The Corn Machine: Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary?
CQ says former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has emerged as the frontrunner for Agriculture secretary in the Obama administration. Ezra Klein speaks to dashed hopes:
Anyone who cares about food policy, or who was excited by Barack Obama’s offhand reference to Michael Pollan’s food policy manifesto [that's me], should be extremely skeptical of this pick. [I am!] Iowa, of course, is a corn state. For the last 14 years, they’ve been the leading corn producer in the nation. In 2006, they grew almost 2.1 billion bushels. But they don’t just grow corn. They also demand subsidies. And they get them. Tens of billions of dollars of them. And corn subsidies are far and away the worst of our food policy abominations — they make processed food cheaper, meat cheaper, sweeteners cheaper, and create a market for ethanol that would not naturally exist. They endure, in part, because of a quirk in our political system. The power of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential Caucus is used to force candidates to swear fealty to ethanol and corn subsidies. This bit of civically disguised blackmail has become so routine that the West Wing did an episode on it. But it’s one thing to make promises during campaigns. Putting a former governor of Iowa in charge of the Department of Agriculture, however, seems like a solemn oath that the subsidies will continue far into the future.
3 Responses to “The Corn Machine: Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary?”
Joe, are you really a fan of Pollan's “food policy” agenda? It's outside the mainstream, to say the least.
While I don't want anyone pushing for ethanol subsidies, someone from Iowa, probably the #1 ag state, is most qualified to run the Ag Department (I don't see why we should have such a federal department, which is the most fundamental issue here), unless you look to California, a #1 state for ages agriculturally as well as economically and politically. There's no reason to feel “unethical” about “diversion” of extra cropland dedicated to ethanol, “from” food production, nor should we begin to have any Ag officials or any other officials trying to tell us what we should or should not consume as food. There should not be a federal “food policy” (nor state government policy) of any kind.
Interested readers can read Pollan's open letter to Obama here.
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/content/view/125…
What you'll encounter there is dreamy, wishful activist thinking, or what some, such as James Lovelock, have described as luxurious indulgences by largely city-residing affluent liberals, who largely are out of touch with the real world and agriculture, who wish to engage in indulgences that make them feel good, or even smug, or address diseased agitations they have, but which, again, are much disconnected from the real world. (Not just wrong-headed “greenness” but the kind of excessively-costly “localism” and other things that only the highly developed world can afford to waste money on, as a rule.) Lovelock identifies true problems with “industrial agriculture” (such as in his own UK, which became industrially agricultural after nearly starving in World War II and about which much “industrialization” is logical if excessive and harmful in its own way). But maybe he is to be ignored in such cases (or with global warming when he advises people to stop playing with their models so much and observe and measure what is actually, really occurring in the world) as he is not activist enough to merit the respect of the young idealists — or he is just too old, like McCain (and so many Democrats in Washington who are conveniently ignored at the same time).
DLS, I haven't been posting much these past few days as a visitor and another project took too much time. I agree with you to the extent that Pollan paints too pretty a picture — here I say “I get that some of his notions are a bit airy-fairy idealist” — but I thought his “Dear Mr. President-Elect” letter (not addressed to Obama) was darned good and while it's “dreamy, wishful activist thinking” you are not disputing his points: that it takes more energy to produce than necessary, that it isn't the most effective use of the soil, that it hasn't provided a healthy diet, and that agriculture subsidies horribly distort how farming is done. Someone has to define the boundaries in order for us to find a healthy middle. Pollan does that for the better food for better living set beautifully!