Reviewed September 2026 against USDA NASS crop production reports, USDA-ERS farm income forecasts (via the American Farm Bureau Federation), and Ballotpedia’s Senate confirmation record.

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Who Is the Current US Secretary of Agriculture?

Brooke Rollins is the current US Secretary of Agriculture. The US Senate confirmed her nomination on February 13, 2025, and she leads the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the federal agency responsible for farm policy, crop insurance, nutrition assistance, rural development, and food safety across the United States. This page tracks the office itself — who holds it, how the confirmation happened, and the production, price, and income data the USDA publishes on a recurring schedule — so you always have a path to the current figures, not just the numbers on the day this was written.

The confirmation vote and the department’s structure are settled facts. The economic figures below — farm income, crop prices, production totals — are USDA-ERS and USDA-NASS estimates for the 2025 crop year and the 2025-26 marketing year, and each one below states its vintage and where the agency republishes it next.

How the Confirmation Happened: Vote Counts and Dates

Brooke Rollins’ path to becoming Secretary of Agriculture ran through two recorded votes, both documented by Ballotpedia’s confirmation process record:

• January 23, 2025 — The Senate Agriculture Committee voted 23-0 to advance her nomination to the full Senate.
• February 13, 2025 — The full Senate confirmed her with 72 yes votes.

A unanimous committee vote followed by a lopsided floor vote is a useful marker on its own: it tells you the appointment was not a contested nomination in the way some cabinet posts are during a given administration. If you’re checking whether this is still the current officeholder, Ballotpedia’s page is the fastest way to confirm — cabinet turnover does happen, and this article’s “current” claim is only as fresh as its last review date at the top of the page.

What the Secretary of Agriculture Actually Oversees

The USDA Secretary sits atop an agency with several distinct functions that matter for different readers searching for this office. It’s worth separating them because “current agriculture secretary” queries usually mean one of these specific concerns:

• Farm income and price forecasting — USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) publish the income and price data farmers, lenders, and commodity traders use to plan a season.
• Crop insurance and farm credit programs — administered through the Risk Management Agency and Farm Service Agency, both under USDA.
• Nutrition assistance — SNAP and related programs fall under USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.
• Rural development — broadband, water infrastructure, and business loan programs for rural communities.
• Conservation and climate programs — administered through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

Each of these publishes its own data on its own schedule, which is why a single “state of the USDA” figure rarely exists — you have to go to the program that matches your question.

The Farm Economy the Secretary Inherited: Income and Expenses

USDA-ERS revised its farm income forecast in February 2025, and the American Farm Bureau Federation’s market analysis of that release lays out the numbers plainly. For the 2025 calendar year, USDA-ERS projected:

• $154.6 billion in net farm income
• $153.9 billion in net cash farm income
• $473.1 billion in total farm production expenses
• $30.5 billion in direct government payments to farmers

These figures come from the American Farm Bureau Federation’s analysis of the February 2025 USDA-ERS revision, which flagged the revision as a downward cut relative to USDA’s prior forecast — a signal that farm income was under more pressure heading into 2026 than earlier estimates suggested. USDA-ERS does not publish this forecast once a year and stop: it revises the farm income estimate four times a year, typically in February, May, August, and November, with the May 2026 release expected to carry the first full-year actuals for 2025 rather than a forecast. If you’re reading this well past that date, go straight to USDA-ERS’s farm income and wealth statistics page for the updated number rather than relying on the February 2025 figures above.

The $30.5 billion in direct payments is worth sitting with for a second. That is not a routine baseline — it reflects USDA support programs layered on top of market income, and the mix of which program (crop insurance indemnities, ad hoc disaster assistance, conservation payments) makes up that total shifts year to year based on weather losses and market conditions. USDA-ERS’s Farm Income and Wealth Statistics data product breaks government payments down by program category; that breakdown was not available in the source used for this review, so if you need the program-by-program split, pull it directly from ERS rather than estimating it from the total here.

Crop Production Under the Current USDA: What the Numbers Show

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) issues monthly crop production reports, and its September 12, 2025 report put the 2025 corn and soybean forecasts at:

• Corn: 16.8 billion bushels of production, at a yield of 186.7 bushels per acre
• Soybeans: 4.30 billion bushels of production, at a yield of 53.5 bushels per acre

NASS then updates the season-average farm price forecast in its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates cycle. The November 2025 crop production report put the season-average farm price for the 2025-26 marketing year at:

• Corn: $4.15 per bushel
• Soybeans: $10.50 per bushel
• Wheat: $5.00 per bushel

Note the difference between these two reports: the September figures are production and yield estimates, while the November figures are price forecasts for the full marketing year — they are not directly comparable line items, and neither is a final number. NASS revises both in every subsequent monthly report through the marketing year, with the final numbers locked in only after harvest is fully reported. If you’re pricing a 2026 crop against these figures, go to NASS’s Newsroom archive and pull whichever month’s report is current — the September and November 2025 reports cited here will be several revisions old by then.

Climate-Smart Agriculture and Soil Health Programs

USDA’s climate-smart agriculture work runs primarily through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, funding practices like cover cropping, no-till, and nutrient management through cost-share and conservation program payments. The department’s specific program allocations, participation counts, and funding levels for these initiatives under the current Secretary were not available in the sources reviewed for this update — rather than estimate a participation figure, the reliable way to get current numbers is USDA-NRCS’s EQIP and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) pages, which report enrolled acreage and obligated funding by fiscal year.

What is verifiable is the throughline: precision monitoring tools that track soil condition, moisture, and input use over a growing season give farmers the same kind of ground-truth data that conservation program applications require. Farmonaut’s carbon footprinting tool tracks field-level emissions data that can support this kind of documentation, and our explainer on soil health practices covers the specific regenerative techniques — cover cropping, rotation, reduced tillage — that most conservation cost-share programs are built around.

Where Precision Tools Fit

• Soil Health Monitoring: Tracking organic matter and moisture trends across a field over multiple seasons, rather than relying on a single soil test.
• Input Optimization: Using remote-sensing data to target fertilizer and water application to where a field actually needs it, which is the mechanism most “reduce waste” claims in agriculture policy documents are describing.
• Documentation for Cost-Share Applications: Conservation program applications increasingly ask for baseline and outcome data — satellite time-series records provide exactly that.

Precision Agriculture, Traceability, and Farm Technology

Farm technology adoption is easier to describe by category than by a single national statistic, since USDA does not publish one aggregate “percentage of farms using precision ag” figure that was available in this review’s sources. The categories that matter for most operations are:

• Remote sensing and drone-based monitoring for crop health and yield mapping.
• Blockchain-based traceability for supply chain verification — see Farmonaut’s product traceability solution for how this works at the farm-to-buyer level.
• Fleet and equipment management systems that track machinery use and scheduling — Farmonaut’s fleet management tools cover this category.

Farmonaut’s web platform gives small and mid-sized operations access to the same satellite monitoring that was historically priced for larger operations. Explore the tools directly through the Farmonaut app, or integrate the data into existing systems through the satellite weather API — full technical specifications are in the API developer documentation.

Rural Infrastructure and Access to Credit

USDA’s rural development mission covers broadband expansion, water infrastructure, and business lending programs administered through USDA Rural Development and the Farm Service Agency. Specific funding totals and household counts for current broadband and infrastructure programs were not in the sources reviewed here — check USDA Rural Development’s ReConnect program page for current broadband grant awards and USDA-FSA’s farm loan program pages for current lending volumes, both of which report figures by fiscal year.

On the credit side, satellite-based crop verification is increasingly used to support loan and insurance underwriting, since it gives lenders an independent record of what was actually planted and how it performed. Farmonaut’s crop loan and insurance solution is built around this use case.

Food Access and Nutrition Programs

SNAP and related nutrition programs sit under USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and are a distinct budget line from farm income support — the $30.5 billion in direct government payments cited above is farm program support, not nutrition assistance spending, and the two are frequently and incorrectly conflated. Current SNAP enrollment, benefit levels, and program spending figures were not in the sources reviewed for this update; USDA-FNS publishes monthly SNAP participation and cost data that is the authoritative source for current figures.

Key Figures at a Glance: Data Table

Every figure below carries a vintage. Use the source column to pull the updated number when you need one newer than this review.

Farm Income Break-Even Calculator

Use the USDA-ERS 2025 national averages above as a starting baseline, then swap in your own acreage, yield, and price to see where your operation sits relative to the national break-even picture.

Assumptions: this calculator uses simple revenue-minus-cost arithmetic per acre and does not account for crop insurance indemnities, government payments, storage or drying costs, hedging positions, or land rent. Default values are the USDA NASS 2025 national corn yield and price forecasts cited above — replace them with your own acreage, yield, price, and cost figures for a farm-specific estimate.

Satellite Tools Farmers Use Alongside USDA Programs

Farmonaut's platform is built to complement, not replace, USDA data and programs — giving individual operations the field-level detail that national statistics can't provide:

• Satellite Monitoring — real-time crop, soil, and environmental insight via mobile, desktop, and API. (API access, developer documentation)
• AI-Based Advisory — Jeevn AI interprets satellite data into irrigation, pest, and fertilizer guidance.
• Blockchain Traceability — see Farmonaut's traceability solution.
• Carbon Footprinting — track and report farm emissions, detailed at Farmonaut's carbon footprinting page.
• Fleet Management — logistics and equipment scheduling, at Farmonaut's fleet management page.

How to Verify the Current Secretary and Latest Figures Yourself

Cabinet positions change, and USDA data refreshes on fixed schedules. Rather than trust any single snapshot — including this one — use this method to confirm what's current:

1. Confirm the officeholder — check USDA.gov's leadership page directly, or Ballotpedia's confirmation tracking page, which updates for any new nomination.
2. Get the latest farm income forecast — USDA-ERS revises this four times yearly (February, May, August, November); go to the ERS Farm Income and Wealth Statistics data product for whichever revision is current.
3. Get the latest crop production numbers — USDA NASS's Newsroom archive lists every monthly crop production report; the most recent one supersedes the September 2025 figures cited here.
4. Get the latest season-average farm prices — these are published in NASS's monthly WASDE-linked crop production reports, such as the November 2025 report cited above; check for the most recent month's PDF on the same site.

This four-step check takes under five minutes and will catch both a change in leadership and a stale price figure — the two most common reasons an article like this goes out of date.

FAQ: US Secretary of Agriculture

Conclusion

Brooke Rollins is the current US Secretary of Agriculture, confirmed 72-0... rather, 72 yes votes by the full Senate on February 13, 2025, after a unanimous 23-0 Senate Agriculture Committee vote on January 23, 2025. The office she now holds oversees a farm economy that USDA-ERS valued at $154.6 billion in net farm income against $473.1 billion in production expenses for 2025, and a crop sector that USDA NASS forecast at 16.8 billion bushels of corn and 4.30 billion bushels of soybeans for the same year. None of these figures are final — USDA revises farm income four times a year and crop production monthly — which is exactly why this article leads with the confirmation record and a verification method rather than a single frozen snapshot. Check back against USDA-ERS, USDA-NASS, and Ballotpedia directly whenever you need a number newer than the ones cited here, and use the tools above — from the break-even calculator to Farmonaut's satellite monitoring platform — to translate national figures into decisions for your own operation.