Tom Vilsack is Biden’s pick for Agriculture Secretary according to Politico, though a formal announcement hasn’t been made yet. Vilsack has already served in that role under Obama, and advised on rural and agriculture policy during Biden’s campaign. 

He is definitely not a wild-eyed reformer. I suppose that means he’d be easier to get confirmed, easier for everyone in Washington to work with, and completely unlikely to curb Big Ag in any serious way.

This 2012 article in the Washington Monthly was brought up in an online farming group to remind people of who Vilsack is. It’s long. In brief, it details how anti-trust laws were reinterpreted during the Reagan era to make it easier for large companies to buy each other out. One result was growing concentration in agriculture, to the detriment of small, independent farmers. This has been a tremendous change and is ongoing. During Vilsack’s tenure as Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, he led a doomed effort to reign in the power of Big Ag.

By November 2011, it was clear that the reformers had lost. … The most ambitious, far-reaching campaign to reform the agricultural industry in forty years was over, less than two years after it had begun.

Obama’s Game of Chicken

If it’s major reform we’re looking for (I am), Vilsack is probably not the best person to count on. And, by the way, David Scott, the new chair of the House Agriculture Committee, is also mentioned unflatteringly in the Washington Monthly article as one of a group who opposed the reforms.