VOLUME 62 NO. 5— November-December 2003

‘Potomac Fever’ bit Mary Waters, an Illinois native, in the late 1970s when she was a college student with a summer job on Capitol Hill. At the time, her father, a professor of livestock marketing at the University of Illinois, was on a two-year sabbatical to USDA.

“My Dad worked in USDA’s South Building and every morning we’d have breakfast together there. Then I took the Metro and worked for a relatively new Congressman from Illinois, Ed Madigan. And that’s how I started working in DC,” she said.

After completing her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois, Waters earned a law degree at George Mason University at night, while working for Rep. Larry Hopkins of Kentucky, a member of the House Agriculture Committee. In 1986 she joined ConAgra Foods as a senior director and legislative counsel working to build coalitions between agricultural producers and processors on agricultural and trade policy issues.

Although not a farm kid, Waters’ family sold her grandparent’s farm when she was 3 years old; agriculture was and is a pervasive topic in Illinois. “I remember sitting in my economics class my first year, and we had a new professor from Boston and he was talking about how shocked he was to move to central Illinois and listen to commercials about the herbicide, Treflan,” she said. “And that was the first time it ever occurred to me that the rest of the country didn’t listen to Treflan commercials. So agriculture kind of permeated the growing-up experience in Illinois, but I guess I didn’t realize it until I went to college.”

In her current position, as assistant secretary for congressional relations, Waters’ office monitors legislation, making sure USDA has input on subjects that range from farm programs to food safety to natural resource programs to the USDA budget.

“A lot of our job is just explaining what we do at USDA. I’ve worked in town for 20 years and I thought I really understood agriculture. Boy, when you come to work at the Department and you realize the breadth and depth of what USDA does, it’s a real eye-opening experience. Members of Congress and their staffs, who may not have been here 20 years, are also surprised by it. Our job is to explain the rationale for programs, decisions, and the data and information we have here, and make it meaningful to the Members,” Waters said.

In recent years the number of counties that are dependent on agriculture has been declining. But, Waters said, “The interest and, I’d say, the passion level in Congress hasn’t diminished at all. It’s still a very, very important constituency to Members. And so, while a lot of families like my own have gone from being on the farm into related areas, we all care about agriculture.” 

Latest Book Read: “Life of Pi,” by Yann Martel

Last Movie Seen: “Family Man” with Nicholas Cage

Hobbies: “My husband and I have two sons who are in elementary school and middle school, ages 8 and 11. So a lot of our time away from work is focused on their activities like soccer, basketball, and baseball, and we do a lot of volunteer work at our youngest child’s elementary school. So I guess that would be a hobby.”

Favorite Weekend Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and bacon and biscuits--all served outdoors.

Priorities in the Months Ahead: “Working on the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. I am really excited about that because the President has a lot of initiatives on healthy eating and concerns about obesity, especially obesity in children. So I am hoping we can come up with some new angles and programs that will encourage schools to adopt some healthier options for children.”   •

--Patricia Klintberg