American Steward’s Land and Liberty 2026 Summit was one of our most successful to date. One reason – USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins was our opening speaker.
Accompanying her was her mother, Texas State Representative Helen Kerwin and her sister Ray from Glen Rose, Texas. Helen holds the distinction of being the oldest freshman ever elected to the Texas House of Representatives at 78. She’s now 80 and running for re-election and as Brooke said: “she is a force to be reckoned with.”
Brooke was open about her faith praising the Lord and quoting scripture throughout her talk. The day she spoke, February 13, was her one-year anniversary of being sworn in to her Secretarial position by President Trump.
Brooke stated she did not expect to be Secretary of Agriculture, claiming it “was not on my bingo card.” She learned about it watching President Trump make the announcement on TV. “I say that God and Donald Trump sometimes have different plans for you than you have for yourself.”
As Sec. of USDA, she wants to reverse the trend of losing thousands of farms and ranches every year and wants to reverse the foreign ownership of American farmland, especially from China and other foreign adversaries. “If we’re unable to reverse all of that, then we will lose America. I believe that’s how existential it is.” Later she explained how in 1980 China owned about 2,000 acres of farmland in America. “Today, they own almost 300,000.”
Brooke explained how she has “spent all of her years fighting for liberty, fighting for private property rights, fighting for freedom, fighting for less government, making Texas a model for the country [and showing what] freedom looks like.” Because of that, the first (Trump) Whitehouse and first West Wing asked her to help them “emulate and model what Texas had become – the bastion for freedom and liberty.”
That’s where the “America First” agenda came from “to save the country.” “And now I understand going back to God’s plan…is what I have been working for. So it’s just been the honor of a lifetime, the blessing of a lifetime, just the work is so good and so righteous.”
She runs an agency that has 100,000 employees and spends about $250 billion a year. She explained how the Department had been founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, to be an agency for the people, for the farm, for rural America.” Fast forward to when she got to USDA, it had become about “supporting transgender farmers in San Francisco, studying menstrual cycles of transgender mice, and using climate change to prioritize their political agenda against farmers and ranchers,” but all that’s changed when President Trump was sworn into office for the second time.
Margaret Byfield, ASL’s Executive Director, was narrating the discussion with Brooke and told the audience: “Everyone in the USDA that we’ve been able to work with since she (Brooke) has taken over is superb and they get things done.”
Brooke, now 58, wants to return to Texas after her stint with USDA and be involved in production agriculture. She grew up being a “rodeo girl” even though she wasn’t raised on a ranch, but “being inspired by so many ranchers and cow producers, I really hope to become one of them.”
With that, she said how the democrat administrations have been in “absolute war on beef” and have “offshored” a lot of our beef processing for years. She said with Trump “we are going to have a once in a lifetime opportunity to rectify that and bring it all back to America and focus on locally run processors.”
She also said “how about if the beef that’s on our consumer shelves that say made in the U.S.A. are actually made in the U.S.A.?” The administration is working on “Country of Origin” labeling stating to obtain that label, the product has to be “borne, raised and slaughtered in this country.”
Brooke and her staff have been extremely accessible proving to be a strong advocate for and defender of private property rights and landowners. She pointed out about a dozen individual landowners in the audience she and her office have assisted stating: “there’s no doubt in my mind and in my heart that God had been preparing me for this moment, my entire life, and for this job at the moment.”
“I believe God knew…America deserved another chance.” When Donald Trump was re-elected we now have the “opportunity to bring agriculture and rural communities to the very forefront of our decision-making in this White House again…there’s a lot more private property rights, cattle, row crop discussion in this White House than perhaps ever before in American history.”
“As I think about America at 250 years old, I think that we are at a pivot point. We are battling for the very soul of this country. And as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton were battling the tyranny of the British, they were battling the freedom that was ignited in their soul, they were willing to give their lives. We today are in a similar battle – the tyranny of elitists” who claim to be better and make decisions for you, who take your land and tell you how to raise your children and how to live your life. “That’s the tyranny that we fight today and that is just as dark as the tyranny was 250 years ago.”
“Thank you all for staying in the battle, for answering the call.”
She concluded by recognizing those individuals in the audience who were with her in Washington, D.C. two days before she spoke at the Summit saying “you represent the best of us. And for all of you that are choosing to support organizations like this one (American Stewards) which are the very tip of the spear, that are choosing to give your time and your treasure and your sacred honor and your name to these efforts, this is why I believe that we will save our country…”
