decisions that are made at a federal level, impact decisions that could be made at state level and at a local level. If you empower people with information, then they’ll start asking the right questions.”

Vilsack expanded on policy ideas he implemented while he was in office as the USDA Secretary, hoping that those programs would continue. One of those being a climate program that incentivizes farmers to use sustainable methods in order to be paid premium prices. That program was canceled by the Trump administration at the beginning of the year. Vilsack said programs like that, and the SNAP cuts are big factors for local, rural farmers not being able to get ahead.

“Ninety percent of our farms struggle mightily, I mean these are hardworking people that care deeply about their community and about their family and about their country. They think they’re doing right by playing by the rules and working two or three jobs and nobody seems to be coming up with a way in which they could make it a little bit easier by having the farm work a little bit harder,” said Vilsack.

Vilsack also commented on the water quality issue right now in the state, with Central Iowa Water Works battling nitrates this summer season.

“First of all, we need to be able to equip farmers with having a better understanding of the acres they have, because they may find that some of their acres don’t require much, if any, fertilizer,” said Vilsack. “I’m sure they would love the notion of spending less money on fertilizers. Okay, secondly we need maybe some kind of method to encourage conversion of that manure into something more valuable. There’s multiple examples of where that might be an economic development program. We might need a tax incentive similar to what we did years ago with biofuels.”

Vilsack has had three of these farmer forums in rural areas so far this year, he called it a great way to get these ideas floating around people’s heads when they ask questions to their local politicians. This was a similar presentation to others he has given around the country, Vilsack estimated its 100 or more times he has pitched his ideas to an audience.