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Committee member urges protections for family farms while endorsing Brooke Rollins’ nomination
Summary
At a committee meeting, a member emphatically endorsed Brooke Rollins’ nomination and pressed her to back value‑added agricultural policies to protect small family farms and bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
A committee member at a nomination hearing offered an emphatic endorsement of Brooke Rollins and asked her to prioritize policies that protect small family farms and promote value‑added agricultural manufacturing.
The committee member, who said colleagues should call him Jim, praised Rollins’ qualifications and demeanor and said he was “all in with your nomination, 1000 percent.” He told Rollins the American family farm “has got to be protected like none other,” noting that the average family farm is “450 plus or minus acres” and stressing the nonstop labor farmers endure: “There is never a day off.”
Why it matters: The exchange framed Rollins’ nomination around agricultural policy priorities. The committee member tied support for the nominee to an expectation she will back initiatives intended to keep small farm families in production and to promote domestic manufacturing of timber‑based products.
During his remarks, the committee member argued that losing small farms would cede production to corporate interests and harm the country’s productive capacity and rural communities. He urged Rollins to support “value added” programs tied to forestry and timber manufacturing, saying he has a plan to bring furniture, cabinetry and flooring production back from China, Vietnam and Mexico.
“I want to hear that you are really supportive of value added products because it is so important to getting our manufacturing home,” he said.
Rollins responded by thanking the committee and affirming agriculture’s strengths: “There is no excuse why everything in American agriculture… is not the best of the world,” she said, adding that the goal should be to “preserve the American heritage of the greatest farmers in the world.” She accepted the endorsement and acknowledged the importance of the issues raised but did not provide detailed policy commitments in the transcript.
The transcript records a brief, informal exchange at the close of the remarks and contains no formal vote or recorded committee action on the nomination. The committee member indicated he and Rollins would continue the conversation about value‑added strategies and manufacturing repatriation.
