Monday was one of those days when there were too many things happening at the same time and I had to pick how to manage my time.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack started the morning off at the National Farmers Union. Among the various initiatives Vilsack discussed, he gave a strong defense of biofuels and increasing the blend level for ethanol. I could have stayed at the NFU meeting for some key lawmakers talking about the same topic, but I opted to pursue the line with Vilsack, who was holding back-to-back press conferences at USDA to talk about stimulus spending.

On the blend levels, Vilsack said he is encouraging the EPA to push the blend level from 10 percent to 12-13 percent and Vilsack is confident that can be done in short order. Given Vilsack's aggressive arguments, you have to wonder if he has already gotten some commitment from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that the agency is moving in that direction.

While I was chasing down the secretary, fellow reporters were getting juicier quotes at the NFU meeting. Bloomberg, Reuters and Dow Jones reported that the administration's proposal to end direct payments for farmers with $500,000 or more gross sales is "dead on arrival," according to comments from House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn. You can line up others in Congress who spoke at the NFU convention as backing Peterson's position on that as well.

Vilsack was asked about the gross-sales proposal at the USDA presser and seemed to concede that the idea of saving money on cuts in direct payments may not work.

"The conversation has begun and I think it will continue," Vilsack said. "I think as President Obama has said on many occasions we don't necessarily have all the right answers. There may be different ways to do what we think needs to be done. At the end of the day, I think what we are interested in is making sure that payments that are made go to farmers who need them and are entitled to them. And that we encourage farmers to think creatively about new future payment opportunities that climate change in particular provide."

That "climate change" aspect of farm payments is a theme Vilsack has been building on in recent weeks. He spoke briefly about "green payments" a few weeks ago, but at the NFU meeting and at the USDA presser, Vilsack built on the argument. He said farmer income from a potential cap and trade plan for carbon credits could replace traditional farm-subsidy payments. Vilsack indicated a farmer could draw more from a cap and trade plan than they now receive in direct payments.

"I believe that agriculture is aggressively engaged in the cap and trade discussion and is at the table as a cap and trade system is formed and its offsets are discussed," Vilsack said. "There are significant opportunities, far in excess of what we are talking about in terms of direct payments. And knowing these operators as I do, my guess is if you gave a choice between something like that, it would be something they would gravitate towards. That's our goal, that's our hope. We're absolutely willing to work with Congress. They may have better ideas and we're open to better ideas, but I think it's important to pursue an agenda that creates new income opportunities.