Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is happy to be keeping his “great job” and continuing to fight for the future of American agriculture.

“I am extraordinarily privileged and honored to have the job as the United States Secretary of Agriculture and to have another opportunity to continue this work,” Vilsack told the American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting last week in Nashville. “I don’t know that there’s not a more important place, a more significant place in the future of this country than rural America.”

Vilsack told Farm Bureau members that he was glad to see 2012 come to an end and expressed his optimism that 2013 will be better for agriculture. “We are committed … to making sure that 2013 is not a repeat of 2012. We need a five-year bill and we need it now,” he said, going on to outline that the bill needs to include a number of important items, including an adequate safety net, commitment to trade and strong support for research.

“The extraordinary story of American agriculture is directly linked and related to the capacity of America to invest in agriculture production. Agriculture is the second most productive aspect of our economy since 1980,” he said. “You deal with it every single day: Embracing new technologies, new techniques, new machinery. And as a result, you become the most productive and most efficient farmers in the world.”

Read a transcript of Vilsack’s AFBF speech or listen to it here: [wpaudio url=”http://zimmcomm.biz/afbf/afbf-13-vilsack.mp3″ text=”Sec. Vilsack Speech”]