mkeating’s Recent Comments

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  Fair enough, we all get emotional about this subject and that can distort what we mean to say. I also take issue with people from non-agricultural backgrounds who throw around their opinion on the subject; I guess that would hold for anybody who speaks forcefully about a subject they know little about. I'll respond to a few of your specific points. Yes, the food security budget does account for more than half of USDA's operational budget. Those numbers are running very high right now because more people than ever qualify for and use food stamps - our economy is a long, steady and not readily reversible decline. Allocating money for the relatively poor and the outright poor to eat is a pretty good investment, IMHO. How they spend that money is a fair question- the number one problem affecting all of America, rich and poor, is that we have forgotten how to eat. Stick to whole, fresh foods and lots of quality saturated fat - you'll like it and you'll be much healthier. The non-food security component at USDA lives and breathes to support commodity monoculture - we can't throw money fast enough at corn, cotton, soy, wheat and rice. You can roll most of your crop insurance and conservation funding into support for these commodities because that is where the money goes. There is one crop that needs to replace these five as the foundation of American agriculture: pasture. Put the animals back on grass, manage it well and we have optimal environmental benfefits, greenhouse gas reductions, increased farm income and healthy, whole food. Farmers who wait till the verge of bankrutcy to convert to organic agriculture are not likely to succeed. How mant people come back from being on acute care life support? In general, the USDA organic program has both a lot of substance and a lot of hype behind it. Let's focus on the good part: how we produce our food definitely affects its nutritional properties, as well as the farmers' income and environmental quality. Not all good food is organic, and not all organic food is good. Back to the original post: Kathleen Merrigan (a friend of mine for over a decade) is a quality individual with a first class mind and plenty of savy to navigate in DC (she's been doing that for over twenty years). After five months on the job, she has done more for local and sustainable agriculture than any other Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in history, which is both impressive and depressing. Federal sustainable ag programswill continue to make progress at the fastest rate possible under her leadership and this won't come at the expense of conventional ag (they won't be ignored or underserved). The key to the success of sustainable agriculture has and always will be consumer demand - this isn't a feel good phenomena that USDA can take charge of. Real change has to come on the ground where people become committed to buying good healthy food as close to the source as possible. Lost in the hand-ringing over the last Farm Bill was just how good it is for sustainable and organic ag. Commodity monoculture agriculture still gets billions and billions and sustainable ag is getting millions and millions, but sustainable ag is going a lot, lot further with those dollars. Example: I was a reviewer for the Farmers Market Promotion Program in July that awards grants between $25K and $100K to direct marketing operations. Before the 2008 Farm Bill, the FMPP got $1 M a year in funding. Thanks to the Farm Bill, it will get $32 M over five years, including $10 a year beginning in 2010. This year, we received over 500 grant applications of which 100 to 125 will be funded. But 80% of the total were WORTHY of funding - shovel ready projects with a prior record of success and people in place who know what to do. SO, many of those not funded this year will be funded next year, and morew after that...the real food revolution is definitely taking off. The good news is that with people like Kathleen Merrigan in place, USDA can be more of a help than the hinderence (with a few hardworking exceptions) it has traditionally been.On Quick thoughts on the USDA's 'Know Your Farmer' program posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago 14 Responses

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  FOODPROVIDER is not submitting accurate statements nor making substantive comments. Comments like these are why sneeze guards were invented for buffets - some people simply don't know how to behave in public. Factual errors begin in the first sentence, in which FOODPROVIDER incorrectly identifies the 2008 Farm Bill - it's titled the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. I'm not going to elaborate the gross distortions and misrepresentations of fact that follow. For an intelligent discussion of the cost of Farm Bill subsidy programs, visit the Environmental Working Group's excellent database on the subject. The United States has allocated between $10 billion and $22 billion annually on such programs over the past decade, not the 2% that FOODPROVIDER states. Really, I avoid flaming people on the internet but FOODPROVIDER'S comments strike me as intentionally counterproductive and designed to frustrate discussion. Yes there is a very meaningful and understandanble definition of sustainable agriculture, one that was codified in the 1985 Farm Bill. Visit the USDA's SARE program's (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) webpage and you will be delightfully informed. I am a strong supporter of sustainable agriculture (twenty years professional experience) and farm subsidies, but we must begin to pay farmers for how they grow, not what or how much they grow. The tide is turning on this subject - T. Philpott is a good source for that - and the essential ingredient is that consumers seek out whole, fresh and local foods and pay farmers an equitable price!!On Quick thoughts on the USDA's 'Know Your Farmer' program posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago 14 Responses

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  Secretary of Ag discussion

  I think that it is a very good thing that the selection of the next Secretary has become a drawn out process.  It's an indication that the Obama Administration is finding itself unable to go with a purely default candidate such as Gov. Vilsack.  His comments that he wasn't approached and wasn't interested, anyway?  Guess he's got something better to do as an ex-Governor than run a $100 billion Department.  And leave Iowa for DC - are you crazy?  

  The new names being circulated by the Washington Post(if in fact there is any substance to the rumors) are also default-style candidates with slighty lower profiles who would conceivably receive less static than Vilsack.  This is why it is very important for the sustainable agriculture community to keep the volume up and the tone polite.  The longer the decision takes to make, the more we stand to gain.  A shotgun wedding is going to get us a Secretary who is more suitable to the powers that be (agribusiness) and the powers that are about to be (Obama). I can't believe that Secretary Wolf has any viability for the USDA job - where is the upside to a guy who is nationally known only for suppressing the public's right to know?  For whatever political purposes are in effect, Wolf could slide in as an Undersecretary (he is qualified), but the Vilsack pushback (it definitely was felt inside DC)definitely sinks frontline gmo champions.

  The names from the letter are all exceptional - all people who are extremely well versed with production agriculture as well as the nits and bolts of federal ag policy.  Realistically, the  next Secretary has to have governmental / administrative experience.  This is for practical purposes (remember the $100 billion budget) as well as political - the Farm Bureau and agribusiness just aren't going to hand the USDA keys over to somebody who hasn't been part of the system.  Remember, the next Secretary is going to have to make friendly with Colin Peterson, House Ag Chairman, who wants to fundamentally overhaul the Department (in his own image).  You've got to have a politician to engage with him, for better and for worse.

  I still believe that Gus Schumacher makes the best candidate for the sustainable ag community.  He has state level executive experience (MA Secretary of Ag) plus Undersecretary experience at USDA - that's one notch below the top.  Sarah Vogel is well respected, but somewhat out of the loop (look who's talking) and has no direct DC experience.  Schumacher is a regular if not a major player in DC.  Mark Ritchie is a fantastic individual and  could be extremely effective at an Undersecretary level.  

  P.S.  Major, major kudos to Mark Ritchie for handling the Minnesota Senate election recount (he's in charge of that) in an extremely professional and non-partisan way.  Of course the candidates are tearing each other apart, but as for Ritchie's performance, here are two words - Katherine Harris.  Richie himself has been no part of the recount story, and that is a reflection of his character and integrity (and the way that Minnesota holds elections).On Prez-elect urged to name progressive farm-policy chief posted 11 months ago 5 Responses

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  Correction: how USDA operates

  Taking a second look at my post, I realized that I slighted too many conscientious, dedicated people working within the bureaucracy.  There are many individuals within USDA who are committed to upholding the law and serving the public and they provide objective, first class service.  Not to name names, but consider Jill Auburn of the SARE Program and Cathy Greene at ERS as prime examples.  They've managed to steer clear of political pressure and bureaucratic inertia and perform with exceptional professionalism.  I shouldn't have overlooked this subset of the bureaucracy, since it's a quite sizable one - and they've had a very rough eight years!On Vilsack out; Peterson and Herseth Sandlin square off posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 11 Responses

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  How USDA operates

  I agree a lot with what Stephanie says.  Whether or not Vilsack was under serious consideration for the Secretary's job, he sure wasn't going to tell the newspaper about it!  Too many downsides: he would appear to be petitioning for the job and, if he didn't get it, he would appear to have been passed over.  I agree that the decision making process is very closely guarded and that 95% of what we hear is speculation (not from Tom, of course!)
  I'll respond to Stephanie's inquiry about the Secretary's role in the decision making process.  I've written about this before; I worked as a mid-level staffer at USDA between 1998 and 2003 in two sustainable ag hotspots: organic standards and farmers markets.  
  The Department works this way: there are two groups of decision makers: the political appointees and the career civil servants (bureaucrats).  The political appointees (several hundred positions that are named by the President) set the agenda: this is what we want to get done, this is how we are going to get it done.  The bureaucrats (several thousand people in DC and around the country and world) make that happen.  This is that Unitary Executive thing that Dick Cheney likes the talk about: When the President talks, people listen (and do).  Naturally, Congress has a powerful presence because it writes the authorizing legislation.  Actually, because no President cares very much about agriculture (they tend to have a lot on their minds) and some Senators and Congressmen owe their positions to agricultural interests, Congress has far more say over what happens at USDA than they do at most other Cabinet Departments.  Do you think anybody on Capitol Hill was calling up Rumsfeld and telling him how to do his job?  Congress does have a lot to say about running USDA - the senior administrative building is named for a former Chairman of the House Ag Committee, not a former Secretary.  That being said, the concentration of power in the Executive branch means that the Secretary can thumb his nose at Congress to a considerable degree: look at the COOL story following the 2002 Farm Bill.
  So, the Secretary enjoys enormous discretion to set the agenda and the pace at which things get done.  When the Secretary wants something, it happens. That doesn't mean that the Scertray gets what he/she wants, but it means that the full force of USDA's resources will be directed at achieving that goal.  Anybody in the chain of command who operates differently will be sidetracked. If the Secretary is mute on a subject, its fate is in the hands of the bureaucracy.  The bureaucracy may be cozy with that constituency because of a revolving door relationship, or they may be unfamiliar/antagonistic towards that constituency (think National Organic Program here, though kudos on the pasture rule).  Mostly the bureaucracy likes to play king of the sandbox and re-create their little world to their own imagination.  Outsiders (meaning citizens) need not interfere.  The political appointees generally don't care what the bureaucrats do on their own time, as long as the Executive Branch marching orders are being met.  One exception: bad publicity.  When the bureaucrats mess up enough to create a public stink, the political people rush in, say they don't know how this happened, promise it won't happen again, and privately tell the bureaucrats to make sure it doesn't happen again (even if that mean that NOTHING happens in that area at all).
  One thing has changed enormously since my tenure at USDA: the public is more aware and invested in sustainable agriculture issues than ever before.  This interest is going to continue to grow, because people discover that there really is something to this whole food, local farms way of life: it actually works, which you can't say for the agribusiness model.  This will result in an increasing degree of leverage over what happens both at USDA and on Capitol Hill.  The sustainable agriculture community should be very proud of the achievements in the 2008 Farm Bill.  I predict that an agribusiness friendly individual will become Secretary of Agriculture but several very pro-sustainable ag types will gain senior administrative positions. Remeber that there were people at USDA like Richard Romminger and Paul Johnson in the last Democratic Administration.  This time, those people in senior positions will have their hands a lot less tied than those fellows had, and they will be able to do a lot of good.  I can't help but feel that an enormous cloud is lifting from DC and I'm allowing myself to feel very optimistic about the potential.  I know this for sure: when sustainable agriculture gets a level playing field, we leave the agribusiness model in the dust y every measurable standard EXCEPT corporate profits. On Vilsack out; Peterson and Herseth Sandlin square off posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 11 Responses