The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Tom Vilsack to head the Department of Agriculture, returning the former Iowa governor to the job he held under ex-President Barack Obama. The 100-member Senate approved Vilsack 92-7. He needed a simple majority in the Democratic-controlled chamber to be confirmed. As secretary of the sprawling department, Vilsack will oversee about 100,000 employees responsible for food stamps, crop insurance, land conservation and other missions at a time U.S. farmers are benefiting from high soybean and corn prices but hunger is on the rise throughout America. Vilsack has said the White House wants to tap a pool of funds from the agency’s Commodity Credit Corporation to support on-the-farm efforts to fight climate change, a policy priority for President Joe Biden. The Depression-era program of up to $30 billion in annual funding was tapped by the Trump administration to distribute billions of dollars in aid to cover …