Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and Rosanna Bauman from Kansas — got to tell the USDA what they needed to survive.

But were policymakers listening? Many of the invited speakers with a political row to hoe seemed to be concerned about one segment of farmers in particular.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the conference with the message that to preserve and grow rural America, which is the heart and soul of this country, we need to stop thinking about big versus small and start thinking more inclusively. He shared the usual dismal statistics — the increased unemployment in these areas, the lower per-capita income, and how more than 57% of rural counties have shrunk. All to say, what we’ve been doing to conserve and grow rural America isn’t working.

Among the alternative strategies the administration has launched recently is the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, intended to shore up the shrinking numbers of farmers. There are tremendous opportunities to build on local and regional supply chains through connecting local products to local consumption, Vilsack noted, but then quickly followed with “it’s not the only answer, though.”

Bill Even, South Dakota’s Secretary of Agriculture, picked up that thread. He began by asking the Republicans in the room to raise their hand: a paltry 5 out of 200 shot up. After praising the USDA’s Know Your Farmer initiative for helping to reconnect society to the soil, he got to the message that he repeated throughout his 10-minute speech: “Don’t disparage one type of agriculture” — by which he meant conventional, large-scale industrial “production” agriculture. Quoting his mother, he said that “blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours burn brighter,” and echoing Vilsack, he ended with how “this is a big tent for all types of agriculture.”