Don Bacon spent his 29-year military career pursuing lofty dreams in the wild blue yonder, at one point serving as commander of the 55th Air Wing at Offutt Air Force Base and eventually retiring as a USAF brigadier general in 2014.

What many constituents may not know about the freshman Republican congressman from Papillion, however, is that he grew up with his feet squarely on the ground and dirt under his fingernails.

“I was raised on a farm in central Illinois,” said Bacon, 53, smiling Tuesday during a visit to the Tribune office. “I was driving the grain truck when I was 13. It helped me be a better driver.”

Now, three months after taking his seat representing Nebraska’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, Bacon is returning to his roots, in a way — traveling around his adopted state familiarizing himself with the triumphs and travails of agriculture more than 30 years and several hundred miles removed from the memories of his youth.

After retiring from the Air Force, Bacon served as an aide to U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., before challenging incumbent Democrat Brad Ashford for the 2nd District seat in 2016. He defeated Ashford narrowly last fall and soon learned he also would succeed Ashford as a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

He now has the distinction of being the only member of Nebraska’s congressional delegation serving on a Capitol Hill Ag Committee. Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse left his Senate ag panel seat this year to accept other assignments.

“In the end, we knew we needed somebody from Nebraska on Ag,” said Bacon, who also serves on the House Armed Services Committee. “I’m proud to do it.”

With the House now in recess, Bacon has been spending much of his time meeting with ag and agribusiness representatives. His travels have taken him to communities including Norfolk, Columbus, Broken Bow, Chapman and Grand Island for tours and round table-type events.

Tuesday morning, he paid a visit to the Gottsch Feed Yard near Juniata.

He said he’s impressed with what he has learned and values the opportunity to hear multiple points of view on hot-button issues including trade policy, immigration, health care reform and the 2018 Farm Bill.

“It’s good to get a breadth,” he said. “It’s good to hear seven, eight, nine, 10 perspectives.”

At the moment, many of those perspectives come with a side of worry. Commodity prices and farm income have plummeted, which puts extra pressure on individual families and businesses and on entire rural communities.

Meanwhile, the change of administrations in Washington has created uncertainty about the country’s future direction on issues of importance to farmers, ranchers and those who work with them.

Bacon said one key message he has heard repeatedly involves the importance of international trade in lifting farm and ranch fortunes.

“We’ve got to open up doors, and we need a Secretary of Agriculture at the table to make that happen,” he said.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the top ag post, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate following a long delay in his submission of required ethics paperwork.

While Perdue touted the importance of trade in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Ag Committee, Trump has sent mixed messages on the subject, pulling the United States out of the proposed multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership and calling for renegotiation of the venerable North American Free Trade Agreement binding the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Bacon, for his part, sees the benefit of the trade agreements to his Nebraska constituents.

“NAFTA has actually been a huge boon to ag exports,” he said. “So if we want to renegotiate NAFTA we need to realize there’s a lot of goodness on the ag side.”

Agriculture is going to need a strong voice within the Trump administration to remind the president how the industry is affected by trade policy, Bacon said — and to push for pursuing bilateral trade deals as well as larger deals that are designed or redesigned to alleviate decision makers’ concerns for the manufacturing realm.

“I think we’re going to have to take the president at his word that he’s for bilateral agreements, and we’d better push that,” Bacon said.

The fast pace of events in Washington and around the world lately means Nebraska constituents have many issues on their minds right now, the congressman said. A gathering one day may be dominated by talk of health care, while discussion at a similar forum the following day may run to national security concerns.

Bacon said by and large, ag producers seem satisfied with a farm program that has subsidized crop insurance as a strong component, and probably would like a continuation of existing programs with some incremental modifications to address specific concerns.

He said he has heard from many in the ag sector about the importance of immigration reform.

“Our farmers and ranchers work with a lot of immigrants,” he said. “They want to make it easier for people to come here and work.”

In general, he said, Republicans in Washington tend to emphasize border security and visa program reform when thinking about immigration policy, whereas Democrats are concerned about what is to become of undocumented immigrants already in the country.

“My view is, Republicans and Democrats should be able to get together on this,” he said. “I think there’s a way to get them together and make this work.”

He said there’s “no doubt” more security is needed, but that he foresees employer enforcement and the “e-verify” system being more effective than a coast-to-coast border wall in addressing that need.

Reform in the health insurance system is another major concern for Nebraska constituents, Bacon said. While some provisions of the existing Affordable Care Act (often called Obamacare), such as assuring that patients with pre-existing conditions can buy affordable coverage, are good and should be preserved, he said, many customers — especially those who are buying health insurance coverage on the individual market — are being squashed by a combination of astronomical premiums and deductibles.

“It’s not uncommon for people to be paying $20,000, $30,000 in premiums with $10,000 or more in deductibles,” he said.

Bacon supported the “repeal-and-replace” bill called the American Health Care Act that Republicans offered in the House and then failed to pass in March.

He said better coordination on the health care issue is needed between factions within the Republican Party, but that he understands conservative members of the House GOP conference’s Freedom Caucus and moderate members of its Tuesday Group are making some headway in overcoming their divisions.

“You can’t be early enough in coordinating (on legislation),” Bacon said. “I think that’s my big takeaway as a freshman.”