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Washington, D.C., Feb. 14, 2025 — Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins delivered opening remarks at the Department of Agriculture to more than 400 USDA employees, stakeholders, and congressional members and staff as they welcomed her to her first full day on the job.
A recording of Secretary Rollins’ remarks can be found on the USDA website.
Stay up to date with Secretary Rollins’ latest news and engagements by following @SecRollins on X and Instagram.
Secretary Rollins’ remarks as prepared:
Thank you, Gary, and thank you for your decades of service to USDA. I am grateful for your leadership of the department as you stepped up to serve as Acting Secretary. I know it’s been a busy few weeks.
It is the honor of a lifetime to serve as the nation’s thirty-third Secretary of Agriculture — and a privilege beyond description to have the trust of President Donald J. Trump, and the opportunity to advance his agenda.
That agenda is of course the agenda of the whole American people — among whom the men and women of American agriculture stand in the first rank. In my confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, I said that “[a]ll Americans are important. But the farmer … is the American important to all Americans.”
That isn’t just rhetoric. It is the truth and here at the United States Department of Agriculture, the tens of thousands of us who serve from sea to shining sea, we walk in the light of that truth in all we do.
That means first and foremost understanding what we do and why. There is great purpose and a deep history underlying our work, and it is our North Star. With it —
- With the knowledge that our Revolution was started, fought, and won primarily by farmers.
- With the knowledge that the American Founders understood agriculture and its stewards to be the prerequisite for democratic civics.
- With the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln understood agriculture to be fundamentally the business of the people in ways no other concern of government was or could be.
- With the knowledge that we defend a way of life and the constitutive stuff of American liberty in ways no other federal Department does.
We understand the charge laid before us. We understand:
- That we are not administrators: we are stewards.
- That we are not federal employees: we are servants of the people.
- That we do not have a job: we have a mission.
You are my people, and I am yours.
We have much to do together. The need is acute. You all know — and America’s farmers and ranchers know — that American agriculture is in its worst economic straits in nearly a century, with grave challenges on prices, markets, and labor intersecting all at once.
You also know that there is a great conversation underway among the American people about agriculture, food, and health.
These are challenges and conversations we cannot avoid — and we do not wish to. We will be at the center of both, and we will meet them both with the professionalism and patriotism that is the foundation of this Department and its mission.
Both those qualities were on stark display in the past several weeks — in the firefighters of our own U.S. Forest Service who answered the call to defend Americans and American homes in the face of a literally hellish natural disaster. The bravery, steadfastness, and selfless service of our men and women who stood against the flames is an example to us all.
They lived our principles of service, risking their lives to do so — and we must give no less, each in our own sphere.
Those principles of our service are crystal clear, set forth by the President and the two and a half centuries of American tradition behind his thought.
Working alongside the men and women of USDA:
- We will ensure that American agriculture feeds all America and the world besides.
- We will ensure that American farmers, ranchers, and producers compete on a world stage that is fair, on terms that put America First.
- We will keep the trust handed to us in our programs to fight disease, to feed the needy, to manage our land and forests, and — most of all — to work for all American agriculture.
- We will work to ensure that Make America Great Again and Make America Healthy Again exist not in opposition to one another, but as complements in a common mission for our country. In that conversation, I will always defend American ag at the table.
When we do it, we will do it with a professionalism and a candor grounded in our efforts to defend and deserve the whole heritage of American ag. That means we will be doing some new things in this Department.
Some of it we’ve done before. Some of it will be new. All of it will be aligned with the intent, vision, and purpose of our President and the Americans who elected him.
First and foremost, we are inviting the Department of Government Efficiency to USDA. DOGE is already here, of course — they are working nearly everywhere — but we are welcoming its efforts because we know that its work makes us better, stronger, faster, and more efficient. I will expect full access and transparency to DOGE in the days and weeks to come from everyone at this Department, and I will personally set that example as they proceed.
Second, we will end identity politics, identity celebrations, and DEI at USDA — period. We will neither commemorate nor celebrate our immutable characteristics, neither among ourselves nor among Americans at large. We will instead celebrate the things that make us American: merit, faith, and liberty first among them. All Americans deserve equal dignity, and at this Department they will receive it. On this precipice of the 250th anniversary of our Revolution, we will rededicate ourselves to “the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Third, we will focus USDA on its core missions of supporting American farming, ranching, and forestry. We will work with both the White House and the Congress to get it done. This is a long-term effort, but it begins now. This Department must return to its basic purpose, and we will work to make it so.
Finally, we will return all USDA personnel to their workplaces — whether that workplace is an office or a farm. Our farmers and ranchers don’t get to work from their homes, and neither will we. They are our models, and we will follow them.
Understand that these are not just expectations from me: these are expectations from America. American farmers and ranchers deserve nothing less, and they will constitute the examples for us. We will meet our responsibilities just as the Americans whom we serve do every single day.
My promise to you is that I will deliver the same that I ask of you.
Each of us has a primary and sole responsibility to the American people. If we remember that, all else will follow.
Our goals are ambitious, but over the next four years, I am confident that we can position American Agriculture to meet the challenges of the present and to continue to lead in the future.
American Agriculture is and always will be the best in the world.
Here at USDA, our service is grounded in the deepest truth of this nation—that we are a people who pioneer the frontier, settle the plains, push the bounds of innovation, and never stop envisioning new horizons.
Together, we are going to bring greater prosperity, opportunity, and stability to rural communities across America—and we will do so far faster than ever before.
Thank you all—now let’s get to work serving the greatest customers in the world—the American people.
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