Given its failure last year to muster support for passing a five-year farm bill, rural America must confront its loss of political influence in Congress, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said yesterday in a speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

It's time, he said, for farmers and ranchers to build alliances and do "constructive engaging" with traditional foes of the agricultural sector.

"Whether we like it or not, I think we have to address and we have to acknowledge that the political clout that rural America once had, it doesn't have as much today," Vilsack said in a half-hour speech at the group's annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn. "And it's going to be important and necessary for us to have a conversation about how we rebuild that political capacity, and I believe we can."

Vilsack's speech echoed remarks he made last month in Washington, D.C., about rural America becoming less relevant.

At that time, House Agriculture Committee leaders were struggling to persuade House Republican leaders to bring a full farm bill to the floor. Versions of the measure had passed the Senate and the House agriculture panels, but the legislation went no further; a partial nine-month extension of the farm bill was instead included in the "fiscal cliff" deal, which punted work on the five-year legislation to this year.

The farm bill is a five-year measure that funds conservation, energy and organic initiatives, as well as commodity subsidies and the national food stamps program. The previous one was passed in 2008.

In his speech yesterday to the nation's largest farm group, Vilsack pointed out that more than 50 percent of rural counties had lost population over the last decade and that a smaller percentage of Americans than ever are farmers.

"It's pretty simple: Fewer people ultimately reflects itself in fewer people in Congress, in state legislatures, who understand and appreciate the challenges and the opportunities of rural America," Vilsack said.

In a separate news conference last weekend, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman expressed disappointment in not seeing a five-year farm bill by the end of last year.

"We were frustrated that we came so close to getting a full five-year farm bill in the fall," Stallman said. "Our mantra was continual in saying that we want a farm bill now. And so we were disappointed when that didn't happen."

He brushed off the notion, though, that agriculture lost its ability in the previous Congress to woo lawmakers.

"I still think we have significant leverage," Stallman said. "There wasn't a lot of change. We're dealing with some well-established friends, well-established opponents, as we have in the past."

Agriculture had an opportunity in a nonelection year to gather support for the full farm bill and called on farmers and ranchers to work to bring the new members of Congress up to speed on the bureau's policy positions.

Vilsack also called on rural America to take an active role in trying to regain its clout, partly by enticing young farmers with the opportunities in agriculture to find solutions to climate change.

He also urged members of the Farm Bureau to take part in "constructive engaging," listing as examples his attempts over the past four years to work with U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on environmental regulations and an agreement between USDA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to raise agriculture's profile.

The egg industry's strange-bedfellow partnership in 2011 with the Humane Society of the United States to push for federal legislation to standardize cages was another example of "what we need to do," Vilsack said.

Vilsack also told the farmers and ranchers in the audience to "take a stand" and support Republican Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for secretary of Defense, as a way of conveying agriculture's message in an "unconventional way."

"Let me tell you why I want Chuck Hagel. Because he's from Nebraska. And being from Nebraska, he understands and appreciates the role of the bio-based economy," Vilsack said, "and he would be a secretary of Defense that would probably be quite supportive of the notion that our military should be more dependent on domestically produced fuel and energy than on imported fuel and energy. He could be a secretary of Defense who could champion our commitment to the bio-based economy."

Vilsack also announced he would remain Agriculture secretary for Obama's second term. In a statement, he said he shared with the president a "deep appreciation for rural America and its unlimited potential" to feed the globe, protect natural resources and "revolutionize" the nation's energy.