The video of Obama and comment that he made to Time Magazine are impressive; I don't think I've seen any coverage of his stance on food. I suppose that makes some sense, though, considering that the economy and war have gotten all the press attention. He does seem to see the two as linked, which they are of course.

All this makes a lot of sense, though I wonder about Obama's real ability to enact meaningful change.

Does anyone have thoughts on who SHOULD be secretary of agriculture, and what they can really accomplish?

Would putting pressure on the transition team help? They are surely being heavily lobbied by the meat industry...

The article where the meat industry person says they'll go out of business if they have to pay a tiny bit for their air pollution is a hoot. That's just one of the many reasons I'm a vegetarian--government reform is excellent, but the personal is political, so I think that people who care about these issues shouldn't support the meat industry.

If Obama avoids the men mentioned then great, if not it shows he is smart but not much of a leader.
The meat and dairy industries are a plague. Whether its destruction of rain forest, rivers, wildlife, incubation of disease(sars, influenza).
It taste good just isnt much of a counter argument.

But unless ecological phonies like Al Gore and corporate green groups start to talk about it, I dont expect it to get much traction.

The following quotes, facts, figures and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The world Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

The following quotes, facts, figures and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers. Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals. Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals. The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke. Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.

Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer. A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer. A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wrs of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country. They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

Great article. The issue of inherent cruelty in industrial farming practices is an important one and needs more discussion. There is a huge grassroots effort to address cruelty in the meat industry and the fact that meat, dairy and eggs are not only murder on animals but murder on the people who eat it and later develop cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.... Obama should recognize this as the immense and pervasive problem that it is. I would particularly like to see health insurance rewards for those who maintain what health groups generally agree is the ideal diet for health--one that is free of meat and other animal products.

Sooners Fan:
Yes,I do have an idea who Obama should choose as Sec. of Agriculture.Not a specific name,but one who fits these criteria.Never been a politician nor a federal employee.A small farmer who used to farm animals but is now growing organic vegetables.A Native-American.
Issues of food and especially increasing hunger have a strong spiritual element,if Obama chooses not to have a Native American head up BIA,at least such a voice would be in his Cabinet.

"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating." ---Chrissie Hynde

Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle." Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

There is no correlation between land density and hunger. China has twice as many people per cultivated acre as India, yet less of a hunger problem. Bangladesh has just one-half the people per cultivated acre that Taiwan has, yet Taiwan has no starvation, while Bangladesh has one of the highest rates in the world. The most densely populated countries in the world today are not India and Bangladesh, but Holland and Japan.

Many of us believe that hunger exists because there's not enough food to go around. But as Frances Moore Lappe' and her anti-hunger organization Food First! have shown, the real cause of hunger is a scarcity of justice, not a scarcity of food.

I'm sorry but this article is just plain dumb. Agribusiness not allowing Congress to create sane food policies is just plain shit talk. Being vegetarian doesn't mean you're any healthier. I've seen plenty of obese vegetarians so you can't blame meat. All government has to do is stop overfunding agribusiness with our taxpayer dollars and get rid of that "Freedom to Farm" Act of 1996 and give family farms a chance ! Besides, this article fails to mention that it was the US and the UN that allowed agribusiness to wipe out the family farms and they're still blaming them for all the mad cow diseases while agribusiness is free to poison the public with its over processed shit. Government has no right to take away my guns or meat ! And quit leaving men out. Yes, women and children are suffering but so too are the men. I left the conservatives not to be written off like this. The next time I hear another article about poverty, can we please stop focusing exclusively on women and children and include the men as well? They too work hard as hell despite getting ripped off. Besides, women have a longer life span than men and when a man dies, his wife still lives the rest of her life trapped in grief and loneliness. Stop excluding men and then less men will vote Republican for a change.

Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho

My 6th graders and I have started up a Google Group entitled, "Safe Food in Schools" and would like to cordially invite you to put a thought or two on our site to encourage debate over this issue. One of the kids wrote an email to Dennis Barrett, the Food Director for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and he started out the letter stating, "Dear Mr. Barrett, This is a matter of great importance. Children's lives are at stake." And this is a child who does not turn in a lot of his work. He is taking the matter seriously, particularly after reading a presentation to Congress by Wayne Pacelle, the Director of the Humane Society, who blasts the USDA for not doing their job. It is great to see the "non-gifted" kids rise to the challenge and write some very engaging letters to professionals.

The kids are writing problem/solution emails and essays around the meat recall in February. It still confounds me that it took a member from the Humane Society to reveal the processing of sick cows, right under the noses of the USDA. 143,000,000 million pounds of beef were recalled. Startling the more you think about it.

I am at a free-and-reduced lunch school (I think around 90%. CA avg. 40%), and they stopped serving beef for a month. Mr. Brewer, our Supt., wrote a letter stating that beef products would be returned to the menu after everything had been cleared up, and assured families that the food is safe. How does he know? And why is it so important to assure the families that beef would return to the menu?

Julie Korenstein, an LAUSD Board Member, asks Dennis Barrett, the Food Director, about the issue, and he responds by saying, "you have to faith in the system" to which she replies, "I don't." The kids seem very intrigued by this discussion.

Ms. Korenstein has responded to our students. Neither Mr. Schafer (head of USDA) nor Mr. Barrett have responded to the students. It has been a week.

I have emailed Calif. Congressman Miller who has been instrumental in bringing this issue to the fore. Not sure where the issue has gone though. I have emailed to find out. He has yet to respond.

I invited Dr. Greger from the Humane Society on board, and Mr. Hecht, Executive Director of Ca. Food Policy Advocates as well. Mr. Hecht just wrote saying that he was encouraged by this effort.

Contact these people to help us change our policies in our country, our "children's lives are at stake" according to one of my students.

These kids deserve better, more nutritious and safe food. They are served the worst of the worst, and with budget cuts it is going to get worse. Mr. Hecht, at one point, mentions that the cafeteria food is becoming more like fast food to get the kids to buy it and eat it.

Disclosure: For those concerned, yes, I am doing my best to separate my teaching in the class and being an activist outside the classroom.

Good article. Thanks. I posted it at my permaculture garden group.

I don't, however, agree with the negative comments about milk and cheese. Milk is an excellent food, and those concerned about cholesterol (I'm not) can use lo-fat milk. Furthermore, I went to the WIC site and found that they do offer a Farmer's Market fresh fruit and vegetables option -- though I'd guess that many, if not most, are unable to take advantage of it. Here is the site:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/FMNP/FMNPfaqs.htm

Regarding meat... While I find it admirable that some choose to not eat meat, properly raised animals are both nutritous and do not harm the invironment. I have rabbits and chickens and I don't know what I'd do without their nutritious droppings that help my organic garden to grow. To my way of thinking, we do not all need to become vegetarians, but we do need to grow our own food and what we can't grow ourself, we need to purchase locally from farmers that use humane, organic methods. That means, for instance, cows that are out in a field eating grass, the way they were meant to.

I hope everyone plans to host or attend a 'Yes We Can' meeting this month. We know that change will not come from the top down, but must start at a grassroots level. Barack Obama has challanged us to speak out about what we feel needs to change. We need to be the change we want. Plant a garden, buy local organic food, and meet up with others in your neighborhood to work to get rid of agribusiness -- you can be sure they are meeting up with their lobbyist and lawyer "friends".

Here is the 'Yes We Can' meeting site: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/changeiscoming/

And here is the story of what happened to the family farm:
THE MEATRIX: http://www.themeatrix.com/

Aside from food we're talking about a relationship with growing on the earth. These images are part of what exists, are realities, stories of lives with the earth... some live for this sort of life

Haying
…gloved jerk and balance of the bale, sweet alfalfa perfectly heated dry by the sun, compressed at the stomach and sprung arc cast onto to wagon. Deep inhalation with every cell, every pore sweetened in the joyous work. Hundreds of more times walking into and through the winter to come. Snorts of wintering horses rythmically grinding, chewing the sun of the past, warming themselves through to the spring…

Tolstoy
…when the green oats, interspersed with tufts of yellow grass, droop irregularly over the late sown fields; when the early buckwheat spreads out and hides the ground; …when the fields smell night and morning of dried heaps of manure mingled with honeyed perfume of the grasses; and the lowland meadows , waiting for the sythe, stretch vigilant as the sea, with here and there blackening heaps of weeded sorrel-stalks…

"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk. (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

Here's a clue folks. The vegan netwar on meat eating has to stop. I get that these are the only forums where you can pretend a majority but simply attacking meat eating entirely does nothing to improve farm animal conditions or return small-farm and small processor resiliance to the food supply system.

All it does is piss people off. I'm eating meat if I have to trap pigeons and that's that. Vegan diets just don't cut it for me or for the majority of other people.

Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!

With the economy going into deep recession or even a depression, you left wingers look like idiots whining about meat eaters, non-organic food and GMOs. I had a smile on my face when I read a recent story that over-priced organic stores are losing customers at a huge rate.

Perhaps you idealist leftists need to learn about real people and their real struggles. Please run into a food shelf and yell at people that they need to eat organic and no meat. Do it please, right now. Idealism means idealism, right? Food shelf users must not be allowed to eat meat, right?

The struggle of the unemployed is to just feed their familes...period. They don't give a shirrt about your left wing purist views on food. Get it? Are you leftists that stupid?

Any food policy/secretary of agriculture article needs to address the core issue of the farm bill. This one, and its sources, do not.

The core issue is the megamoney, megapower. We see agribusiness, but the farm bill's (farm program's) big money and power is not identified: impacts on commodity grain prices. This is bigger than subsidies and the nutrition title combined. Historically the impact is trillions. The mechanisms involved are price floors with supply management on the bottom side and price ceilings with commodity grain reserves on the top side. U.S. policy has been to lower (1953-1995) and eliminate (1996-2011?) price floors. The National Family Farm Coalition and it's member groups are the progressive leaders on this issue, (nffc dot net,) with their Food from Family Farms Act.

This is the single mega factor behind industrial livestock worldwide. I find no reference to it at PETA's site, nor in the recommendations of the "two extensive reports," nor in the Obama video, nor in the Obama interview, nor in the comments. (The two reports provide some important information, but miss this, the dominating issue.)

Ok, the Union of Concerned Scientists recommends: "Replacement of farm bill commodity crop subsidies with subsidies that strengthen conservation programs...," which covertly means maintaining zero price floors and therefore the biggest factory farm subsidization, below cost grain prices. It does far more harm than good. UCS continues "... and support prices when supplies are high (rather than allowing prices to fall below the cost of production)," which is good, it's what price floors do, but it is not what subsidies do, as in the first part of that quote.

The Meatrix links to some good sources (IATP, Food and Water Watch) and some bad ones like Environmental Working Group, which totally fails to understand that price floors, not subsidies, are the culprit for the various harms (ie. environment, nutrition, world hunger, animal factories) attributed to subsidies. Meatrix is weak on the core issue, letting agribusiness off the hook and not informing activists about the dominant issue.

For Secretary of Agriculture we need someone from the National Family Farm Coalition, perhaps Mark Ritchie (formerly of IATP). Michael Pollen is weak on the farm side of the issues, which soft sells half the argument. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack wrote nuisance lawsuit protection legislation for livestock factories.

Comments! Vasumurti (below) wrote 4,000 words! (Elsewhere 8000 words!) Freud: "some unconscious doubt!" There's a whole pile of sources, but how can we peer review such verbiage in 1000 words or less. On areas I've studied vasumurti's arguments are one sided, as much as Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. This really weakens the progressive argument. They throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hog factories are bad therefore all hog raising is bad, etc. for 4,000 words. For most issues there is no hint of the case against what is said, to then be rebutted. It screams for peer review.

A person could argue (less one-sidedly) that vegetarianism is in cahoots with the agribusiness complex because it promotes a high carb (cheap food) diet filled with more harmful vegetable fats. It would run farmers out of business world wide as they lose the value added of livestock, causing massive poverty, hunger and starvation as economic multipliers crumble, and also destroying the global environment as fragile pastures and hilly hay ground are plowed up to make way for vegetarian foods, and free nitrogen fertilization from legumes (clover, alfalfa, etc. in livestock based and more diversified crop rotations) are replaced with mono-row-crops. Meanwhile our world's health is damaged as the downside of vegetarian diets kicks in (lack of fat soluble vitamins, and other health benefits from nutrient dense animal foods, see the Weston Price Foundation). So then it's all part of the agribusiness complex's (ie. soy and other bad fats) unscientific attack on saturated fats (Mary Enig and WPF on McGovern Committee). Meanwhile, the problem now and pretty much all along is oversupply of food, (the price of corn and most program commodities has fallen to less than half of peak prices, to below cost, so we're dumping on LDCs and subsidizing corn processors again,). Without livestock consumption grain prices would tank, killing LDC economies world wide.

Much of what I’ve added tot his discussion is apparent from a farmer’s point of view. Humane, sustainable family farmers are leaders, taking a balanced, sustainable view. Denny Caneff’s “Sustaining Land, People, Animals and Communities: The Case for Livestock in a Sustainable Agriculture” is excellent. On Jeremy Rifkin's Beyond Beef, see various excellent rebuttals: “Beyond Rifkin” in Caneff, Fred Kirschenmann’s “Cattle Culture: A Rancher and a Vegetarian Square Off,” David Ostendorf’s “Livestock Concentration: Real Issues for Real People," and Larry Kreil’s “Turning the Ark.”

For decades farmers have worked closely through the Humane Society of the United States (excellent booklets), the Animal Welfare Institute, and the Humane Farming Association on animal husbandry issues. They’ve set up husbandry standards and labels and got them into organic certification. They’re broadening and strengthening progressivism. In contrast, PETA and others have enabled conservatives to label opponents as anti-meat, as wanting to destroy the heart of value added farming nationwide and world wide, while offering no viable economic alternatives (as none have been offered here). Economy, ecology, community, nutrition: each argument is conceded by default via dogmatism

I would love to see the reaction of food shelf users if a left winger who posts on CD were to run into a food shelf and yell this:

"You unemployed people need to stop eating that stuff. It was made by the meat-loving, GMO-growing, corporatist agribusiness supporters of Obama!!"

The reaction would be priceless.

It would also show how far away the today's "progressives" have moved from the days of FDR and the needs real people.

Possible new Sect. of Ag?

http://nymag.com/daily/food/2008/12/can_foodies_really_choose_a_se.html

Can the Guy From Stone Barns Be Secretary of Agriculture?

Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Dan Barber, and 80 other food luminaries sent Barack Obama a letter today with several suggestions for a sustainably minded secretary of Agriculture. Fred Kirschenmann, the president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, made the short list. The food at Stone Barns is fantastic, but it's expensive and not accessible to much of the population. So what does a guy who produces food for an upscale restaurant know about being a secretary of Agriculture? We did some research, and here's what we found.

He's a farmer. In addition to his work at Stone Barns, Kirschenmann oversees a 3,500-acre organic farm in Windsor, North Dakota. The land has been farmed by his family since 1930.

He's a scholar. Kirschenmann is a distinguished fellow and former director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Architecture. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and is a professor at Iowa State University.

He's familiar with the Feds. He's already served on the USDA's National Organic Standards Board and the National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. In an interview with Grist Magazine last October, Kirschenmann talked up the federal "Community Food Security Grant program. On a competitive basis, communities can come up with their own creative solutions to solving [local] food security problems and apply for small amounts of money to help solve them."

He's not cult-champion Pollan, but it's a start!

Sorry, this is good too:

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/foodies-make-a-pitch-to-obama/

A Pitch to Obama on Food and Farming
By Kim Severson

The fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has yet to be named has some chefs, farmers and animal welfare advocates wondering whether food and farming have been shoved to the Obama D team.

To help move the process along, nearly 90 notable figures in the world of sustainable agriculture and food sent a letter to the Obama transition team earlier this week offering their six top picks for what they called “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.”

The hope is that the new secretary will be less aligned with industrial agribusiness and commodity farming than secretaries past. And if he or she embraces the connection between food, health and the environment, well, that’s all the better.

The letter lays out a tall order:

“From rising childhood and adult obesity to issues of food safety, global warming and air and water pollution, we believe our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a vision that calls for: recreating regional food systems, supporting the growth of humane, natural and organic farms, and protecting the environment, biodiversity and the health of our children while implementing policies that place conservation, soil health, animal welfare and worker’s rights as well as sustainable renewable energy near the top of their agenda.”

It was signed by 88 people, among them: Michael Pollan, Judy Wicks, Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser, Anna Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Paul Willis, Dan Barber, Michel Nischan, Ann Cooper, Marion Nestle, Peter Hoffman, Winona LaDuke, and Michael Dimock.

For those playing along at home, here’s their list of the six top picks for Secretary of Agriculture. Keep in mind that yesterday, Rep. John Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, a potato farmer, said he was being considered. (And no, the effort to nominate Michael Pollan never got off the ground):

Gus Schumacher, former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.

Chuck Hassebrook, executive director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, Neb.

Sarah Vogel, former Commissioner of Agriculture for North Dakota, lawyer, Bismarck, N.D.

Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.

Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Neil Hamilton, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and director of the Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

It makes sense to eat lower on the food chain.

Significant environmental damage results from livestock agriculture, often driving many other species into extinction. The existence of dodo birds was first recorded in the early 1500s by Portuguese Sailors. The dodo, which weighed about 50 pounds, was incapable of defending itself and could not flee from its enemies, since it lacked the ability to fly. Large numbers of these birds were killed by human beings for food. Additionally, pigs that were brought to the islands destroyed a significant portion of the dodos' eggs, creating a severe decline in the dodo population. The species became extinct by the 18th century.

The Steller's sea cow once inhabited the coastal waters of the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. Russian Sealers, who were the first to record the existence of these creatures in 1741, estimated the entire population to be about 5,000. Their meat was considered a delicacy by Russian sealers, who decimated the entire species by 1768.

The Labrador duck has been extinct since 1875. This species formerly inhabited the coastal regions of northeastern Canada. The extinction of the passenger pigeon was caused by the American westward expansion in the second half of the 19th century. As passenger pigeons became a popular food item, the numbers of this species rapidly diminished. Millions were slaughtered each year and shipped by railway cars to be sold in city markets. Another bird to become extinct because of its use as food was the heath hen, which became extinct about 1932.

The pacific sardine lives along the coasts of North America from Alaska to southern California. Sardines, once a major part of the California fishing industry, are now considered to be "commercially extinct." Another species classified as "commercially extinct" is the New England haddock. Ecologists have also been concerned about the significant reduction in finfish, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Lake Erie cisco, and blackfins that inhabit Lakes Huron and Michigan.

More than 200,000 porpoises are killed every year by fishermen seeking tuna in the Pacific. Sea turtles are similarly killed in Caribbean shrimp operations. Some animals are killed because, as carnivores, they compete with the human predator for the right to kill other animals for food, including wild game and domesticated species raised by livestock ranchers. Alaskan hunters are eager to reduce the wolf population in their state because this animal is a predator of moose.

Cougars, coyotes and wolves are considered a menace to the cattle and sheep industries, and livestock ranchers have engaged in a large-scale campaign to exterminate them. Two species of wolves are now endangered, and very few wolves can be found in the United States except in Alaska and northeastern Minnesota. The relatively small number of eagles in the U.S. is largely due to the destruction of this species by livestock ranchers, particularly those in the sheep business.

Herbivorous animals that inhabit rangeland areas are also killed by the livestock industry because they compete with cattle arid sheep for food. Large numbers of kangaroos are being exterminated in Australia, while in the United States livestock ranchers seek to destroy wild horses, wild burros, deer, elk, antelope and prairie dogs.

An ever-increasing amount of beef eaten in the United States is imported from Central and South America. To provide pasture for cattle, these countries have been clearing their priceless tropical rainforests. In 1960, when the U. S. first began to import beef, Central America was blessed with 130,000 square miles of rainforest. But now, less than 80,000 square miles remain. At this rate, the entire tropical rainforests of Central America will be gone in another forty years.

These tropical rainforests are among the world's most precious natural resources. Amounting to only 30 percent of the world's forests, the rainforests contain 80 percent of the earth's land vegetation, and account for a substantial percentage of the earth's oxygen supplies. These forests are the oldest ecosystems on earth and have developed extreme ecological richness. Half of all species on earth live in the moist tropical rainforests. But these jewels of nature are being rapidly destroyed to provide land on which cattle can be grazed for the American fast-food market.

The current rate of species extinction is 1,000 species a year, and most of that is due to the destruction of rainforests and related habitats in the tropics.

It is good that "nearly 90 notable figures" are speaking out on Secretary of Agriculture from a sustainable agriculture perspective, but it's a mixed bag.

There is ONE or GLARING SHORTCOMING in the quotation from SoonersFa: "a vision that calls for:" well, it EXcludes world trade and hunger issues. This is inexcusable in light of the global food crisis and our decades of dumping, destroying the rural and national economies of LDCs around the globe.

And note this: this is the same shortcoming found in the 2007-2008 policy proposals of major progressive U.S. coalitions (National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture [2008 priorities page], Sustainable Agriculture Coalition ["NO TIME FOR DELAY"], Food and Farm Policy Project [Seeking Balance - Recommendations). They're excellent on the issues listed, no problem, just not on the big stuff.

Ok, as far as Secretary of Agriculture, the key world/hunger/trade issue is the impact of the Commodity Title on price. This is the mega issue, multitrillions in impact historically. It's world impact is bigger than the other farm bill titles combined, including the nutrition title. We need price floors with supply management and price ceilings with strategic grain reserves, in the farm bill and rooted in international agreements (ie. world participation in supply management, as called for by the Africa Group and formerly by the EU). The National Family Farm Coalition is the clear U.S. leader on these issues, no other progressive US coalition compares. These other coalitions were on the wrong side of it, pro dumping (green subsidies and subsidy caps), not full replacement of subsidies with price floors. As Food First put it, quoting NFFC's George Naylor, "Let them pay the subsidies," (Cargill, ADM, Tyson, Smithfield, Kelloggs). But also Europe, Russia, China, Korea, Japan. We've subsidized them too long. Making a U.S. profit on farm exports IS winnable, but it takes guts and MLK quality leadership ("Letter from Birmingham Jail," "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue").

Understand: this I've described is the mega money and power. The Secretary of agriculture must be someone honed in the biggest fight against corporate power, the issues of price floors in the commodity title (1953-2008). As I've repeatedly posted at Common Dreams, commodity subsidies are about a 3% impact issue, much smaller, indirect and subsidiary. The call (of much of) the progressive community) for reducing and eliminating subsidies with NO accompanying price floors, as though "commodity growers" (David Beckmann & Moyers on Bill Moyers Journal) are the dominant agribusiness exploiters is absurdly false. Farmers lose money vs full costs and get subsidies as compensation, usually only partial compensation. No, it's the unmentioned below cost gainers (Cargill, ADM et al)

Ok, Mark Ritchie, formerly of IATP (excellent group) is on the list. He would be excellent all around. Next, perhaps, Sarah Vogel. Fred Kirschenmann and Chuck Hassebrook would be great for undersecretary this or that, but not for the Commodity Programs or the top job. They both understand farming much better than Pollan, which is essential if you want to survive and win. Hassebrook in particular has been pro dumping (one of the most vigorous opponents to price floors anywhere in the progressive community). Hey, it makes no sense to try to fund sustainability off the de facto (below cost grains) subsidization of unsustainable animal factories, in direct competition against farmers seeking sustainability.

Ok, a final point of explanation. Farm commodities lack price responsiveness on both supply and demand sides. (See "Daryll E. Ray" on "price responsiveness.") That's why price floors are required. But get this, that doesn't apply to organic farming. The organic market has grown by 20% per year for, what, two decades? They haven't needed the commodity title. But they were also shortchanged by the commodity title and they're justifiably mad at it. Many of them tell the program where to stick it. But in fact, as the organic market grows, they may need price floors too. But most of their leaders have no experience with this, the biggest fight against corporate agribusiness in all of U.S. farm politics.

Organic is becoming cheaper to produce because it uses less fossil fuel (and see organic no till!) and is smarter. See costs at Iowa State University for 2006, organic corn beats regular corn even without premiums, (perhaps, it's hard to compare). As fossil fuels become scarce organic may take over, and need price floors.

Again, farmers are VERY independent and hard to mobilize. But organic farmers who dropped out and did it on their own are even MORE independent. They're not the best ones to lead on the top farm program justice issues (but again, great for various undersecretaries). They haven't been honed by the mega fight against corporate power. We've lost on price floors for 55 years. It's good to have groups working on alternatives (sustainable value added, local marketing). But we must see the big picture, including world food justice, which requires price floors and ceilings, supply management and reserves, See the Food from Family Farms Act at nffc dot net.

Mark Ritchie, YES! (But where is the progressive movement that really knows anything about the mega issues of the farm bill to support someone great like him? We aren't ready, so Obama would be a fool to select Ritchie and have the agribusiness brown "lagoons" hit the beltway mega fan. But we must be ready to get all we can!)