Bill Northey, U.S. Department of Agriculture under secretary for farm production and conservation and former Iowa secretary of agriculture, told Iowa Farm Bureau members last week that the USDA’s trade mitigation program shows an understanding of the importance of trade to U.S. agriculture.

“One of the nice things about putting this into practice is essentially the administration recognizing the trade necessity that there is to agriculture and how vulnerable we are,” Northey told members of the 2018 Iowa Farm Bureau Federation Ag Leaders Institute. “I would argue as well that we’re likely to be on...