RFD News Anchor Suzanne Alexander: Welcome to RFD-TV’s Rural Town Hall. Joining us is U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Good morning, everybody. Good morning.
RFD NEWS: You know, it’s amazing. Earlier, Darryl Henry mentioned the late Congressman Doug LaMalfa. And I said how accessible he was, and how grounded he was, and so sweet. We just had Congresswoman Celeste Malloy out here at the same time. And I feel like we’ve got some of the great ones here from DC—just always so personable, so accessible. It’s always a pleasure to get time with you, so thank you for doing this for us.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, this is a joy for me in the Western Caucus and what this organization represents and how we’re just battling every day for our way of life, for our ranchers, for our farmers. It’s very. It’s an honor for me to get to come talk about it.
RFD News: Well, let’s talk about some of the wins because prior to actually coming here to Texas, when I was in the studio, we were reporting on the video of you at that Texas ranch where that first detection took place. And we saw that calf running around, and I could see the smile on your face. It was a lot of joy there.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: It was, you know, and I bet we’ll dig in a little bit more on Screwworm, so I won’t talk too much about it. But we did. Just a week ago, the very first case of New World Screwworm — other than a couple of aberrations in 2017 — we had some deer in Florida. We had a horse from Argentina a couple of years ago, but we knew it was coming.
They broke, you know, the screwworm broke the Darién Gap in 2021; began to move at basically unabated speed through Central America, hit Mexico in 2024, and every model showed that it would be here last summer. When we walked in the door, a couple of months before, of course, we implemented a massive plan to hold it off as long as possible to be able to prepare and also to significantly expand our new sterile fly facilities.
Having said that, the first case — the calf I visited yesterday — since 1966. The first case was confirmed last Wednesday. So, our world pivoted to now, America containment a week ago. But the really cool thing — I was down at La Pryor, Texas, yesterday at the ranch where the first detection happened, visiting. And that baby calf is perfect. He’s healthy and happy and running around. And this is not going to be easy.
But, you know, our country has been built with grit and overcoming challenges. And when I saw that baby calf yesterday — happy, running after his mom, completely healed, in just a few days. It was like a sign. It was like God saying, “This is going to be okay. You’re doing everything you can. You’ve built the infrastructure. We’re going to battle this and beat this back.”
And, and our ranchers are going to be the frontliners and they’re going to, they’re going to make they’re going to make this happen with, of course, help from all of us, right?
RFD NEWS: Biosecurity, right, comes down to the ranchers doing their jobs and, of course, staying on top, which they do, constantly watching, a credit to those ranchers for finding it so early. And to know that this can be turned around, that this doesn’t have to be fatal. This is something that, if it’s caught early, can be fixed.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: That’s exactly right.
RFD News: I want to go back to the Darién Gap. I know you’ve talked about this before. I don’t know if a lot of people understand that those barriers that were broken down, that these cattle were crossing illegally, and what was happening at that point, really bringing this up from South America.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, that’s right, and let me give a little bit of history. New world Screwworm, we have our first case in the history books from 1840 in America. So this is nothing that happened just in the last, you know, 20 or 30 years, 50 years. This has been something that our ranchers have had to battle almost since the beginning of Texas. I mean, Texas, 1836, 1842, the first case.
So for a hundred years, our ranchers just basically with not many tools — they really just battled and battled and battled. It became a significant problem in the 1950s and the 1960s, where really our entire herds were decimated as there were no sterile flies. The technology hadn’t been confirmed yet. Of course, we didn’t have the communication efforts we have today. We didn’t have the treatments we have today.
And in about early 1960s, we had a couple of incredible USDA scientists: Doctor Knipling and Doctor Bushland. And they came up with this, this concept — and think about, without all of the tools we have today — them coming up with this idea, testing it, and then building it out, so that we can produce sterile male flies.
The screwworm, of course, is a female fly that lays her eggs, her larvae, in an open wound of a mammal, mostly cattle, livestock, but really can be any warm-blooded animal bigger than a squirrel.
And so these two scientists created, invented this concept and tested it. It worked. And over the course of about a decade, from early 1960s to late 1960s, they tested it, confirmed it, and then began to produce its scale. And by 1966, we had about 300-400 million sterile flies being sent into Texas and northern Mexico that ultimately eradicated — began to push it back and then eradicated completely — out of the United States, then out of Mexico, then out of Central America, then through the Darien Gap into South America.
And at that moment, everyone thought that it would never hit our shores again. And it didn’t.
And so they scaled down. Over the course of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. They scaled down that 400 million flies to about 30 million just in Panama, which is at the Darien Gap. It’s a biological gap that, again, everyone thought would keep everything out, including the USDA facility that was producing the 30 million flies.
But starting in 2021 — to your question — as the movement, the open border policies, of course, incentivized millions of people to try to make the trek to America. And with no border, the people began to move through South America over the Darien Gap, bringing their livestock with them. And it travels in companion animals, really any animals — goats, sheep, cattle, dogs, cats, etc. — begin to make its way.
So, in 2021, the first breach of the Darien Gap happened in, what, 50, 60 years? In 2022 and 2023, it began to make its way up through Central America again, and by 2024 had made its way into Mexico.
So when we walked in, one of my first briefs in January of 2025 last year was, “Well, we may have a screwworm problem.”
And of course, I’m from Texas. We have cattle. I had heard of it, but hadn’t really lived it the way so many of our South Texas ranchers and ranchers had, and their dads and their granddads and grandmas had years before.
And I said, “Okay, well, you know, we can handle anything. Are we ready for it?”
And the team said, “Unfortunately, no.”
There had been no effort to build more sterile fly production. There had been no expanding of the staff, the teams, to be ready. The FDA had not fast-tracked any treatment. So we really got to work last spring, about February of 2025, invested about a billion and a half dollars in new sterile fly facilities, began outfitting facilities in Mexico. We have the Metapa, Mexico facility coming online in the next few weeks. We began building that out last year.
FDA has now fast-tracked about a dozen new treatments that would normally take years to get to market. But we’re ready to go when our veterinarians are now trained up on them. So we’re ready for this containment moment that we’re in. We’re playing whack-a-mole right now.
To your point, yesterday I was riding with the ranchers, understanding the eyes on the cattle, treating right away. We can solve for this, but we’ll be up to full capacity, back up to that 400 million, 300-400 million flies by next year. But in the meantime, we’re playing containment.
RFD News: But just amazing. I mean, amazing work that you’re getting done and fast, you know, cutting the red tape, allowing these buildings to come online as quickly as they are.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: That’s right.
RFD News: A lot of headwinds, obviously within the cattle industry. But let’s talk about some of the wins. Let’s talk about expanding some grazing lands.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Yes. So last year, again, trying to figure out so many challenges in agriculture for years. But one of them currently is that we have the lowest cattle herd on record. And in the 75 years since we’ve been tracking this, the lowest on record. Now there’s a lot of good news in that. The good news is that Americans want more beef, and they want to eat real food. And Bobby Kennedy and I released our new dietary guidelines at the beginning of the year, about 5 or 6 months ago.
And for the first time, it was the biggest reset in American nutritional guidelines in history. And so instead of it being about, you know, not necessarily real food and real nutritious food and nutrient-dense food, we put real food back at the center of all nutrition policy in America.
And that has massive implications across school lunches, across the military, across hospitals, across everything. What the doctors are advising, pediatricians advising, you feed your kids. And so that, alongside just beef becoming really such a staple after some years of some headwinds on that, we have the biggest demand in the history of our country for good, great American beef, while at the same time we have the lowest herd.
Now again, you I try not to get too political in these things, but I will say that the last administration, whether it was the Screwworm, whether it was pulling grazing permits from our great cattle ranchers, closing federal lands off to our cattle ranchers, whether it was blaming cattle on climate change and implementing all of these crazy climate things at USDA that we, of course, got rid of within the first month we were there. But it really was a war on our cattle ranchers from the last government, from the last Biden White House.
So, yes, we are opening up five million new grazing land opportunities. We are really supporting our small- and mid-sized processors so we can get more processing out into the country, and closer to where our cattle are raised. It’s just an all-of-government approach to ensure — it’s a national security issue if we can’t feed ourselves, then we can no longer know freedom in this country. And I believe that very sincerely. So really working to incentivize our ranchers and not just our third, fourth, fifth, sixth, 10th generation guys, but opening up the market for our first-gen ranchers to the big bill, the Working Families Tax Cut that the Republicans got through Congress and then got to the president’s desk — Celeste may have talked about that — has a lot of beginning rancher programs in it, trying to get more people into the business. So I think we’re going to see a lot of dividends on that in the coming years.
RFD News: So this is the grazing action plan. I mean, this is really extending all of that land, the benefits of that to the cattle industry, growing the herd. You mentioned prices as well. Of course, we’re seeing some high prices right now with our beef. Talk about the ability when the administration had said lowering prices without decreasing revenue for our producers. Talk about how that’s going to be done, how that’s going to play out.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, I think there, and this probably is writ large, the entire farm economy. And I’m so sorry. I have completely lost my voice. This is not ideal. I hope, I hope everyone can understand me.
RFD News: We have some water here if you need it.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Yeah, well, I may grab some. Thank you; that will help. But I’m usually a little scratchy, but I’m extra scratchy. I think riding on the ranch yesterday in the dirt was amazing.
RFD News: Well, there’s plenty of moisture in the air here in Texas, too. I always say I’d have to wear a wig if I lived here.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: It is 100% true — But this is true across the farm economy. When we walked in last January, the cost of inputs for all of our agricultural community had increased on average by 40%. The top of that was that interest rates had increased by 73% between 2021 and 2024. Labor had increased 47% between 21 and 24. Fuel 36%. Fertilizer a little over 40%. I mean, these numbers are unsustainable, while at the same time, the markets around the world had contracted. When we left, I was in the first Trump administration.
When we walked out the door, we had an $8 billion agricultural trade surplus. Meaning, of course, that we were shipping out our great American goods, which is so good for our farmers and ranchers. When we came back, that had changed from an $8 billion surplus to an almost $50 billion — just agriculture — trade deficit. There wasn’t one new trade deal struck in those years between 2021 and 2024.
So, of course, we got to work, really focused on bringing the cost of inputs down. And we could talk more about that, what that looks like, which of course leaves more money in the pockets of our farmers and ranchers, right? If they’re not having to pay an obscene amount of money for all of that while striking 19 new trade deals, which is huge. And we’ve got a lot of new markets for our beef cattle in China. Just a few weeks ago, China, the Chinese agreed with the president, and this went all the way up to President XI and President Trump. China had shut down, taking our offal, our kind of leftovers from our beef cattle, which we don’t eat in America. Right. We don’t use as much the lungs and the tongue and other things. So China is now taking that again. It’s little wins like that that allow the profitability to get back into what our farmers and ranchers are facing every day. And so we’re very focused on that.
RFD News: Well, let’s talk about that. You know, we often talk about, you know, of course, all the incredible things that are happening right now with trade. I think sometimes we’ve heard from producers that there is some short-term pain we have to get over. I feel like the short-term pain may have turned into long-term pain for a lot of our producers at this point. Talk about how it’s shifting right now when we talk about trade globally, I mean the border cut off right now with, you know, with Mexico, of course, because of the screwworm. But now they’re processing their own beef, with China turning to other countries, and we’re now turning to others we maybe hadn’t tapped into before. Speak to how that global trade world is now shifting. I feel like there’s a significant shift in what we’re seeing.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, I think the president’s focus on putting America first and American farmers and ranchers first. There is a lot of narrative out there how destructive the tariffs have been. But I think it’s important to realize and to understand that because of the president’s approach, we now have 19 new trade deals that we would have never had before. We’re going to have the highest on-record exports for corn this year. Corn exports are expected to be up 29%. Dairy exports are expected to be up 17%. Our great dairymen. Tree nut exports are expected to be up 11%.
Beef will continue to rise — but we want more beef to stay in America, with the affordability issues — but obviously we’ve opened up markets in Australia, in the EU for our beef, our good beef, while we’re selling the stuff we don’t eat as well to China and Asia. So I think that from what we are seeing, we’re seeing incredible positive numbers as a result of implementing that initial round of tariffs. But then using those tariffs to negotiate all of these deals that have opened up markets that our producers have never seen before.
But we also have the bridge payments from last year. Understanding to get from point A, no new trade deals, highest input prices on record. A 30-year commodity high crashed under the Biden years. You know, we’ve got a lot of significant headwinds that we’re taking head-on. But it isn’t just those 2021-2024. It is decades of policy that didn’t put our farmers first, that didn’t put our ranchers first, that didn’t put the real food that they produced at the middle of the dietary guidelines.
I’ll finish with this because I know we have a lot of things we want to get to — every day in Washington, USDA spends $400 million on our nutrition programs. That’s across 16 programs. That’s SNAP, WIC, school lunches, etc. But think about the market-moving potential of $400 million every day from government-funded eating programs. Basically, these are food programs. The opportunity for our farmers and ranchers, not just the export opportunity, not just bringing the inputs down, but the opportunity of shifting that money to buying real food from our farmers and ranchers and putting real food on the plates and the tables, in the retailers where the EBT cards and the SNAP and the food stamps are used. This is such an incredible opportunity. A long-term opportunity to again put our farmers and ranchers back in the middle of everything.
RFD News: Well, since you brought it up, let’s talk about waste and fraud in some of these programs. How to deal with that? You know, there are states that say, I don’t see any fraud in this program. How do you combat that? How do you come back at it? Maybe speak to that process.
Secretary Brooke Rollins: I will tell you, I have been in this world a long time. I was in the first Trump administration. I was the domestic policy chief. I mean, we knew and understood the depth of the fraud and the corruption. But in four years, it just is so difficult to really root it out. You can make changes, you can work hard. But then there’s an election, and then you’re maybe not staying, which we didn’t stay for that contiguous second term. And so what the blessing of — as hard as — I believe the election was taken from us in 2020. What the president had to go through assassination attempts a thousand years in prison through felony indictments. I mean, it was crazy that interim four years. But what those four years allowed us to do. I started a think tank called the America First Policy Institute.
We were preparing, and it wasn’t necessarily for Donald Trump. But my idea was, okay, we now know as believers in freedom and less government and believers in the American people and our founders’ vision, we, in those first four years of Trump 1 — we now know what the darkness really looks like. And we went in, and we shinded some light. Very biblical for me. We shine some light in that darkness, and we made some real progress. But now, whoever is next, I didn’t at the moment I started the organization, I didn’t realize President Trump was even thinking about running again. I thought, but for whomever is next, whether it’s Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or whoever, it didn’t matter to me. I just wanted us to be ready because what we had learned in the first term was that we’re not good at government, conservatives. We’re good at raising cattle and going to church and being philanthropists and being community leaders. We don’t like too much government.
So if we can take the lessons from the first term and then whoever does come next, we’ll be ready. We’ll build for four years. And so in that interim, four years, of course, the president ran again. Then he won. We built the plans out to be able to really address this fraud. So in the first couple of hours, I sent a letter to every governor in America.
A lot of people don’t know that the Secretary of Agriculture is also in charge of these nutrition programs. The SNAP program is the biggest part of the USDA budget. And so sent a letter to every governor saying, “This is not political, but so that we can really preserve and ensure we’re helping the families that really need it and not helping fraudsters, those who are driving fancy cars, those who live in nice houses.”
There are no guardrails on SNAP. Pretty much anyone can apply for it. Well, all the red states wrote back. I said, share your data. No one had ever shared data before. We were a federal government sending money, taxpayer dollars, to the states, and never asking follow-up questions like, “Who are we giving this to? Is it to the right people? What’s happening?” And so the red states and a couple of blue-state governors sent their data in. And what we found was shocking: 200,000 dead people — or at least 200,000 people using dead people’s Social Security numbers — and 500,000 people are getting more than one benefit. In one state alone, we found hundreds of Teslas and Porsches and Ferraris and Lamborghinis that were connected to Social Security numbers that were getting the SNAP dollars, these programs. So the fraud is mind-blowing. And this is in the red states where we actually have some accountability and smaller government. The blue states are suing us. We’re in massive litigation with California, New York, Oregon, Illinois, etc., but I think we’ll win those suits, and we’re going to return real accountability to these government programs.
RFD News: I think a lot of people are scratching their heads right now in their audience, going, “I didn’t know that Teslas were on the SNAP program.”
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Yeah, no, it’s—it’s so stunning. And it goes to why I know we all feel this. The amount of tax dollars that we all have to pay — local, state, property, income — I mean, it is a little crazy. And now, when you see the depth of the corruption and how the government continues to grow bigger and bigger.
And one interesting thing, if we’ve got just a second—every great civilization in world history, every one of them—England, Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Egypt, Rome—they buckled under the weight of their own government. That began their decline. They rise—literally every great civilization in world history. These countries would rise to the top, become the world power, and then the government would become so corrupt. They would vote themselves largesse from the government coffers. And that is what ultimately brought all these governments down, these countries down. And then another one would take their place.
Honestly, I believe that’s where we were in American history until President Trump came down that escalator and didn’t care what the lobby said, didn’t care what the media said, didn’t care what everyone was chirping in his ear about. All he cared about was putting America and Americans first and representing the real men and women of our country. And we have been able to, I believe, fundamentally change the tide because we are unequivocal in our battle against big government, big media, big corporations, etc. This is about returning the power to America.
And the final thing I’ll say is, I think that’s why rural America and all of your viewers on this incredible medium that we get out to rural America here at RFD-TV—I think that’s why rural America has stuck with the president through thick and thin when everyone else said, “Oh, Donald Trump is done. He’s finished. He’s going to jail,” or “we don’t like him.” Everyone else. January 6th—Rural America and farmers and ranchers have stayed with him so consistently. From the moment he came down the escalator, there were 17 candidates running in that primary. He was one of 17. No one gave him a chance, except rural America, saw it immediately.
And the irony—the real estate billionaire who lives in a gold-plated penthouse in New York, and I’ve been there, and it actually is gold-plated—that he would become the greatest champion for the rural American, and arguably in American history, is incredible.
RFD News: Absolutely. You can applaud for that if you’d like.
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RFD News: And putting the right people in the right positions, and that being you and part of that, and making sure that the government runs a little bit more efficiently. I want to talk about the restructuring of the USDA and making sure that the people are where they need to be. That’s very important for you, for people to be face-to-face with the people they serve. Speak a little bit about that and how that’s working.
Secretary Brooke Rollins:: You know, I call it the “Uniparty” in Washington. There are some incredible—you’ve had a couple on this morning; they’re here in Fort Worth—I don’t include them in the Uniparty. But the Uniparty in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats for decades, have had this vision that a government should be measured by how big it is, how big the buildings are, how many government programs there are. That has been the measure of success for a really long time in Washington, D.C., and as a result, you see building upon building upon building.
I mean, the fact that USDA had over 100,000 employees when we walked in the door. Now, I do like to carve USDA out a little bit because we are serving the farmers and ranchers; we do have the FSA offices, which are so important, the frontliners. But in the food and nutrition programs we were talking about, and other programs. The growth of government under the last administration, almost 40%, unsustainable. But in really every area of the federal government. So the idea that we don’t need 10,000 staffers at USDA in Washington, D.C.—we need them out amongst the people.
And so I made an announcement: we’re moving almost everybody out of Washington last year. We’re going into five key, main hubs around the country — but really we’re going to keep building everywhere — Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Colorado City, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Those become the five major hubs. But we’re building—we have new research in Iowa, we have things here in Texas—but really making sure that the people that we’re serving, we’re actually face to face with, and we’re not in the very, very blue bubble of Washington, D.C., where 92% of Washington, D.C. voted for Kamala Harris. That, at least at USDA, does not represent the farmer and the rancher. So I’m really, really proud of that work.
The Democrats are seizing on some of that right now as we’re moving into midterms — of course, everything becomes political — but I am really proud. It has not been a perfect—you know, anytime you make significant change, it’s hard and it’s imperfect. But I believe, for the most part, and the men and women who are part of USDA—the career employees, as we call them—there’s only about 300 when the administration changes from Democrat to Republican or even Republican to Republican; those teams bring in their own leadership.
So in an organization like USDA, we’re not about 85,000 employees. Only a couple hundred of those are actually Trump-appointed. Everyone else are career; they’ve been there through many presidents and many changes. And to a man and woman, everyone that I have met has been extraordinary. We did do the deferred resignation program, so I think there was a self-selection, where we moved on about 15,000 of our staff to other things—but that was voluntary. We never fired one person. We just incentivized anyone who didn’t see themselves in the long term, as we were reorganizing, to move on. But I’m just blown away by the incredible dedication of our team every day.
RFD News: Well, you said anytime there are changes, right? There are challenges, there are bumps in the road. How will you know this is working? What will you be looking for?
Secretary Brooke Rollins: The metric for me, and part of my initial vision in taking this job, was completely recalibrating the U.S. Department of Agriculture around the farmer and the rancher. We were founded in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln. We were always to be, in Lincoln’s vision, the Department of the People. He said that in his initial writing when he founded the USDA. I went to the National Archives and actually saw and read his initial wording—it was incredible. And what his vision was for USDA, of course, over time there’s always mission creep.
So USDA, of course, doing the nutrition programs—I take that very seriously. We also manage the Forest Service, the farms, the grazing land, our wildland firefighters, wildfire response, etc. So we have some really important pieces, but our initial and most important constituent is the farmer and the rancher And so, getting rid of, last year, all those, you know, all those crazy grants— you know funding a couple hundred thousand dollars [to study] whether there is racial injustice in the pest control industry. Another couple of hundred thousand dollars studying challenges facing queer and BIPOC farmers in San Francisco — I’m not making this up, these are actual grants. Or another grant in New York studying the transgender challenges with the menstrual cycles—I’m not kidding, these are actually taxpayer-funded grants through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
On day one, I canceled 900 DEI trainings—diversity, equity, and inclusion—900 just in the USDA. So from my perspective, the ultimate metric is the prosperity and viability of this way of life for the future. That’s the ultimate metric.
Are we able to bring input costs down? Are we able to, instead of being a net — you know, we were a net export of food, y’all, in America—we fed ourselves and then we net exported, for our entire history, until 2023, when that flipped, and we became an importer, meaning we imported more than exporting. That is a change —that is not sustainable. We lose our freedom.
So, making all of these changes: the prosperity of our farmers and ranchers, number one; the preservation of rural America, number two; and, further down, measuring how successful we are at actually serving our constituents, not some radical left agenda.
RFD News: Well, let’s talk about those inputs. The ability, like you said, to be self-sufficient, to not depend on other countries—especially adversarial countries like China. Let’s talk about fertilizer production. Is it possible? Can we produce what we need here in this country?
Secretary Brooke Rollins: 100%. And when I started researching this, I started looking very closely at all of the input costs. A year and a half ago, when we realized that’s a major margin we’ve got to fix for the farmers, and because it had increased so much in the last administration, we started looking at all of that. And what we saw in fertilizer was stunning. Under the last administration, the prices had skyrocketed.
And even with the high prices today, after the Strait closure and the Iranian conflict, it’s still lower than the highest prices in the Biden administration—and it is coming down. Even though we’re still in a conflict, it actually is coming down. But if we go pre-Iranian conflict, we’d already cut almost all of the fertilizer input costs by about 40 percent. So we were making progress just at the outset. But what the Strait of Hormuz closure has shined a light on for us is how much we had offshored our fertilizer in the last couple of decades.
Now, more than half of the fertilizer our farmers and ranchers use in this country, we bring in from other countries—and a significant amount of it from China, from Russia, from countries that are not really our friends. And so this concept of what do we need to do to change that? About a month and a half ago —really, about a week into the conflict —we didn’t know how long it would last—and we still don’t have an exact number. But the president is very confident that it will be very quick to finish. We know there are a lot of complexities there that are out of my lane of work, so I won’t get into that.
But we realized that if we can fast-track permitting, we can use funds—not just at USDA but at the Department of Energy. I talked to Secretary Chris Wright and said that fertilizer—not that energy sources aren’t really important, fossil fuels, coal, etc.—but fertilizer and the LNG, etc, that’s one of the most important inputs in the country. And the number-two largest investment that our Department of Energy has now made is into a fertilizer plant, which is huge. Secretary Lutnick over at Commerce has a big pot of money left that was filled through the president’s trade negotiations. We struck a deal with Japan—Japan agreed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into America.
I made the case to Secretary Lutnick: let’s not divert; let’s invest some of that money in our fertilizer sector.
So in a couple of weeks, I’ll be in Louisiana breaking ground on what will be the largest ammonia plant in the world when it comes online next year. And that is because of fast-track permitting under the Trump administration and the investments that we’re making. We also have 80 other fertilizer plants that are under production and moving into—like we are fast-tracking all of them. Some as small as a $3 million organic fertilizer plant in Minnesota. Another, we have an $80 million plant in Washington. So working to bring it back from overseas, but supporting that as a national security project, not just as an agricultural project, has allowed us to move this out very quickly.
RFD News: I think there are a lot of producers who may be watching, and some saying “it’s not quick enough,” right? We know a lot of producers that we talk to on a daily basis here on RFD-TV that are struggling, that are hurting, they’re questioning, are they going to still be able to farm? So when we look at what’s happening right now in the Strait of Hormuz and what we’re dealing with Iran, would there be another aid package coming to get them through this hard time until we can kind of see some kind of resolution?
Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, we have been talking about it since the first Farmer Bridge Assistance Program we released on December 10th of last year, with the president in the Cabinet Room, with a lot of our great farmers. And the president is always asking me and checking, “How are we doing? How are we doing? How are we doing?”
And I said, you know, this Iranian conflict is really challenging us on diesel—the cost of diesel and the cost of fertilizer for the farmers. And they’re already struggling, as we know, trying to fix a lot of the wrongs.
And so I wasn’t expecting him—but this is the great thing about working for President Trump. I think it was a Friday ago, maybe two Fridays ago—we were in Wisconsin. That may have been just a week ago; it all moves very quickly. But he actually mentioned it. So I’m not going to get ahead of him—he has publicly said that he really wants us to look at it. I know Congress is looking at it.
The good news is that with the One Big Beautiful Bill—the Working Families Tax Cut Act—reference prices increased for the first time in a decade, expanding acres under ARC and PLC. This is going to be huge for our farmers and ranchers, lowering the cost of crop insurance, etc. That is all going into effect in the next couple of months.
The reason I’m mentioning it is directly related to potential farmer aid: from a USDA perspective, we have something called the CCC fund, and that’s where we’re usually able to kind of plug and play if assistance is needed. It’s really a congressional job to step in, but we’re trying to bridge the gap a little bit.
A lot of what Congress funded — and all extremely important, and I’m so proud—the largest investment in rural America in history was in that bill. But a lot of those will be paid for out of that CCC fund. So we don’t have a big pot of money sitting around.
But the president — it’s a priority of his, it’s a focus of his. In my hearing last week in front of the Senate, we talked about it significantly—Chairman Hoeven, Chairman Boozman, Chairman Thompson—they are all on this as well, and we’re working hand in glove. So I’m cautiously optimistic, but I also don’t want to create any unmet expectations.
RFD News: This sounds silly because I’m listening to you and all of the priorities you have just laid out everywhere, and I feel like you are omnipresent. You are just every single place at once. When you look ahead to this year, obviously, screwworm and tackling that and shutting that down has to be the priority. After that, what is something that we have to tackle immediately?
Secretary Brooke Rollins: You know, there are lists and lists of challenges. And I appreciate you saying it seems like I’m everywhere. It was not in my concept of this job to be constantly on the go—and I knew I would be. I mean, we’re all on the go here. This is a really important job. But what I realized is that every day Americans love their farmer, but they don’t really know; they don’t understand where the food comes from. They don’t understand it’s a national security issue. They don’t understand that we’re losing this way of life. They don’t understand that the input costs have gone nuts under the last administration—no new trade deals. The average American, not those who are watching this channel, but the average urban-living or suburban-living American in the United States, has no idea that if we don’t preserve this, we will lose our country.
It is an existential issue, from my perspective. Everyone kind of loves their farmer, but I don’t think they realize that if we don’t lean in and support and change the trajectory, our children and grandchildren won’t understand freedom the way that we do—and the way our founders fought for it and died for it, and the way millions have fought for and died for freedom in the intervening 250 years.
And so I realized that at this moment in time, with this president, with God’s hand, that I have been put in this position to make the case to America why this is so important. And so that’s why I’ve worked so hard to be on the go—that’s why I’ve literally lost my voice constantly—but the priorities are many.
And I’ll answer the macro question you asked in a little bit of a micro way.
We launched our Great American Cotton Plan a few weeks ago. Our cotton farmers, our textile mills. I mean, China has taken — foreign countries plus China — have taken all of that away. What we used to wear as all-cotton clothing, we now wear synthetic fibers. This is a MAHA issue.
Our timber industry has been devastated by cheap timber coming in from other countries. Devastated.
Our shrimpers are devastated by the dumping of not good, foreign shrimp into America. We eat a lot of shrimp in this country, but only 4% is from our own American shrimpers—we have plenty of shrimp here. I could go one after the other after the other.
So challenging, tackling that macro question—what are the biggest things we’re working on? I think one of the fastballs that I have — I’m a very macro-oriented person: how do we fix the big things — but I also understand we can’t fix the big things without focusing on the little things. And so I am in every detail of every plan, pushing our team every day. We’ve got to do something about all of this before we leave—and we only have… that’s the hardest thing.
The hardest thing is not the negativity, although it’s not great. The hardest thing is not dealing with the haters out there, although that’s not fun either. The hardest thing is not dealing with a lot of the radical left. The hardest thing is just the amount of time we have to fix all of this.
That is the constant weight for me on my shoulders—we only have four years, and now we only have two and a half years. And while we’ve made a huge amount of progress, we have to make lasting change so that when we leave in two and a half years it doesn’t just switch automatically back, no matter who’s in the White House. So that weighs on me very heavily: how are we making these permanent changes that will last for a long time?
RFD News: Everybody, I think, right now is thinking what I’m thinking—Is Brooke Rollins ever at rest? Do you ever just… You know what it is?
Brooke Rollins (USDA Secretary): That’s a really kind question. I feel I am so inspired. [pause] We have to get this right. If we don’t get this right, we’ll lose America—and we’ll lose these farmers and ranchers.
And so when I’m with them every day—down in South Texas yesterday with some great ranchers, in upstate New York a few days ago with our dairy farmers in Wisconsin with the president, with some of our row croppers, with some of our seafood guys in North Carolina a week ago, with some cotton farmers in Arizona about ten days ago—I just feel it.
I am so inspired. I love this so much. But I also understand, we’ve just got so much to do. And that is why getting out of Washington is so important to me—making sure I have that connection with these guys and girls and that they know we’re fighting for them, and that we don’t have an alternative.
Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no alternative.” We have to win. And that’s why we work so hard. That’s why this is so important. That’s why everything we’re doing, I take so seriously. We’re building the best team on the field, the best team we’ve ever seen. We’ve got a great president who’s willing to break the status quo. And that’s why I sincerely believe we will make such progress for the most important of all Americans—and that’s our farmers and ranchers.
RFD News: We know the passion is there. We thank you for making the announcement, by the way, on, of course, extending this grazing land.
Brooke Rollins (USDA Secretary): Yes. Actually, can I say a couple of things? I brought the card just because I didn’t want to miss anything. But we wanted to do this today on your show, and with the Western Caucus, just because it’s so important. And listen, talk about the fight.
When I met Heather and Charles Maude over a year ago—our incredible ranchers—the Forest Service… and these were aberrations, these were one-offs. We have amazing men and women working in the Forest Service. I’m so proud of all of them.
But the Maude family—the weaponization of the last administration, of government and the Forest Service, and what they had done to this family. Threatening them with prison. Telling them they needed to get new parents for their children, their five- and seven-year-old children…
This is a fifth-generation ranch that has been using that grazing allotment since—I think it was Heather’s or Charles’ great-great-grandfather. It all started along a fence line, and it spiraled into indictments and criminal charges. They were indicted separately, which meant separate lawyers, which meant financial ruin—it was crazy.
So of course, we fixed that immediately. The Forest Service, being under the USDA, meant we could address it right away. One of the first things we did was pull that back and lift the criminal and civil actions.
What it showed me—and what Western ranchers have been living with for decades—is the weight of bureaucracy and conflict in these grazing issues. And yes, there are agencies doing good work, but there are also serious problems out there. Today, we’ve made progress—cutting red tape and increasing grazing capacity by another $5 million for ranchers.
But in more recent years, we’ve had serious activist lawsuits. The left is trying to keep all of our agriculture off federal lands. And there are tens and tens and tens of millions of federal acres in this country. And, of course, it’s not just bad for ranchers—it’s bad for the land, too. That’s where we get wildfires; we’re not managing the land. Nothing better for land than our cattle, and the Grazing that comes with that. So, as we know, we’ve been fighting that for a year and a half. I signed an MOU with our great Secretary Doug Burgum just this past March about how we have a renewed commitment on making sure our grazing action plan opens up more federal land for grazing. So, that’s all been happening. Our beef plan, we talked about today.
But today, I want to announce — we’re taking that grazing action plan one step further—to support the current 23,000 permittees and lessees who rely on public rangelands under [USDA] and the Department of the Interior’s purview. 23,000 of our ranchers and producers.
Today, right after this announcement, I will be sending all Forest Service employees a letter directly from me , attached to a memo from our Undersecretary, who manages the Forest Service, and that memo empowers our line officers with clear and concise policy direction to remove barriers so we can expand livestock grazing on federal lands.
I think today — under past administrations — the Forest Service employees didn’t consider themselves partners with our ranchers. They considered themselves even adversarial to our ranchers.
That all ends today. Today, the directive is: we are on the same team, and we will support our ranchers.
We’re going to expand access to prioritize permitting vacant and closed allotments. We’re going to maximize the flexibility within the grazing — right now, there are all kinds of rules about the fencelines and what kind of fencing — we’re going to alleviate all of that. Allow a lot more flexibility to keep the working lands working. We’re going to eliminate all delays by streamlining permitting and allotment authorizations between Interior and USDA. And if you’re a rancher, you know what I’m talking about — if you’re not, you can’t even imagine the bureaucracy they’ve had to deal with.
We’re going to elevate rural Americans by giving our rural ranchers more of a voice in the actual process, so instead of them waiting for us to tell them what to do, they’re going to tell us what they need in an official process. And then, of course, improving our services to all of our ranchers.
We want to empower our line officers at the Forest Service, again, to be partners with our great American ranchers, and to make this better, easier, and open up the market to more ranching than ever before.
RFD News: Let’s hear from our ranchers here in the audience. Awesome. Another big win. We’re going to wrap this up. Final thoughts—I don’t want you to lose your voice.
Brooke Rollins (USDA Secretary): I know, I’m so sorry about that. No, just—thank you. This work is a challenge, and it’s hard, but there’s no question—I’ll never have a better job than this.
And having the opportunity to fight every day for the people that I believe in so strongly, but also the patience and the grace to get this done. None of these changes can happen overnight. This was decades of policy that got us to this moment in time. And it’s interesting. We hear a lot about, well, bankruptcies are up 46%. And I say, okay, well, let’s talk about the fact.
Well, first of all, one bankruptcy is one too many. Of course. And we have a concierge service at USDA to help. These are chapter 12 bankruptcies, mostly reprioritization, not necessarily going out of business, but we have 1,077,000 farms and ranches in America.
Last year, our bankruptcies went from about 115 in 2024 to about 300 in 2025. That’s about 0.003% of our total ranchers. So again, the headlines are screaming a 46% increase in bankruptcies. And one, bankruptcy is too many, but it’s 0.003%.
But I say all that because we’re losing a lot more, a lot more of our family farms, just from our farmers who are closing up shop, selling their land, putting, you know, solar, some of the some of the government coming in, like in Arizona is happening New York right now, taking the land, putting solar panels, etc. on it, that we really have to dig in and we have to make sure working across the states and across with the producers that we’re able to preserve.
So that’s what I would ask for — the continued partnership, the extraordinary leadership we’re getting from the Hill. They’re doing such a good job. I know you’re talking to some of them today, and really, I’ll end with just — pray for us.
These are real battles and real darkness that we’re fighting every day. Pray for the strength, the courage, the boldness of our president, the safety of our president, and our entire cabinet. We’ve all had to significantly increase our security, which is really unfortunate, but it just is what it is.
And listen, if the apostle Paul can walk through the streets of Greece and talk about Jesus as the Savior, in the wake of unbelievable headwinds. If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can fight the greatest power ever known in the history of man, the British, and win. If here in Mexico, uh, you know, the, the Texians at the Alamo, which was basically made up of a lot of other states, some Tennessee guys and others, can battle against the Santa Ana Army of 3000. Uh, and while we lost at the Alamo, of course, we won 19 days later in San Jacinto under Sam Houston.
If all of that is possible, we know God’s hand is at work, and that we will be able to solve for this, battle for this, and take such energy and courage in doing so. So God bless y’all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
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