Stabilizing ethanol industry high on new USDA boss' to-do list

Agriculture Online
Dan Looker
Successful Farming magazine Business Editor
2/11/2009, 4:26 PM CST

Many tasks ahead
It's hard to think of a member of President Barack Obama's cabinet whose job is more political than the secretary of agriculture. The USDA is one of the nation's largest bureaucracies. Its agencies manage vast federal forests in the West, provide food assistance to the poor, and crop subsidies to large cotton and rice farms in the South.

On top of all this, the latest holder of the job -- former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack -- is reviewing rules for payment limits while working with his boss, Obama, to get increased food aid and biofuels support included in the final economic stimulus bill that House and Senate negotiators approved today.

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