Years ago, I heard that activists have to learn how to walk on two feet. I interpret it to mean that you have to be a functional schizophrenic. Interesting post from the trenches.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

 i like your point "but the sustainable/organic ag/foodies/local foods progressives have not quite arrived"

that may be an understatement when you consider the vast legions of people who shop Costco etc and buy the heavily processed crap some call food.

like any emerging cultural shift I think we are still in our infancy. for instance the freak out attitude and in general disinformation campaign on GMO is a good issue to look at and see that "we" the progressives are too extremist on refusing to consider the use biotech to reduce or eliminate the widespread use of farm chems and other weather and practical issues farmers face.

how many people that have a strong opinion against GMO's even understand the basic science behind GMO'?

I hope we can, because we know Monsanto and the Biotechnology Industry Organization can work with him, as they have had lots of practice. Apparently it has been a very mutually beneficial relationship.

Will Vilsack be able to promote both bio-tech crops and organic crops and have them coexist without GM contaminating the organic crops. I am anxious to see how these mutually exclusive farming systems will work together.

We know that small scale organic/sustainable farming has the best possibility to feed developing countries. We also know it is a system that, for health, economic and environmental reasons, we must adopt in the US.

We know GM crops offer no proven benefits other than high profits for the agribusiness industry that promotes them, the same industry folks that are praising Obama's selection of Vilsack.

Bud Dingler says that anti-biotech people need to grow up and get informed, and then we would see that we need GMOs to "reduce or eliminate the widespread use of farm chems and other weather and practical issues farmers face."
Bud, where is your evidence that GM technology has ever done any of those things? What is your reason to think it will do so in the future? So far what it has done is two thingsL one, allow farmers to save labor by spraying weeds with Roundup without killing their crops--and not incidentally, created a huge financial boost for Monsanto whose patent on Roundup was about to expire. Two, reduce some insect problems by the splicing Bt, a naturally occurring bacterial pathogen,  into the germ plasm of crop seeds. Trouble is, having this bacteria present in every cell of every plant from planting to harvest (and beyond, in residue) naturally and predictably leads to much-speeded up evolution of resistance in the affected bugs, thus taking away an important weapon in the arsenal of organic farmers.
Apparently "life sciences companies" as they call themselves now, are in fact working on strains that would resist drought or excess wetness or heat or salt, etc, which could be very useful, especially in a world in which agriculture is made even more chancy by climate change. But they are not planning to give the fruits of the labors to the farmers of the world--they will patent their discoveries, and insist on big profits for their shareholders before releasing any useful discoveries. Perhaps they'll use the research of some years ago on ways to arrange for these useful traits to be locked up in the plants, to be activated only by spraying with a particular proprietary chemical--which would, of course, be owned and sold by Monsanto.