Today on The Brian Lehrer Show, Michael Pollan spoke about the change in food policy he’d like to see under the next administration.  Although there has been a move to nominate him for Secretary of Agriculture, Pollan stated that while he is flattered, he thinks he wouldn’t make the vetting process (See The Botany of Desire, Chapter 3: Marijuana.  But then again, our new president has a past of his own).  He did however say that he felt that President-elect Obama is one of the most synthesis-oriented presidents we’ve had in a long time, and he feels that while he might not implement all of the ideas Mr. Pollan put forth in his recent letter in the New York Times Magazine, he feels confident that we will begin to see change in the right direction.  Perhaps an ode to Thomas Jefferson by adding an organic garden on the White House lawn?

He discussed his idea for a new position at the White House, Food Policy Czar, who would connect the dots between trade, health energy and environmental policy as they relate to food.  He also talked about how the affordability of good food should be addressed at the government level, so that the fresh produce is price competitive with snack “foods.”  Following that, he spoke about making a new definition of food, that no longer includes things like soda, which has no true nutritional value.  And shockingly, he took a stab at the milk industry, saying, “We have been sold a bill of goods on milk, that its the only way to get calcium, which it’s not, and that you are a bad parent if you don’t give glass upon glass of milk to your children. This is the dairy lobby talking… I’m not saying you shouldn’t drink it, but we idolize milk as the ultimate health food, and there are some real questions whether it is that.” (Find calcium in spinach, sardines, tofu, collards and molasses to name a few other sources)

listen to the entire segment here:

Photo: Made in Mississippi, Jefferson’s garden at Monticello

In an interview with Joe Klein of Time Magazine today, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged the brilliant letter to the next president by Michael Pollan and said that agriculture is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, is a national security risk, and is built on cheap oil:

“I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael
Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is
built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is
contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And
in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to
national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices
or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are
partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because
they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease,
obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in
healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think
about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true
on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy
in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security
and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when
I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to
just stabilize the immediate economic situation.”

Photo: megpi

Yesterday, Michael Pollan spoke on The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio about his New York Times Magazine article, Farmer in Chief: What the Next President Can and Should do to Remake the Way We Grow and Eat Our Food.  He argues that we should “re-solarize” the food system, an essential step to the energy independence both candidates are talking about because bringing food from farm to plate is responsible for 20% of our oil consumption.  His plan touches on the cultural elements of food: a re-valuation of farming, changing the federal definition of food, the future president’s role in re-engaging us about what we eat.  He also suggests a new view of policy, which currently has us mired in corporate welfare and poor land stewardship.  For this all to work, he says, we need more farmers, and those farmers need to have access to land, resources and education.  And we need a President who is willing to look at the long term effects our current practices are having (like factory farm operations, shown in the photo above, and the multiple waste lagoons we as taxpayers probably helped pay for), and be willing to make a definitive change.  Listen to the program here.

Photo: Uncle Kick-Kick, factory pig farm near the Escalante Desert in southwestern Utah

In fifteen days, Americans will make an important decision: who will take the reigns and get us out of this mess.  One topic the candidates have mostly left out of their speeches on the campaign trail thus far is food.  Whether they realize it or not, when either John McCain or Barack Obama sit down next January to begin the task of fixing our economy, to promote green energy in order to produce the jobs they’ve both promised, and to deal with the climate crisis and health care, food will be the unavoidable issue that keeps cropping up.

Perhaps the candidates don’t yet realize food’s role in these issues, or maybe they assume that because less than 1% of the population is currently working as a farmer, the topic does not appeal to the voting constituency that matters most.  But I think we are ready for a president that is willing to create a more nuanced food policy as opposed to leaving it unchanged in thirty years.  Telling farms to “get big or get out” as a philosophy for food security has long ago reached the point of diminishing returns.  So what will the next president do about it?

McCain’s agriculture policy can be found under the heading Prosperity for Rural America.  There is little here to show that a McCain administration would stray very far from current agriculture policy that favors agribusiness.  Recognizing agriculture’s role in national security is a good start.  But in McCain’s plan, there isn’t even a peep about organic or local agriculture.  He supports unchecked free trade, meaning that our lower priced subsidized food will compete with other nations that might not have such subsidy programs, disenfranchising small farmers in developing nations.  Should McCain follow through with his threat to end subsidies, however, there is no evidence here that he would offer any alternatives to struggling farmers.

He also views technology and growth as the sole measure of our agricultural potential.  Scary is McCain’s plan for upping production: to “direct the USDA to carry out comprehensive research to help develop more stress-resistant, higher yielding crops to increase production per acre,” giving a further carte blanche to corporations like Monsanto, which have dominated the genetically modified foods and pesticide sectors for decades.  McCain sees bio-technology as the key to “reducing reliance on petroleum-based inputs, and improving the long-term sustainability of agricultural production.”  But the track record is clear, genetically modified foods do carry unforseen consequences, require much oil in the form of pesticides and the energy moving the machines spraying them, encourage practices that strip the land of productivity over time and encourage less diverse crops and by extension, less diverse diets.

While McCain supports funding nutrition assistance programs, including indexing food stamps to reflect the current cost of living, he also seeks to cede the marketing of healthy diets to the fruit and vegetable companies, which have special interests at heart when doling out such information.

By comparison, Obama’s plan, Real Leadership for Rural America, reflects actual change from the current corporate-friendly policies.  Though for the most part lacking in concreteness, his plan goes further by recognizing the problems that previous administrations have been unwilling or unable to discuss.

Obama supports capping commodity subsidies at $250,000, and looks to close loopholes that allow farmers to subdivide their operations into multiple paper corporations.  His plan talks about regulating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which raise 40% of our livestock and are one of the largest polluters in America, with tougher air and water pollution standards.  Extending from that, the plan states that there will be limits placed on Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funding to CAFOs, so that instead of taxpayers, the largest polluters must pay for their own environmental clean-up.

He promises to strengthen anti-monopoly laws, which thrills me, though I worry that riding on the Archer Daniels Midland corporate jet during the campaign has fueled Obama’s interest in ethanol, that company’s largest emerging industry, even though it has a poor net return on energy invested ratio (currently 1 unit of energy invested nets 1.3 energy output) and is destroying car engines.  Here I agree with McCain: corn-based ethanol production should no longer be subsidized by the U.S. government.

Both agriculture plans tie in energy, but Obama’s plan goes further to seek to improve the quality of life in rural America.  Community is an essential element to building local economies.  The Obama plan includes providing locally grown, healthy foods to school meal programs.  It also promotes encouraging young people to become farmers through training programs and capital gains tax breaks for those selling their land to beginning family farmers.  Obama’s plan also gives importance to encouraging organic and sustainable agriculture through increased funding to help farmers become certified.  But most impressive: “Barack Obama and Joe Biden recognize that local and regional food systems are better for our environment and support family-scale producers.  They will emphasize the need for Americans to Buy Fresh and Buy Local, and will implement USDA policies that promote local and regional food systems.”

Does this mean that the Victory Garden on the White House lawn that Alice Waters has been promoting and that Micheal Pollan suggested in last week’s New York Times Magazine might be within reach?  We will have to wait and see what happens on November 4th.

Photo: rhondawinter Victory Garden, City Hall in San Francisco