President-elect Donald J. Trump on Saturday chose Brooke Rollins, his former White House domestic policy adviser, to helm the Agriculture Department, whose wide-ranging purview includes supporting farmers who grow the nation’s two biggest crops, corn and soybeans, and setting the nutrition standards in school cafeterias across the nation.
Ms. Rollins, a conservative lawyer, was considered for Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, but ultimately lost to Susie Wiles, his campaign manager. She is the chief executive of the America First Policy Institute, a prominent think tank founded in 2021 to promote Mr. Trump’s agenda and staffed with many who worked in the first Trump administration.
Before her tenure in the White House, Ms. Rollins served as president of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential nonprofit that has worked to push public funding to private schools, increase the role of Christianity in civic life and heavily promote fossil fuels.
Ms. Rollins hails from Glen Rose, Texas, and is a former member of National FFA Organization, which promotes agricultural education for youth, and 4-H, a youth development organization. She studied agricultural development at Texas A&M University and said of her career in a recent video recorded for Ag Women Connect: “It all started in agriculture.”
If confirmed, Ms. Rollins would oversee an agency with an annual budget of more than $200 billion and nearly 100,000 employees. The department, responsible for promoting, subsidizing and regulating the nation’s agriculture sector, has a sprawling portfolio. It also administers most federal food assistance programs, supports rural development in part by providing electricity to the most isolated areas of the country, and manages nearly 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands.
While Congress determines much of the department’s funding levels in the farm bill, the incoming secretary exerts great influence over federal food policy.
Under the Biden administration, the department, led by Tom Vilsack, has prompted the largest-ever permanent increase in food stamp benefits, strengthened antitrust rules in the meatpacking sector and invested billions in regenerative or so-called climate-smart farming practices.
Another department initiative has focused on compensating Black farmers who have faced years of discrimination by banks and the federal government. This summer, the Agriculture Department began disbursing $2 billion in payments, most of it to Black farmers. The initiative had been long delayed in part because of lawsuits, including one filed by a group led by Mr. Trump’s longtime aide, Stephen Miller.
The think tanks Ms. Rollins helmed may provide insight into the issues she would focus on as agriculture secretary. The America First Policy Institute has warned of the risks of Chinese ownership of American farmland and criticized the Biden administration’s expansion of food stamp benefits and its energy policies. Similarly, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has opposed efforts to curb fossil fuels and other environmental regulations.
Ms. Rollins may also have to balance competing visions for farm policy: the “Make America Healthy Again” mantra advanced by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary who has vowed to limit processed foods and go after industrial agriculture, and the more traditional approach of agribusinesses and farm groups, which favor fewer regulations and embrace conventional farm practices and programs.
Mr. Trump has said he will let Mr. Kennedy “go wild on the food.” Already, Mr. Kennedy has voiced support for eliminating certain unhealthy foods from school meals and food stamps. He has emphasized organic and regenerative agriculture, less pesticide use and an overhaul of subsidies for commodities like corn and soybeans.
But some of those ideas run counter to the policies enacted under Mr. Trump’s first term, his own second-term proposals and the conventional farming practices favored by big business and some rural communities.
During the first Trump administration, the Agriculture Department rolled back school nutrition standards and funneled a record amount of bailout payments to farmers affected by his trade war with China. And in responses to a questionnaire from the politically powerful American Farm Bureau during his 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to improve subsidies and also reduce regulations and environmental protections.
Rural counties overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Trump. (At a recent rally, he boasted about the level of support, saying, “The farmers love me and I love them.”) But Mr. Trump’s proposals for tariffs may inflict additional economic pain on farmers, who report struggling with falling incomes and the high cost of feed, fertilizer and fuel. His promise of large-scale deportations of unauthorized migrants may also cut into a key source of agricultural labor.
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