Praise for farm aid, criticism for meatpackers: Under secretary’s visit a mixed bag
The threat of infection had kept the USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation cooped up in Washington D.C. for months. On July 15 he arrived in Great Falls, noting that his trip to Montana was the first he’d made outside the beltway since last March. “One of the best parts of the job is to get out of D.C. and be able to get to real farm country,” Under Secretary Bill Northy said to an assemblage of Montana ag producers who gathered at a machine shop on the Bumgarner farm east of Great Falls last Wednesday.