Former Ag Secretary Bob Bergland dies

National News

December 11, 2018 - 10:17 AM

ROSEAU, Minn. (AP) — Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland, a farmer from northern Minnesota who was tasked with selling President Jimmy Carter’s unpopular Soviet Union grain embargo to other farmers, died Sunday. He was 90.

As agriculture secretary, Bergland had the difficult job of defending to Midwest farmers Carter’s unpopular 1980 decision to embargo grain sales to the Soviet Union after the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Walter Mondale, who was vice president when Carter was in the White House, recalled Sunday that both he and Bergland did not like the grain embargo.

Related
April 30, 2021
April 20, 2021
November 14, 2019
February 28, 2019