McCain Faults Obama’s (Pollan) Comments on Farming

For those of you who have yet to notice, I am a big fan of Michael Pollan. I get that some of his notions are a bit airy-fairy idealist, but I thought his Dear Mr. President-Elect open letter to the next Farmer in Chief was brilliant.

In it he deftly points out the links between farm policy and the three main issues of our day — health care, energy independence and climate change. So I was thrilled to see him quoted by Obama in an interview with Joe Klein in Time.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find that McCain faults him for it:

Sen. Barack Obama’s comments linking modern agricultural practices to obesity, global warming and high health care costs drew condemnation from Sen. John McCain’s campaign on Friday. …

Obama told Time: “As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector … and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they’re contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs.”

In a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called it “ludicrous to blame farmers for obesity and pollution.”

Said Grassley: “It shows that Sen. Obama doesn’t have a very good foundation in American agriculture. And people in agriculture need to know that if Sen. Obama is going to get his ideas on agriculture from a professor at Cal-Berkeley, they should think twice about what they are voting for.”

Of course Grassley, who has kept his farmer constituents happy by ensuring the continuation of their Farm Bill handouts, would play to base emotions by demonizing Berkley. It would have been more interesting if he cited some facts to back up the complaint.

Tom Webb, the McClatchy reporter who wrote the story, made a point of citing this very interesting fact:

Obama, of Illinois, has a history of supporting federal farm programs and ethanol subsidies. McCain, of Arizona, has previously condemned ethanol subsidies and earlier suggested he would eliminate many farm programs.

For his part Michael Pollan says it’s mistaken to think of food as a left or liberal movement:

There is a ground swell on the right also. There are many, many people who are trying to take back control of their family dinner from the fast-food companies. There are evangelicals who are very interested in this food movement. And that you can understand it, I mean, restore – you know, what is a more traditional value than sitting down to a dinner with your family, and not going to McDonald’s? I mean, this is the culinary equivalent of home schooling.