Minnesota Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz brought the farm bill into the debate Tuesday night, in answer to a question about when he was in China.

Walz was asked about a discrepancy between when he said he was in Hong Kong in the spring of 1989 during the Tiananmen Square protests and media reports that he was not there until August of that year. “I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can,” said Walz. “Those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years and in Congress I was one of the most bipartisan people working on things like farm bills that we got done.”

Walz also brought up farmers earlier in the debate during a question about climate change. “My farmers know climate change is real,” said Walz. “They’ve seen 500 year droughts, 500 year floods back-to-back. But what they’re doing is adapting. And this has allowed them to tell me, “Look, I harvest corn, I harvest soybeans and I harvest wind, we are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. We’re also producing more clean energy.”

Four years ago this month, Gov. Walz spoke at the groundbreaking of the Ag Innovation Campus (AIC) processing plant, a facility spearheaded by Minnesota soybean growers which held its grand opening just over a year ago. However, last week the AIC announced the closing of the facility:

We must announce with deep regret that the operations of the Ag Innovation Campus (AIC) processing plant have come to an end.

…While our Board of Directors strongly believes in the AIC mission and has put in years of volunteer effort to advance the AIC mission, it has come time to bring the process to an end.