page_title: Ralph Abraham (politician)
section_title: Agriculture
hierarchical_section_title: Ralph Abraham (politician) / Political positions / Agriculture
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Sonny Perdue welcomes U.S. Representatives Ralph Abraham (R-LA) and other congressman from Louisiana to a morning breakfast in the Lincoln Dining Room at USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., September 6, 2018. Photo by Preston Keres
context_page_description: Ralph Lee Abraham Jr. is an American politician, medical doctor and former veterinarian serving as the U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 5th congressional district since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he is a native and resident of Alto, Louisiana.
  Abraham ran for Governor of Louisiana in the 2019 Louisiana gubernatorial election, but lost the nomination. On February 26, 2020, Abraham announced that he was not running for re-election to Congress in 2020.
context_section_description: In March 2017, Representative Abraham visited with about seventy farmers from the agricultural lobby, the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation. He told the farmers, "Food security is national security. Agriculture is at the forefront of the fight because any interruption in the food supply or a compromise in its safety goes right to the heart of the nation." Marty Wooldridge, a cattleman from Caddo Parish said that Abraham's slogan "Food security is national security" should be incorporated into the slogan of the Farm Bureau. Abraham, Louisiana's only member on the House Agriculture Committee, defined his job in part to "educating members whose districts might be deeply metropolitan and who have no perspective on the importance of agriculture." In 2018, Abraham was named to the conference committee for the 2018 Farm Bill. The conference committee will resolve differences in the House and the Senate version of the Farm Bill.
caption: Abraham greeting Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in 2018
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