The new U.S. Secretary of Agriculture will spend much of today (Friday) in Iowa. According to the U.S.D.A., Sonny Perdue will deliver his first “major farm policy speech” as the nation’s ag secretary during a mid-morning event at a cattle farm near Nevada. IOWA Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey will be there.

“Certainly in his second week in the job, it’s a great thing to be to have him here,” Northey says. “I think Iowans are going to like him a lot. He’s going to feel very much like a regular down-to-earth, Iowa farmer almost — with a little bit of a twang.”

Perdue is the former governor of Georgia, but — as Governor Terry Branstad notes — Perdue has extensive roots in agriculture. “He’s been involved in the elevator business and, of course, he’s a veterinarian,” Branstad says. Branstad and Perdue had dinner in April when Branstad was in Washington, D.C. “That’s when he told me…’I might be from Georgia, but I don’t raise peanuts or cotton on my farm. I raise corn and soybeans,'” Branstad says.

Northey says there’s an ethanol plant near Perdue’s farming operation and Perdue has sold corn to the plant. Northey is rumored as under consideration for a job in the U.S.D.A. Northey says he hasn’t had an interview and hasn’t been told he’ll have one today (Friday) while Perdue’s in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa)