The U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA), which provides services to farm operations such as loans, commodity price supports, conservation payments, and disaster assistance, is led by a third generation Montana farmer. Bruce Nelson was selected to serve as FSA’s Acting Administrator in May 2011 and its Administrator two months later.

 

Born May 24, 1951, in Helena, Montana, Nelson was raised on the wheat farm his grandparents had homesteaded. He graduated from Fort Benson High School in 1969 and earned a B.A. in Political Science at the University of Montana in 1973.

 

Starting his career in public service, Nelson served as Bicentennial liaison for the office of Democratic Governor Tom Judge from 1975 to 1976 and as Judge’s administrative assistant from 1976 to 1977. In 1976 he was Montana coordinator for the Frank Church for President campaign. From 1979 to 1980 Nelson served as chief of staff to Congressman Pat Williams (D-Montana). He worked as chairman of the Montana Democratic Party from November 1983 to September 1991.

 

Between 1981 and 1986, Nelson was vice-president of Triangle N Farms, and he then served as its president from 1987 to 1993. He was also a partner in MAX Associates from 1991 to 1993.

 

Nelson was originally appointed to serve as the State Executive Director of the Farm Service Agency in Montana by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and stayed until the end of the Clinton administration in 2000. Returning to the private sector, Nelson worked as development project manager for Zoot Enterprises, a “credit decisioning and loan origination” company in Bozeman, from 2001 to 2004.

 

He then served as Governor Brian Schweitzer’s chief of staff from 2005 to 2009. In June 2009, Nelson was appointed by the Obama administration to again serve as state executive director of FSA in Montana.

 

Nelson and his wife, Nancy, have two sons and a daughter. A lifelong Democrat, Nelson has contributed $10,745 to Democratic candidates and causes since 1990, including $2,000 each to the Montana Democratic Party and to Governor Brian Schweitzer, and $1,000 to Barack Obama and to Montana’s Democratic Senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester.

-Matt Bewig, David Wallechinsky