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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: You're becoming "less and less relevant."
A month that Democrats won the election even as rural parts of the country voted overwhelmingly Republican.
Now Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of Iowa, has told farm belt leaders that he's frustrated with their internal squabbles and says they need to be more strategic in picking their political fights.
In a speech this past week in Washington, he said rural America's biggest assets, the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example, can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.
