Brooke Rollins, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Agriculture Department, vowed on Thursday to provide relief to food producers and to be an advocate for farmers and ranchers, regardless of the administration’s agenda on trade and immigration.
In a largely amicable hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Ms. Rollins, a former White House official, pledged to support food producers who could be caught up in a trade war should Mr. Trump impose tariffs.
The president “understands the potential devastating impact to our farmers and our ranchers,” Ms. Rollins said, adding that the needs of rural communities would be a priority.
The department will work “to ensure that we can close those holes for our farmers and ranchers moving forward under any sort of tariff execution in the next coming days, in the next few years,” she said.
Asked how Mr. Trump’s plans for mass deportations would affect the labor supply for farmers and ranchers, Ms. Rollins said that if confirmed she would work with Congress to address worker shortages through existing labor programs. She added that the department would “do everything we can to make sure that none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business.”
Over more than three hours, Ms. Rollins also fielded questions about food assistance and disaster relief programs and the bird flu outbreak that has led to the deaths of more than 141 million birds and infected more than 900 dairy herds across the country.
While Ms. Rollins does not have the traditional résumé of an agriculture secretary, she and several senators argued that her experience as Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser would be an asset for the agency.
“She has the relationships across this new administration, and an understanding of the processes in which decisions are made in the executive branch, to best position our producers for success,” Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement.
Ms. Rollins echoed that sentiment, saying that she “may be the most well versed in how the interagency process works of all the cabinet — of how the interagency process works, of how the discussions are handled, of what the Oval Office meetings look like.”
Among the priorities Ms. Rollins listed for her first days on the job were ensuring swift delivery of economic aid to farmers hurt by recent natural disasters and fires and working with state governments and agricultural commissioners to combat bird flu.
Lawmakers also asked Ms. Rollins about her past at two prominent conservative think tanks she led.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, noted that the group she helped found in 2021, the America First Policy Institute, has called for mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants. He asked Ms. Rollins how that might factor into her approach as agriculture secretary.
“Can we expect this administration to be raiding farms and going after the immigrant farm workers?” he asked.
Ms. Rollins responded that she supported Mr. Trump’s immigration plans and did not specifically promise to inoculate the agriculture sector from mass deportations, though she said she would work with lawmakers to modernize a temporary visa program for farmworkers. She also contested estimates cited by Democrats that 40 percent to 50 percent of agricultural workers were unauthorized, arguing that “we just don’t know.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the top Democrat on the committee, noted that Ms. Rollins’s previous think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has opposed ethanol mandates, which have traditionally garnered bipartisan support in Congress.
Ms. Rollins responded she did not personally write those statements, and pledged to “honor all sources of fuel.”
If confirmed, Ms. Rollins would oversee an agency with an annual budget of more than $200 billion and nearly 100,000 employees. While Congress determines much of the department’s funding levels, the agriculture secretary can still exert great influence over federal food and farm policy.
Ms. Rollins, unsurprisingly, signaled some opposition to signature achievements under the Biden administration. Under President Biden, the department increased food stamp benefits, provided billions in funding for so-called climate-smart farming practices and compensated Black farmers who faced discrimination.
Ms. Rollins expressed a willingness to revamp nutrition assistance programs but declined to commit to opposing cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.
“I think it’s extremely important to take a wholesale look at every one of these programs and ensure that they are serving the people that are needing the programs,” she said.
Asked about proposals to expand existing work requirements to SNAP, Ms. Rollins said she was not familiar with the details but that she did “believe in work requirements, and I do think they’re important.”
Even as Ms. Rollins said she would consider the recommendations of an equity commission created under the Biden administration, she added that she supported Mr. Trump’s executive order to root out diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the federal government and to base hiring decisions “on merit.”
And asked about the Trump administration’s freezing of additional funding for popular conservation programs that incentivized “climate-smart” farming practices, Ms. Rollins said Mr. Trump opposed taxpayer-funded climate programs in general, but she would study the issue to best represent farm interests.
Ms. Rollins also nodded to the concerns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s pick for health secretary whom she called a friend, commiserating with a few Democratic senators over the proliferation of PFAS, or forever chemicals, in food and soil and pledging to reduce the amount of ultraprocessed foods in school lunches.
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