A new Farmer in Chief – what’s next?

It is six days until Election Day.

Those of us concerned about corporate influence on government policies in general and agriculture policy in particular face a situation much like the one we faced in 2008 when Obama was first elected. I am assuming that Hillary Clinton will be the next President but of course that may not be the case.

In any event I will proceed under this assumption.

As Michael Pollan pointed out in his open letter to the next president titled "Farmer in Chief" (October 12, 2008)

"It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food."

He went on to point out that some of the ‘big topics’ the campaign did focus on—health care costs, climate change, energy, security threats at home and abroad–could not be successfully addressed without also addressing a broken food system.

The choice of who would lead the Department of Agriculture which has so much responsibility for addressing all of these issues was, as it is today, 8 years later, critical.

In spite of a determined effort on the part of a few concerned watchers, by mid December, 2008, it became obvious that Tom Vilsack, who has deep ties to the industrial agriculture model, had the job of Secretary of Agriculture even though a group of us tried very hard to prevent that appointment. It is worth noting that Vilsack is the only original Cabinet member still on the job. (Vilsack was the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership, and was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry lobbying group.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) covers more than just food production issues.

For example, the USDA Rural Development, Business and Cooperative Service, in addition to supporting rural business, economic, and cooperative development, has become increasingly involved in renewable energy and value-added agriculture since the enactment of the 2002 Farm Bill. The Rural Business-Cooperative Service is headed by an Administrator who reports directly to the Undersecretary for Rural Development, who in turn reports to the Secretary of Agriculture. All three posts are appointed by the President of the United States.

The Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services is the third-ranking official in the USDA and is appointed by the President. This undersecretary oversees a little known part if this program, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), the foreign affairs agency with primary responsibility for the USDA’s overseas programs—market development, international trade agreements and negotiations, and the collection of statistics and market information.

In 2003 FAS posted agricultural officers to Baghdad, not for the by-then traditional purposes of market intelligence and market development, but to reconstruct the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture. FAS also began organizing USDA contributions to Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.This marked FAS’s return to national security work. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has pledged to continue and to expand that work. FAS’s role in national security work, however, remains controversial.

Given the wide range of activities that come under the control of the Department of Agriculture Secretary, this position is possibly the most powerful of all the Cabinet posts. Pollan was correct when he identified the areas the Secretary of Agriculture would deal with. No wonder this was one of the first Cabinet positions Obama filled—it will very likely be at the top of the list for Clinton as well.

So I bring this back around to discussing the corporate power that influences so much of what happens in Washington these days.

Back to Pollan — think of Big Ag, the $1.5 trillion industry that grows, rears, slaughters, processes, imports (and exports) packages and retails most of the food Americans eat as a pyramid…

• The Base—Big-Ag, the corn/soybean industrial complex plus the seed and chemical suppliers for that complex
• The Principle Customers–Big Meat where all food animals are fed then funneled into a small handful of companies that process most table meat
• The Fabricating Companies–using the raw commodities from the base for processed foods
• The Retail outlets–grocers and fast food franchises plus the wholesale food suppliers to all food establishments

(For an overview, see Michael Pollan’s "Why Did the Obamas Fail to Take On Corporate Agriculture?")

One way or another, this huge power structure can and does decide the rules that will govern all stages of the pyramid which would also include the polluting part of these businesses. For example…

The Department of Agriculture has had the power to regulate the abusive business practices of the meat industry since the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 which established a powerful antitrust unit to deal with these issues. It is now called the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) but when Vilsack tried to update the rules governing this entity in 2010, in part to protect producers from retaliation by industry for making any complaints, Big Meat simply spent approximately $9 million lobbying, plus unspecified amounts directly to ag committee members to stop any changes by de-funding the whole program in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Even the Secretary’s offer to revise the changes a bit was not acceptable to Big Meat.

When the administration undertook an ambitious campaign to tackle climate change by stringently regulating industries responsible for greehouse gases, most notably energy and transportation, agriculture was not confronted at all even though it contributes maybe as much as 40% of total emissions across all parts of the sector. Again, this regulation effort would probably have come under one or more programs of the Department of Agriculture.

The most recent example of exercising raw power is this….

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was slated to hold four days of public meetings, Oct. 18-21, focused on essentially one question: Is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, safe? However, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings were "postponed", just four days before they were supposed to meet, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry, including Monsanto. The industry first fought to keep the meetings from being held at all, and argued that if they were held, several leading international experts should be excluded from participating, including "any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate."

The industry clearly has much at stake, as does the public. Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s branded Roundup herbicides as well as herbicides marketed by numerous agrichemical companies around the world. It is also the key to what has been 20 years of sales of genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops developed by Monsanto. The future sales of both the chemical and the crops are being jeopardized by the mounting concerns that glyphosate can cause cancer and other illnesses or disease. (EPA Succumbs to Pressure From Monsanto, Delays Glyphosate Cancer Review by Carey Gilliam, Alternet, Oct 2016)

Probably only the pharmaceutical companies can pull off this kind of tactic and make it stick.

A Politico article posted on 10/25/16, "Stabenow is potential ag (secretary) kingmaker," alerted me to the possible sequence of events which will determine a Clinton Sectrary of Agriculture selection. I think it will be Blanche Lincoln, one of the five potential people to fill that position.

To find Debbie Stabenow still involved in this process is worrisome to say the least. Stabenow got publicly fired as DNC chair for her part in derailing any help from the DNC to Bernie Sanders but immediately went to work on Clinton’s transition team. Stabenow did not get fired from the Senate where she (Correction: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz from Florida was DNC Chai.r) 

Stabenow is currently the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She will resume as Chair if the Senate reverts to Democratic control. In that position part of her responsibility will be to assure that Clinton nominees that come before the Ag Committee and then the Senate are properly shepherded through the process. Stabenow owes her position on that committee to the Lincol’s 2010 Senate defeat, and they have worked together for many years on many things.

Since I live in Arkansas I am quite familiar with Blanche Lincoln; in fact I worked my heart out to remove her from the Senate because she was the Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee and her affiliation with industrial agriculture was well known in Arkansas by those of us interested in alternative agriculture issues. She was very up-front about not having any use for what she once called ‘regressive’ agriculture and she also made a point of saying that as long as she was in charge of the Senate Ag committee there would be no discussion of any energy issues. I did not realize until that moment that the Senate Ag committee dealt with energy issues. That one statement was enough to make me work to get her out of the Senate. ("Top Utility-Fueled Senators Are Skeptical Of Clean Energy Reform", Think Progress, Apr 2009)

I knew, but had forgotten, that immediately after she lost in Arkansas she signed on as a Monsanto lobbyist. Her connection to Clinton goes back a long way also. Lincoln was a mover at Riceland Foods and I have not checked but it is quite probable that they have contributed to Hillary’s presidential run. And of course, Riceland is quite closely connected to Monsanto and Dow as part of the fertilizer and chemical side of that business.

(Be sure to read this particular article for a very good reason to never allow Lincoln anywhere near the Sec of Ag post: "Blanche Lincoln Oversees Agriculture Subsidies She Has Received" (David Dayan, ShadowProof Mar 2000.)

Blanche Lincoln will be a disaster in many ways for any and all efforts to revamp our approach to agriculture at any level except the industrial, high input model with all of its attendant problems.

If we are going to support or promote any of the offered possibilities, it seems that Kathleen Merrigan is the best option but maybe we propose someone totally different…Gus Speth, for example. His credentials for the job are sound as far as I can tell.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton examines wheat samples at the Indian Council for Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in Pusa, New Delhi, India July 19, 2009. [State Department photo]. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of the United States Department of Agriculture explaining the American Jobs Act to a group from the Portland, OR area on Tuesday, September 27, 2011. USDA Photo by Glen Sachet. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo:Official photo of Senator Blanche Lincoln (2007) Via Wikimedia Commons