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Published on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by The Nation

Obama's Farm and Food Appointment

by John Nichols

The most telling Cabinet pick that Barack Obama will make -- and from a long-term standpoint perhaps the most meaningful one -- is not his selection for secretary of State, secretary of Defense, Treasury secretary or attorney general. Obama, constrained by circumstance and the demands of official Washington, has filled those positions with predictable players from the usual D.C.-insider lists.

The pick that will give us the most insight into where Obama will lead the country could well be the one he makes in coming days for the most misunderstood position in the Cabinet: secretary of Agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture is, to be sure, misnamed. Ever since Abraham Lincoln evolved what had been a subdivision of the Patent Office and then a section of the Department of the Interior into an independent federal agency that the 16th president referred to as "the people's department," the department has been about much more than just farming. And that is only more so today, as the agency deals with everything from food safety and the spread of organic farming to buy-local food initiatives, rural development, food and nutrition programs in urban areas, and overseas aid.

The USDA is a key player when it comes to energy policy, both because of the rise of biofuels and because of the increasingly adventurous grant-making by its Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvements Program.

The USDA's Forest Service administers almost 300,000 square miles of national forests and grasslands.

The secretary of Agriculture is, as well, often a definitional player in trade debates -- as the question of how the United States supports farmers remains an essential one when it comes to forging trade agreements and engagement with the World Trade Organization.

With a $97 billion annual budget and roughly 110,000 employees -- more than the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Energy combined -- it is one of the largest non-defense agencies in the federal government. And its hand is everywhere, with thousands of county extension offices spread across every state.

Bill Clinton and George Bush made what might best be described as "hack" appointments to the Department of Agriculture, naming political pals with limited real-world experience in contemporary farm and food debates. In Bush's administration, in particular, the job of the secretary of Agriculture has been to promote the agenda of corporate agribusiness with regard to trade policy and the lowering of food safety standards. As such, there is a lot of repair work to be done.

The question is whether Obama will nominate someone who is ready to do the work.

Most of the early speculation regarding the Agriculture secretary nomination focused on former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who was briefly a contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nod before dropping out to back first Hillary Clinton and, finally, Obama.

Vilsack is a capable administrator with the right partisan credentials.

But he was only at the top of the list of Agriculture secretary prospects because he is a prominent Democrat who comes from what Washington insiders know as a "farm state." As governor of Iowa, Vilsack had to engage with farm issues. But that embrace was anything but inspired. Family farm activists, fair-trade campaigners and advocates for organic foods were regularly disappointed by the stands he took. The Organic Consumers Association was blunt, declaring: "Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto."

Reviews like that one led Obama's transition team, and Vilsack himself, to recognize that the Iowan was not the right choice.

Obama can do better, much better.

Some activists have suggested a radical break with recent Agriculture Department appointments. They'd like to see Obama select a genuine change agent: writer Michael Pollan, whose books -- "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" -- have reframed the debate about food production, food safety and eating. Pollan would be a bold choice, somewhat like Franklin Roosevelt's selection of Henry Wallace as his Depression-era secretary of Agriculture. But the author admits he's an unlikely pick.

More likely -- and still quite appealing -- is the prospect that Obama might turn to Tom Buis, the president of the National Farmers Union, who was an early and wise counselor for the president-elect. Buis, an Indiana farmer who has also served as an aide to top Democrats in the Senate, has over the past several years been in the thick of every major debate about farm and food policy. He knows the issues and, for the most part, he has been on the right side of them, although critics of ethanol initiatives will find fault with his advocacy on that front.

Unlike the Farm Bureau, a conservative grouping that has historically aligned with corporate agribusiness interests and Wall Street, the Farmers Union has for a century represented working farmers and Main Street. In recent years, Buis and the NFU have emerged as a key player in advancing fresh thinking about farm and food issues: supporting the development of organic farming, backing the development of farmers' markets and local food programs, promoting country-of-origin labeling and other food safety initiatives, and battling the commodities speculators that have driven up global food prices.

Emblematic of the broader view taken by Buis and the NFU is the group's embrace of fair-trade thinking; the NFU was the first of the major farm groups to recognize that free-trade agreements such as NAFTA have failed working farmers in both the United States and the rest of the world.

There are, to be sure, other prospects for secretary of Agriculture. Obama could take the easy, and uninspired, route of selecting a key player in Congress, such as House Agriculture Committee Chair Colin Peterson, D-Minn., or Congressman John Salazar, a potato farmer from Colorado. The president-elect would be wiser to turn to a sharp state official, such as Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Rod Nilsestuen of North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture Roger Johnson. Even more impressive would be former North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture Sarah Vogel, an always-ahead-of-the-curve advocate for food safety and fair trade. The same goes for Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former policy analyst in Minnesota's Department of Agriculture who co-founded and for many years led the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Vogel, Ritchie and Buis are different players with different strengths. But each has a record of commitment to approaching farm and food issues from the perspective of those who grow and eat this nation's bounty -- as opposed to the agribusiness conglomerates and speculators that profiteer off America's and the world's fields of plenty.

© 2008 The Nation

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy - from The New Press. Nichols' latest book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.

 

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