March 9, 2011 10:31AM # Ezra Klein vs. the Secretary of Agriculture By [Sallie James](https://www.cato.org/people/sallie-james) --- SHARE It seems that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack took exception to [Ezra Klein’s recent blog post on “Why we still need cities”. ](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/why_we_still_need_cities.html)Someone at the USDA emailed Ezra, outlining the Secretary’s concerns and to set up a time for the two of them to talk. Ezra took notes during their discussion and, yesterday, [posted a “lightly edited” transcript of their conversation](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/vilsack_i_took_it_as_a_slam_on.html). The Secretary had plenty of the standard talking points on hand — and some new ones, like the fact that we should support farm subsidies because rural America has good values and farmers don’t feel appreciated — but Ezra expertly took him to task, deftly pushing back on the non-sequiturs, questionable assumptions and enduring myths about the need for farm subsidies. He even gets in a worthy swipe at sugar tariffs and the “need” to produce all our food in America. Read the entire thing; it is worth your time. (HT: Justin Logan) ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Trade Policy](https://www.cato.org/trade-policy), [Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies](https://www.cato.org/herbert-stiefel-center-trade-policy-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).