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By Allison Kinney
Few people have experienced agriculture from as many perspectives as Jim Mosley. A farmer by trade, Mosley’s career also took him to some of the highest levels of public service, giving him a unique view of how agriculture has changed over the last several decades. Still, for Mosley, the answer starts and ends with farming.
“First and foremost, I’m a farmer,” Mosley said. “I’ve had experience at the ground level, and then I’ve had three positions in D.C.”
Throughout his career, Mosley served as agricultural adviser to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment at USDA from 1989 to 1992 and later returned to Washington as USDA deputy secretary in 2001. In between his federal service, he returned home and remained closely connected to production agriculture.
Those experiences allowed him to see agriculture through multiple lenses, from the concerns facing farmers in the field to the policy discussions shaping the industry’s future. Mosley’s experiences as a child in the 1940s and 1950s looked very different from modern production systems.
“In my very early years, of course, as a young child on the farm, we were in a completely different system,” he said. “Then we did have a significant change in the 1970s. Farming both economically and environmentally has really changed considerably.”
According to Mosley, one of the industry’s most significant challenges emerged as farming practices intensified and environmental impacts became more visible. Water quality concerns began attracting attention as nutrient runoff increased across waterways throughout the Midwest.
“We began to see soluble nitrogen and phosphorus beginning to increase in our waterways,” Mosley said. “Of course, that was flowing to the Gulf of Mexico from the Midwest and, in fact, a large portion of the United States.”
Those nutrient losses eventually contributed to the formation of the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, often referred to as the dead zone. By the time Mosley arrived at the EPA in 1989, he said it was clear that agriculture-related nonpoint-source pollution required attention. At the same time, researchers and farmers were learning more about what repeated tillage was doing below the soil surface.
“With continuous tillage we saw a change in the soil profile where a compaction layer began to develop,” Mosley said. “You were stirring the top, creating very fine particles.”
Rainfall carried those particles deeper into the soil until they collected at the plow depth, creating what became known as a plow pan. The compacted layer restricted root growth and reduced the soil’s overall productivity. Attempts to correct the problem through deep tillage often delivered only temporary results.
“The only real solution to that was to quit the tillage and quit stirring that soil,” Mosley said.
While agency leaders pushed educational efforts and promoted conservation practices, Mosley noted that widespread adoption was not immediate. Farmers carefully evaluated new ideas before making changes.
“The culture was set, and farmers are independent,” he said. “It’s a beautiful part about our farming community that they are independent, but they’re also independent thinkers. They judge things very carefully. In many cases, getting the information and knowledge out there was the major challenge.”
From the farm to federal policy, Mosley’s career has mirrored agriculture’s own evolution, demonstrating how innovation, stewardship and independent thinking continue to shape the future of American farming.
