Vilsack?
Why not just appoint the CEO of Archer-Daniels-Midland and give up any pretense. Tom Vilsack may have been governor of Iowa, but he is a supporter of agri-business, not farmers, and that includes genetically modified crops.
He supports ethanol which is a disaster, as it doesn’t reduce green house gases and increases the cost of food. We have plenty of lawyers in government, would it be so bad to have an actual farmer as the head of the Department of Agriculture?
Rick Warren and Tom Vilsack on the same day, there are fewer reasons to cut Obama any slack.
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Yeah! I saw at C&L that John Amato is *seriously* not impressed with the Rick Warren deal!
Though… There was this on the plus side (maybe):
Mary Shapiro to take over SEC
And so… It begins! 😉
[Small] Change [if any at all] we can believe in! I can live with Rick Warren’s very likely christianist invocation a lot better than I can take Vilsack’s likely approach to the USDA.
I did a whole series of subcontracts for a USDA contractor back in the early days of my tiny business, and learned a few things about them. The important thing here is that from its formation, USDA has always had two separate fundamental missions. They are (expressed in my words) 1) to promote a healthful diet available to and consumed by all Americans, and 2) to promote the marketing, at home and abroad, of U.S. agricultural products. Not surprisingly, these missions are sometimes in unavoidable conflict with each other.
Three or four of the projects in which I participated were various aspects of the first-named mission, ranging from measuring the actual nutritional content of meals eaten in typical households in various American communities, to assessing the nutritional needs and actual consumption of the U.S. Army. As to mission number 2, you’ll have to ask someone else; all I can tell you is that it always appeared to me as if market promotion was the far better funded mission. And that was during the Bill Clinton years, so the problem here is not a partisan matter.
An actual farmer for USDA chief someday? Don’t hold your breath.
I am not pleased at all. I was expecting some change at the USDA and it is very unlikely that Vilsack will want to piss off his friends at Monsanto and ADM. This was a great opportunity for Obama to make an impact and he missed the boat in a big way.
If he was looking to highlight change, I can’t think of anyone who is more representative of change than Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of Episcopal Church in the United States of America. At the same time she would provide a tie back to the founding of the US, as the Anglican Church was here almost from the beginning.
If being a farmer was good enough for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, I don’t see why it is so difficult to find someone who has actually mixed some sweat with the earth to lead the agency that oversees the production of food in this country. Family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate as farming becomes industrialized. Much of this is caused by the government directing almost all of its assistance to agri-business and middle men, rather than the large number of people who are trying to make a living while workers are struggling to buy food.
Growing grain that will end powering engines instead of people is pretty damn short-sighted, and growing sterile seed is down right suicidal, but this is what agri-business and Vilsak want to do.
I’m not happy about this either. As an avid gardener, that sterile seed business really annoys me. I just know cross-pollination is going to occur and those nasty plants will destroy normal crops. I use heirloom seeds whenever I can, and I always hold back seeds from my best plants for the next year. I’m not against genetic engineering… but in this case it adds nothing to the nutrition of the plants and is only to protect profit.
I guess we should have known that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Old fashioned cross breeding has to be as successful, and probably less expensive than genetic manipulation, and when you look at the fact that many of the GM seeds are actually designed to allow farmers to use stronger chemical controls, not grow better food, they have lost me.
Monocultural food production is dangerous. One new disease can take out a crop, not just a field, and you won’t find a resistant strain if there is only one strain in the field. If you get hit by something, the chances are good that whatever is left is resistant, so you want that seed. What Monsanto does is bad for farmers and hungry people.
not sure about the other farmers, but our farm usually plants 2 or 3 strains of each crop each year, and about half the farm is in corn and half in soybeans [with each field rotated each year]. it’s still too close to monocropping, and the seeds are all gmo, but my generation has been laying plans for changing some of that when we get hold of the reins of power [we’ve all got great sympathy for prince charles].
Charles is also an advocate for organic farming, and is rather successful at it on his Cornwall estate. I can believe that they are pooling manure from stock farms all over hell and gone, and then spending money on chemical fertilizers.
Part of the pasturing grown patterns on a dairy farm is to use the herd to fertilize the pasture fields that grow nitrogen fixers like clover, before the fields are used for crops. The thought of one of my great uncles or grandfather buying fertilizer is beyond the pale.