RALEIGH — The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce’s 2025 Ag Allies Conference featured remarks by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s deputy secretary.
Stephen Vaden discussed the USDA’s relocation of staff to Raleigh as a policy hub.
“What attracted us to Raleigh is the same thing that attracts you to this area of the country: You have a lower cost of living.” Vaden said. “Your cost of living here in Raleigh, North Carolina, is literally a half that of Washington, D.C.”
According to the USDA’s press release, Raleigh is joined by four other sites — Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City — as hubs cities
Vaden said Raleigh made for an easy choice because “we already have a footprint here,” and the city has two “modern state-of-the-art” buildings already paid for by taxpayers.
“So it’s a good deal for the taxpayer. It’s a good deal for the department, and it’s obviously a good deal for the people of North Carolina,” said Vaden, noting that hundreds of D.C. USDA employees would be permanently relocated to Raleigh.
Vaden highlighted agriculture’s important role in North Carolina’s economy, noting it contributes more than $110 billion to the gross domestic product and represents a sixth of the state’s overall income.
“For at least 16% of all people employed in the state of North Carolina out of all 50 states, North Carolina is ranked ninth for the value of its agricultural products,” Vaden said. “You are a leader, not just in this region of the country, but in the entire country, when it comes to ag. We take a note of that at USDA.”
Vaden, turning to disaster relief, said the USDA, through Congress, has provided $31 billion in disaster relief payments for the current calendar year. He highlighted the marketing assistance program for specialty crops, which he said provides financial assistance to specialty crop producers in the state to expand domestic markets for their products.
“North Carolina specialty crop producers have benefited to the tune of nearly $64 million,” Vaden said.
He also mentioned USDA block grants for disasters like Hurricane Helene, stating his agency “will pay to North Carolina more than $220 million in order to cover infrastructure loss.”
Vaden described the strained national farm economy, especially for row crop producers facing record-high input costs, which include seeds, fertilizer and fuel. He also said the situation is exacerbated by abundant corn supplies, late-season dryness for soybeans and reduced Chinese purchases.
“Crop receipts are falling,” said Vaden. “We’re having our third year in a row of declining crop income … the steepest decline on record. And we are looking, according to USDA, at perhaps an 18-year low in terms of crop receipts this year.”
Vaden described an aggressive deregulatory push under President Donald Trump’s 10-for-1 executive order, requiring agencies to repeal at least 10 existing regulations for every new one to increase efficiency and reduce burdens on businesses by eliminating outdated rules and conflicting guidance.
The deputy secretary also touched on long-term strategies, citing a memorandum of understanding between the USDA and the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division to investigate fertilizer prices he said have “increased so much more than the rate of inflation would suggest that they should.”
He urged the audience to read recent court documents on the matter, saying the filings show fertilizer companies claiming there is a “glut of fertilizer” in the United States and they have “suffered depressed prices because of foreign dumping.” Vaden said those companies are charging farmers “more than $900 a ton for a product that sold for less than half that four to five years ago.”
Vaden said biofuels are a critical “first stop” for boosting domestic demand for row crops like corn and soybeans amid economic strains, praising EPA proposals to strengthen the renewable fuel standard.
“I’m extraordinary grateful to the Environmental Protection Agency for their proposal to not only make the renewable volume obligation which governs ethanol and biodiesel like corn and soybeans be real, but that they’re backing it up by proposing, for the first time ever, to reallocate the volumes that are waived by legal necessity for small refiners,” said Vaden.
He also supported congressional pushes for E15 ethanol blends and international talks on synthetic aviation fuel, citing a Japan trade deal. Vaden envisioned biofuels as driving “market-based returns.”
The Ag Allies Conference, held at the McKimmon Center at NC State on Sept. 30, was opened by the N.C. Chamber’s General Counsel Ray Starling and BASF’s Fred Moore, the vice president and head of regulatory and stewardship, seeds and traits.
Topics of this year’s conference centered on updates regarding activities in Washington, D.C., and its first session featured an overview of agriculture economic outlooks by Bart Fischer, co-director and research associate professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University.
Fischer told North State Journal the biggest takeaway from the updates he presented was “despite a significant infusion of funding from Congress that the farm economy is still in a tough spot.”
“Between now and planting in the spring, the growers are probably going to need another infusion just to be able to cash flow spring planting,” Fischer said.
He said the pressure growers face is “just a continuation of inflated cost of production that skyrocketed during the previous administration.”
“So that persists, but it’s now being layered with this trade conversation, and so there’s just a lot of uncertainty for growers right now,” Fischer said. “But given that 30% of our net farm income is from exports, I feel like we have to finish the work that the president is doing to hold other countries accountable on trade.”
Fischer said while it’s “bumpy” going right now, he is hopeful some of the trade negotiations can be converted into “wins for agriculture that provide a more hopeful optimistic future going forward.”
