No, Vilsack is clearly not "Change We Can Believe In."

We have a lot of work to do, and we can begin by correcting common misunderstandings among progressives and, as we see here, even the farm based organic community. (I write this as an organic transition farmer who confronted workshop presenters on similar federal policy matters at MOSES last year.)

First (here above in the article) "factory farms and junk food have been subsidized with billions of tax dollars" is false or at least crucially misleading, feeding into 2007-2008 progressive farm bill myths. The big subsidization does not occur with tax dollars but with below cost gains. If the quote refers to large farms, they're the ones who lost the most in the marketplace 1981-2006, and then received the largest partial compensations. So let's reverse course, folks, and stop endorsing this massive (below cost) de facto subsidization. Sustainable Agriculture groups, you weren't on board, (what since the 1980s?) on price floors and supply management, so you favored (by default) below cost feeds for livestock factories to take over the industry. See Tufts University's online report, "Industrial Livestock Companies’ Gains from Low Feed Prices, 1997-2005." Main farm commodities (except organic?) lack price responsiveness on both supply and demand sides (Daryl E. Ray, "It's Price Responsiveness!"). Let's all work together for sustainability. We organic farmers may need price floors too before long, and we'll surely face increased opposition from the agribusiness complex.

"The Secretary of Agriculture is responsible for ...." farm market price ranges, within limits, and that's his biggest responsibility by far in terms of monetary value. The world impact is surely in the multitrillions historically and when economic multipliers are figured in, multiply that again. But of course, responsibility for the public welfare has been rejected, as price floors were lowered 1953-1995 and ended 1996 (including the 2008 farm bill through 2011). US policy is to lose money on farm exports (except organic?). But look at the economic crisis. We've poured out enough wealth. Organic community, come on board! Get your orgs to recognize these issues, and not inadvertantly subsidize corporate agribusiness with support for these policies.

"Organic Consumers Association members have sent over 20,000 emails to President-Elect Obama’s Transition Team." Fine, but are they misinformed, as here? Are you sending false information? Or are you at least advocating for an end to the below cost gains we've had for a quarter century? I've yet to see any evidence you're on board on this, the mega issue of the farm bill and USDA, of sustainability and healthy food (below cost gains* for high fructose corn syrup and unhealthy soy). (*It's not subsidies that caused those low corn and soybean prices, see Tufts University, The Paradox of Agricultural Subsidies, p. 21, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, "A Fair Farm Bill for Public Health.")

Where's the organic beef?

Author Keith Akers, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), notes that by arguing against the killing of plants, the meat-eater "seeks to reduce vegetarianism to absurdity. If vegetarians object to killing living creatures (it is argued), then logically they should object to killing plants and insects as well as animals. But this is absurd. Therefore, it can’t be wrong to kill animals.

"Fruitarians take the argument concerning plants quite seriously; they do not eat any food which causes injury or death to either animals or plants. This means, in their view, a diet of those fruits, nuts and seeds which can be eaten without the destruction of the plant that produces the food.

"Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, is not particularly difficult. Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system. Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive. Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not."

In determining a boundary between sentient and insentient life, Peter Singer in Animal Liberation suggests that "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most."

Keith Akers states further, "Even if one does not want to become a fruitarian and believes that plants have feelings (against all evidence to the contrary), it does not follow that vegetarianism is absurd. We ought to destroy as few plants as possible. And by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animals we eat than if we merely ate the plants directly."

(Meat-eaters indirectly kill ten times more plants than do vegetarians!)

"What about insects?" asks Akers, "While there may be reason to kill insects, there is no reason to kill them for food. One distinguishes between the way meat animals are killed for food and the way insects are killed.

"Insects are killed only when they intrude upon human territory, posing a threat to the comfort, health, or well-being of humans. There is a huge difference between ridding oneself of intruders and going out of one's way to find and kill something which would otherwise be harmless."

According to Akers:

"These questions may have a certain fascination for philosophers, but most vegetarians are not bothered by them. For any vegetarian who is not a biological pacifist, there would not seem to be any particular difficulty in distinguishing ethically between insects and plants on the one hand, and animals and humans on the other."

I'd like to see a return to organic farming. In 1989, concern over the use of the pesticide Alar on apples caused many Americans to consider organic produce. We produce pesticides at a rate some 13,000 times faster than we did in the 1950s. Our environment is being flooded by pesticide compounds.

Poisons used to kill insects accumulate on crops, in the soil and in greater concentration in the tissues of living creatures higher on the food chain. The EPA's Pesticide Monitoring Journal reports that "Foods of animal origin (are) the major source of pesticide residues in the diet."

In his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, How to Survive in America the Poisoned, pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein writes: "Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than do plant foods...Thus, by eating foods of animal origin, one ingests greatly concentrated amounts of hazardous chemicals."

A 1976 study by the EPA found the breast milk of mothers who consume animal products to be 50 to 100 times more contaminated by pesticide residues than the milk of vegetarian or vegan mothers.

Organic farming and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are getting more attention today. These utilize natural insect controls, such as predatory insects, weather, crop rotation, pest-resistant varieties, soil tillage, and other environmentally safe practices.

A 1979 Department of Agriculture task force of scientists and economists came to "...positive conclusions on the importance of organic farming and its potential contributions to agriculture and society." Until the end of the Second World War, American farmers produced bountiful harvests without relying on pesticides. There is no reason why America cannot do so again.

He's probably against Industrial Hemp as well, the Holy Plant that could save all of us and the planet as well.

I live in Iowa, I can say without the slightest bit of regret Vilsack is not what we need as the head of the Department of Agriculture. I have letters from his office that sound like Monsanto had schooled him to perfection with there mantra of genetic engineered crops are good for you and will save the world from starvation. Both of these principles have proven to be absolutely incorrect. I attempted to point out to then Governor Vilsack, the falliacy concerning the safety issues when considering cross pollination with other non-genetically engineered crops. What if they don't do enough testing to insure safety of food crops and a terminator gene is accidentally released? Are we prepared to feed the world without corn, beans or other main stream crops? With all the knowledge of hybrid corn accumulated since the 1930's we came within a hairs breath of the complete destruction of the North American corn crop in 1968. One commonly used corn variety had a problem with corn blight. The early varieties showed signs of the problem in the south and the seed was changed in time to prevent a total failure of the crop. This happened even though we had forty years of trials and experiments with hybrid corn crops, what is the likelyhood we would even see a problem in genetically engineered seed before it would be to late? The addition of genetic material into corn, such as BT, a naturally derived and organic substance used to prevent potato bugs in potato crops, has proved to be an example of yet another application of poor judgement. BT is the only non-chemical way of effectively treating potatoes for potato bugs. It is only used when there is a problem and because it is used only then, the potato bug has not created a resistance to BT. With every crop of corn genetically engineered you will find BT has been included in that engineering. Early trials at Iowa State found genetically altered seed corn "safe" and the only mention of any "problem" was monarch butterflies seemed to die when they ate the pollen of these corn varities that included the BT genetic material. Interesting how this wasn't found to be very important at the time. And what about the potato bug? With thousands of acres of corn and all those innoculated corn stocks could it be possible the potato bug could eventually create a super bug that will be resistant to BT? Mother nature usually gives you some alternatives, but with human engineers involved the end result maybe the end of food crops as we have known them for a millenia.
I believe Vilsack should stick to being the lawyer he is, and leave farming to real farmers who aren't interested in these industial strength corporate factory ideas of food production.

Time to Sack Vilsack!

Sign the petition at: www.stopvilsack.org