Grist: Obama Disappoints Some with Agriculture Picks
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Like a majority of people out there, we’re very happy about Barack Obama’s appointment to the highest office in the land and impatient to get George W. “He’s still ****ing President?” Bush out of there. Obama is smart and capable, and for the most part he’s built himself a good team. That being said, his appointees for key Food and Agriculture policy-shaping lean too far to the conventional and leave much to be desired.
From the GristMill:
Will Obama lead food and ag policy in new directions?
He raised hope late in the campaign season, when he indicated he had read — and understood — Michael Pollan’s “Farmer in Chief” essay.
Since then, things have turned more dour. Obama made a boldly conventional pick for USDA chief — a corn-belt ex-governor with ties to the GMO and biofuel industries. And now the chief adviser to this campaign on agricultural issues, Marshall Matz, has come out with a Chicago Tribune op-ed advocating a business-as-usual approach to ag policy. Matz co-wrote the piece with Democratic Party eminence grise (and farm-state politician) George McGovern.
The Matz/McGovern op-ed is a lightweight document that hangs on easy platitudes. It implies that in order to “feed the world,” we’ll need to rely on chemical-intensive, industrial-scale agriculture, largely centered in the U.S. (for the benefit of “those around the globe who lack America’s productive resources.”)
But instead of teasing out an argument to back up that premise, the authors mount a weak defense of industrial ag. “Commercial agriculture is still the backbone of the economy in most rural counties across the nation,” they declare — even though industrial ag has essentially emptied the countryside and hollowed out rural economies.
“And commercial agriculture is a big factor in offsetting our unfavorable balance of international trade,” they continue. That’s just a pathetic argument. First, our ag trade balance has shown an overall declining trend for years. Second, if we’re relying on farming to offset the decline of our industrial base, we’re in deep trouble. Third, when we force our ag goods into other countries’ markets, we undermine those countries’ food security. Fourth, … oh never mind.
Matz and McGovern take a patronizing view of organic ag: “There is an important role for organic agriculture and, indeed, some consumers are willing to pay a premium for foods that are certified as organic.” Right, but everyone else deserves industrial crap.
Biofuels, meanwhile, get a rousing endorsement: “Agriculture is key in our becoming less dependent on foreign oil by converting crops into biofuels and renewal [sic] energy.”
Matz and McGovern do deliver one notable flash of insight: “A case can be made that our entire consumer economy is fueled by cheap food.” That’s depressingly true; some of us were hoping that Obama would push for a new economy built on widely accessible healthy and sustainable food. These guys are pushing in the opposite direction.
