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).

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.