Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz Has Deep Ties to Agriculture and Environmentalism

Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate, photos of the Minnesota governor began appearing on social media — Walz holding a piglet, Walz on rides and attractions at the state fair, Walz with his rescued dog.

All this creates an image of a man with rural roots and strong ties to agriculture.

Since Harris’ announcement, climate advocates have applauded her selection, pointing to Walz’s solid track record on climate issues. Farm groups from across the political spectrum, including those working to reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint, have done the same.

During his six terms in Congress, Walz served on the House Agriculture Committee, where he played a key role in ensuring that soil conservation measures were included in the 2018 farm bill. At the time, the farm bill — a massive piece of legislation that guides the nation’s food and farm policy — failed to acknowledge agriculture’s role in contributing to climate change and barely hinted at its potential role in slowing it.

Walz, who spent his early years working on his family farm in rural Nebraska, found a political workaround of sorts: This year, he introduced the Strengthening Our Investment in Land (SOIL) Stewardship Act, which strengthened existing farm conservation programs and encouraged farms to adopt certain practices that improve soil health, ultimately making the soil more capable of sequestering carbon.

“As recently as 2018, the word ‘climate’ doesn’t appear in the farm bill,” said Ferd Hoefner, who was then policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “He made soil health, through the SOIL Act, something acceptable to talk about when you’re trying to talk about mitigating climate change through agriculture.”

Hoefner noted that the term “climate change” last appeared in the 1990 farm bill, which is an indication of how polarized and partisan the issue has become in farm policy debates since then. After that, “even mentioning the word was off limits,” he added.

The SOIL Stewardship Act’s provisions were ultimately included in that year’s farm bill. Farm policy observers also point to one of Walz’s biggest agricultural accomplishments as legislation in 2014 and 2018 that helps small, experienced and beginning farmers access credit and financing for land, equipment and crop insurance. Provisions from those bills were included in the final versions of those years’ farm bills.

The Minnesota-based Land Stewardship Council has long opposed the trend of increasing consolidation in agriculture, which has led to larger farms, many run by large corporate entities. This week, the council praised Walz for his actions against that ongoing shift.

“What we’ve seen during his tenure in Congress and as governor is that the issues surrounding the future of farming and rural communities are not partisan — they cross political lines,” said Sean Carroll, policy director for Land Stewardship Action, the council’s policy arm. “A lot of the bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow the farmers who manage it to succeed and make money.”

Consolidation, Carroll noted, has exacerbated the agricultural system, which has become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Large livestock facilities produce more liquid manure, which emits methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas. The crops that feed these animals, mainly corn and soybeans, are particularly fertile-intensive. Agricultural land use, including fertilizer application, is the largest source of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas even more potent than methane. (While carbon dioxide is the most abundant greenhouse gas, methane is 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere, and nitrous oxide is 265 times more potent.)

“Consolidation is the root of climate problems in agriculture,” Carroll said.

“Many of the bills he has co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land…”

Walz had to balance the economic interests of his farm-dominated state with the climate and environmental problems caused by the ag industry, which generates about $26 billion a year for the state. Most of that money comes from carbon-intensive forms of agriculture, including concentrated animal-feeding operations, which in Minnesota are mostly hogs, or row crops, where corn is grown for ethanol. Minnesota has 19 ethanol refineries.

“Governor Walz is the ideal candidate to run for Harris’ vice president,” said Geoff Cooper, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “He brings a pragmatism and Midwestern sensibility to the campaign and would ensure that the ‘flyover country’ of rural America has a strong voice in a potential Harris administration. Governor Walz has been a passionate and effective advocate for renewable fuels and agriculture since his time in Congress. He has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the ethanol industry.”

Ethanol has come under increasing criticism from environmental groups who question the supposed climate benefits of the corn-based fuel. Some studies say ethanol’s carbon footprint is larger than gasoline’s.

But in corn-producing states like Minnesota, challenging ethanol means political death, and Walz had to tread a bipartisan path. In 2020, Walz, along with three Republican governors from the Midwest, urged the Trump administration to reject the oil industry’s efforts to exempt small refiners from blending biofuels into their blends. (One of those Republicans, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, said on social media Tuesday that Walz was “not a leader” and called him a “radical.”)

“When it comes to biofuels, he’s no different than every other Republican and Democrat in the Midwestern states,” Hoefner said, “which is bowing at the altar of almighty corn.”