The Senators accuse USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of diverting urgently needed funds from rural communities in favor of: 1) “specialty crops” (the government’s term for fruits, nuts, and vegetables, of which the USDA recommends each of us eat at least five servings a day); and 2) small growers and organic farmers (who the Senators stereotype as hobby producers “whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets.”)

They conclude that:

“American families and rural farmers are hurting in today’s economy, and it’s unclear to us how propping up the urban locavore markets addresses their needs. Given our nation’s crippling budgetary crisis, we also believe the federal government cannot afford to spend precious rural development funds on feel-good measures which are completely detached from the realities of production agriculture.”

The not so subtle subtext of this letter is that to be a “real” farmer, you must be engaged in “production agriculture.” One can only assume this means corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybean production—the five primary commodity crops grown across hundreds of millions of acres in factory fields, propped up by the lion’s share of $15-plus billion in yearly USDA farm bill payments. In their view, the small producers benefitting from the Know Your Farmer program are not just do-gooders raising organic heirlooms for elite urbanites. They’re sucking away subsidies that should be going to the nation’s real farmers. Never mind that there are now more than 5,000 farmers markets across the country; or that an average of 10 million Americans shop at one on any given Saturday during the harvest season; or that farming organically is extremely hard and valuable work.

Here’s the bottom line. The Know Your Farmer program has spent a reported $65 million total so far with plans to invest another up to another $1 billion in loans from the stimulus program. This is peanuts compared with the $60-plus billion in USDA commodity subsidies that production growers presently receive over a five-year period.

Since Senator Chambliss is the ranking minority member of the Agriculture Committee, he and his fellow scribes must be aware that the U.S. is now considering paying Brazilian cotton growers $147.3 million this year because of former production agriculture subsidies that were in violation of World Trade Organization rules. You read that right––Brazilian farmers. The Wall Street Journal recently decried this as madness.

Such divisive political framing sets clear distinctions for how we talk about farmers, food, and our agriculture and nutrition policy. It might also backfire by fueling the fires of public opinion that have been rallying around healthy food production and raging against USDA subsidy programs. It is obvious to an increasing number of citizens and legislators that these programs:

1) divert billions of dollars to commodity agribusinesses whether they have actually suffered losses or not, whether they grow crops or not, with few funding caps, and few social or environmental mandates that would provide a public benefit to taxpayers in return;

2) support industrial crops that are more suited for animal feed, processed foods, and biofuels rather than a healthy, diverse diet;

3) flood the market with cheap, processed ingredients that contribute to a growing crisis of obesity and other diet-related epidemics.

Are these the feel-good measures McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts want us to get excited about?

Instead, they single out a long-overdue and modest attempt to repair links in broken local food chains and educate the public about the importance of knowing your farmer and where your food comes from. Revitalizing local food production can impact the every day lives of citizens––Food Stamp recipients, for example, who can use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards to buy organic produce at farmers markets; or public school kids that enjoy fruits and vegetables grown by productive farmers in their areas; or small livestock producers that can now process their pasture raised meats with the aid of mobile slaughtering units.

Why don’t the Senators want us to know our farmers or care about where our food comes from? Maybe it’s because they are clinging to the decades-old “Get Big or Get Out” story line that defines how the majority of the country’s food is presently produced. This is the tragic story of 50 years of USDA policies that swept millions of family farmers from the American landscape and gave agribusiness the unimaginable powers they wield today over our entire food system.

Knowing your farmer and knowing your food will become the primary story of the next fifty years of food production. It is the story of saving local agriculture and local farmers before they disappear altogether. In saving regional food production, we become healthier, more engaged, more secure citizens. With quite a bit of leadership, and a comparatively miniscule budget, Vilsack and Merrigan are actually trying to restore relationships and rewrite the stories of decentralized modern farming.

If Senators McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts cared about the health and vitality of rural communities they might be better served to embrace the inevitable rediversification of the food supply. It certainly deserves its fair share—and then some.

Originally published on the Huffington Post

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a United Nations agency that develops food safety and labeling standards. Its standards carry weight because they are used to settle disputes at the World Trade Organization. The Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) meets in Quebec City, Canada May 3-7, 2010 to discuss the labeling issue.

The letter refers specifically to a position, drafted by USDA and FDA, that opposes a Codex document stating that countries can adopt different approaches to labeling of GE food, in line with existing Codex guidance. The current U.S. draft position goes even further to say that mandatory labeling of food as GE/GM “is likely to create the impression that the labeled food is in some way different” and would therefore be “false, misleading or deceptive.”

“We are concerned that the current U.S. position could potentially create significant problems for food producers in the U.S. who wish to indicate that their products contain no GE ingredients. Organic food in particular, which prohibits GE ingredients, are frequently labeled ‘GE-free’ or ‘No GMOs’. A recent CU poll [PDF] found that two-thirds of consumers would be concerned if they thought that GE/GM ingredients were in organic food,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.

The U.S. position paper states that Codex should not “suggest or imply that GM/GE foods are in any way different from other foods.” However, Dr. Hansen stated, “Such foods clearly are different. USDA organic rules specifically state that GE seed cannot be used in organic production. The FDA has also taken the position that within the U.S., voluntary labeling as to whether or not a product contains GE ingredients is permissible.”

The letter to USDA and FDA is signed by the Organic Trade Association, the Organic Consumers Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Organic Coalition, and R-CALF USA, among many others.

“We find it hard to understand how FDA and USDA can argue to Codex that mandatory labeling is inherently false and misleading, but voluntary labeling, which is permitted in the United States, is not,” the groups state. “We are, in fact, concerned that the current U.S. position appears to seek to establish precedents at Codex that would make it difficult to label food as non-GM within the U.S.”

The groups also urge the U.S. to not allow trade goals to interfere with or overrule judgments made on sound science and existing policy.

Join CREDO Action in calling on the U.S. delegation to the Codex Committee meeting, led by representatives of FDA and USDA, to drop these positions and support proposals to allow countries to make their own decisions on the labeling of GE foods.

Causing no end of difficulties in our national discourse is the steadfast belief held by both the right and the left that everything is either right or left: bad or good, strong or weak, despotic or patriotic.  You’re either with us or you’re against us.  President Obama addressed this very effectively before both House Republicans and Senate Democrats in recent days.  It is media driven to a large extent because the media need controversy to sell papers, or bytes or views or whatever it is they’re selling these days.

The most common form this takes is the old build’em-up-then-tear’em-down routine.  Perhaps the only thing many Americans enjoy more than the uplifting emotion of a success story is the schadenfreude of watching that success come tumbling down.  So when an idea comes to the fore, the critics ooze from the woodwork and their primary tactic is divide and conquer.  Label it, frame the debate, and the fight is won or lost before the story is even told.

For a long time in the circles I travel in this was not a problem because the ideas embodied in what some have come to call SOLE food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, & Ethical) were not perceived as a threat to the established paradigm.  Recent successes such as Michael Pollan’s work have, however, shined a very bright spotlight on advocates of real food.  As a result, people who have been toiling at these ideas for decades are becoming targets of powerful interests in the Big Food lobby.  Such is the case this week at WeeklyStandard.com, where Missouri Farm Bureau vice president Blake Hurst has found his most recent audience.

Mr. Hurst was among the earliest vocal detractors of Mr. Pollan’s work, as well as that of anyone who might find flaw in agroindustrial model.  His essay last summer, titled The Omnivore’s Delusion, did an excellent job of exploiting Pollan’s success to rally the big corporate agriculture interests against the perceived threat of critics both in the media and in the field.  It’s natural: he felt attacked and he responded, and has now done so again.  Unfortunately Mr. Hurst’s vitriol, then as now, only serves to fan the flames of a fire that needn’t be burning.  Individuals on neither side of the debate are inherently evil, in fact both want the same thing: healthy food for all.  Since our ideas for how to accomplish this differ, we are immediately cast into the right and left corners and told to come out fighting when the bell rings.

Of course this is not a new phenomenon.  City and country folk have mistrusted each other since the beginnings of civilization (which, it bears pointing out, came into being because of agriculture).  Nonetheless our society has changed enormously in the last 100 years.  Where once nearly everyone lived on a farm or had an immediate relative who did, today only 2% of the population lives in rural America.  It’s not a surprise that when the 2% senses criticism emanating from within the other 98% they’re going to feel a bit nervous.  Some of the critiques in fact even come from within the 2% (witness cattleman Will Harris in Georgia).  In his most recent essay though Mr. Hurst’s fears are misplaced, and he remains little more than a tool for moneyed interests.

The essay suffers from many errors of presumption as well as fact.  He contends that Kathleen Merrigan’s Know your Farmer initiative results from the idea that “America, it seems, has been operating at a knowledge deficit when it comes to farmers, and farmers lack the social skills to close the gap between eaters and producers of food.”  He is partially correct in that people in this country and throughout the Western world have become increasingly distanced from their sources of food, and we have become so to our detriment.  The second part of his statement though, a backhanded swipe at critics of industrial agriculture disguised as self-deprecation and designed to raise the ire of his fellow Farm Bureau members, is uninformed to say the least.  Not only are the farmers I know perfectly capable in the “social skills” department, both they and the rest of my friends in the movement to improve our food are working hard to close that gap.  Ms. Merrigan’s program is one of many tools.

While he correctly points out that the average age of farmers in America is 58, he misses the point that this means we are running out of farmers.  We actually now have more prisoners in America than farmers.  He goes on to put words in foodies’ mouths by claiming that we seem to think farmers are not sustainable.  Quite far from it, but many of the inputs many farmers use are not. These include the GMOs and chemical fertilizers that Farm Bureau and the Property and Environment Research Center he cites both adamantly advocate.  It’s not the farmers or even the farms that are unsustainable; it is the methods they have been railroaded into using by large corporate interests seeking markets for their chemicals since even before the early 70’s when Earl Butz and his “Get Big or Get Out” mantra took hold of American food.

The point is missed yet again when Mr. Hurst says:

In December, strawberries from California can be shipped to market in Canada with less total energy use than the locally grown crop. The food miles are greater, but the carbon footprint is smaller. True believers in the local food movement, of course, simply stop eating strawberries in winter. Their devotion is admirable, but a winter diet of freshly dug turnips and stored potatoes is hardly interesting.

I choose not to eat strawberries in the winter not because they come from far away but because they taste awful.  In my own restaurant, we stock everything feasible from local sources.  This does not mean, as Mr. Hurst would have it, that we have nothing but turnips and potatoes in winter, nor does it mean we forego oranges or olives because they don’t grow in Iowa.  Despite what he and his corporate-activist-supported friends at PERC might have you believe, the “SOLE” food movement is not a bunch of lefty Luddites, and that’s my main point (besides that I like turnips).  Not only does food I trust from people I know taste better for those reasons, it also keeps my dollars in my community.

Consider this: there are about 50,000 households in Johnson County Iowa, where I live.  If each of those households redirected just $10 of their existing weekly food budget toward buying something local, whether from the farmers market or a CSA or eggs from the farmer down the road, it would keep $26M in the local economy rather than it being siphoned off to China via Bentonville.  Now imagine the same thing in larger communities.  That’s not a left or right issue, that’s a hometown issue.

I must also point out Mr. Hurst’s use of the phrase “alleged global warming.”  It carries with it all the intellectual honesty of “alleged cancer from smoking.”

Agendas like those of Mr. Hurst, the Farm Bureau and PERC serve only the interests of the large corporations that fund them, not of the farmers whose toil fills their coffers.  Better to look to the like of the Practical Farmers of Iowa, who are truly concerned with the well-being of the food, the farms and the people on them.

This is not about rich v. poor, city v. country or smart v. dumb.  It’s not even I’m right and he’s wrong nor the reverse.  It’s that these issues are only important to those of us who eat, live and breathe on this planet.  It matters to those of us who have to pay for health care, and raise our children, and get and keep a job.  And the positions that the organization I work for, and many others take are not ones designed to attack farmers but rather to support them and all the people who are making food where it should be made: on farms and dairies, in breweries and wineries and vineyards and not in factories.

It was by no means Kathleen Merrigan’s first trip to the Ecological Farming Conference (EcoFarm). But when the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture stood at a podium to address last week’s annual gathering of farmers, retailers, processors, and advocates, it was clear she had never had quite such a crucial role to play at the event. Now on its 30th year, EcoFarm regularly draws a large percentage of those who have been envisioning and shaping the sustainable food movement for years.

Since Merrigan’s appointment to the USDA, she’s been under a great deal of pressure to make big changes happen quickly. She began Friday’s address with a direct plea for patience, much like we have heard from President Obama in recent months. “I come to this job with great ambition — and a great history with many of you in the audience — but also with an understanding that change takes time,” she told the audience.

What follows is a run-down of the major issues Merrigan touched on in her address and in response to audience questions.

National Organic Program Expansion

Last fall, Merrigan played a personal role in appointing Miles McAvoy to head the National Organic Program (NOP) — the program she once helmed. Before Merrigan’s address, McAvoy ran through an in-depth PowerPoint presentation detailing his plans for creating what has been dubbed the “Age of Enforcement” in this regulatory program. After years of making do with a severely limited staff and budget, a shift will be made possible by a recent expansion of the NOP budget, from $3.8 million in 2009 to $6.9 million in 2010.

“We needed to pull in some new leadership and we need to keep working on that budget, because it’s really important,” Merrigan said, “not only for organic [producers] but for all American agriculture, because our organic farmers have, in many ways, been research pioneers.” She also stressed that the whole USDA should be integrating organic into their work. “It’s about time that everything that has to do with organic is not just sent to NOP.” She described her plan to go to all 27 agencies within the department, and say “what are you doing for organic? Who’s your organic point person and what’s your organic agenda?”

Every Family Needs a Farmer

Merrigan has high hopes for the recently launched Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program. She talked about traveling the country examining efforts to reestablish local and regional food systems, taking notes on what needs the department’s support.

When asked by a member of the audience where she sees the program in five years, Merrigan responded: “I’m hoping that it is like what ‘sustainable’ is now. We won’t have to sit around doing creative brainstorming about what it is we need to do to reconnect consumers with their food; it will be embedded in the agenda of every agency in the USDA.”

To ensure that this happens, Merrigan appears to be focused on systematizing the local food infrastructure. The day she spoke, for instance, she and several USDA staff members had just come from visiting a mobile slaughter unit, and she described the lack of small scale meat processing options as “a big structural barrier to sustainability.” The biggest challenge for small meat producers, she continued, is the fact that “Food Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) rules about mobile slaughter aren’t written down anywhere…and that puts a lot of risk into the equation.” Within the month, she added, the USDA will release a mobile slaughter compliance manual along with several instructional webinars. “That should let everyone know the rules of the road,” said Merrigan.

Reaching New Audiences

Merrigan and her staff also appear to be focused on communicating to new audiences using methods that might have sounded strange for an official branch of the government just one year ago. She described the suggestion on the part of her new-media-savvy staff to launch the Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program by inviting a group of bloggers to a small farm, rather than staging a formal press event. And, she also announced plans to start participating in new technology more directly. “They’ve convinced me,” she said. “I’m going to start tweeting, even if I’m not even sure what that means.”

She also described her efforts to engage college students, as she travels around the country, as a way to address what she sees as, “a profound disconnect between consumers and American agriculture.” The night before her arrival at EcoFarm, for example, Merrigan had spoken to an audience of Stanford students, where she employed “a colorful slideshow, combined with multiple choice questions the audience could answer with transmitter devices…handed out before the talk.”

Part of her intent in reaching young audiences, is engaging would-be-farmers, and figuring out how to begin meeting their needs in new ways. “I was at Iowa State, and I can’t tell you how exciting it was for me when a bunch of students stood up and said, ‘I want to be a farmer.’ But when I asked, ‘how many have a business plan?’ maybe two hands were raised. So one big question is how to bring young people — especially those who have grown up on farms and ranches — back into American agriculture. The desire is there, we just need to help them find the pathways.”

Farm to School and Vice Versa

Merrigan described the farm-to-school tactical team she established. “It’s a group of USDA employees from both the food and nutrition and agriculture marketing departments that are currently traveling the country taking stock of the dos and don’ts of farm-to-school programs.” As important as recording the successes, she said, will be documenting what hasn’t worked, so that school systems with stretched budgets can make wise decisions from the get-go, based on models that work.

“USDA really has an opportunity to help farm-to-school programs,” said Merrigan. “We see that as part of Know Your Farmer Know Your Food. And at the same time we want get our research agencies to think about what it means to go school to farm. What can we do in terms of curriculum and connecting farmers and schools? I think that needs to be part of the equation.”

Stimulus Dollars

Merrigan fielded a number of questions about stimulus funding, and addressed the USDA’s use of the money directly. The answer? The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program (formerly know as food stamps). “You know as well as we do that there are a lot of people whose only source of survival is food stamps,” she said.

“The recovery act has allowed for $80 more a month for every [qualifying] family of four,” she continued. “We have an incredible upsurge in participants and we expect that to continue. So we are spending that recovery money in a way that is very meaningful.”

Growing food in winter is the ultimate challenge in colder regions, and lately everyone (even the White House) is doing it. One of the first comments about local food from detractors is, “but what do you eat in winter?” Well, I am here to report that kale, bok choy, radishes, carrots, and beets are still on the menu, as well as the arugula and spinach growing in our cold frame.

The cold frame was a no-brainer to add onto our raised beds; we literally drilled holes in some plexi-glass that we bought at our local hardware store and connected the pieces to the side of one of the beds using door hinges. They work fine for low-growing plants, as we have about seven inches of space between the soil and the lid. A thick layer of mulch and warm compost will keep the temperature up inside the growing space. However, if you want to have more options and grow longer into the winter, you could buy curved metal piping and cover it with Reemay fabric, making your very own hoop house.

The White House recorded their recent conversion of the First Garden — which has generated 1000 pounds of vegetables since the spring — into a winter garden, using just this technique. They are even growing a cover crop of rye to add nutrients back to the soil. Check out this new video, which features USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and White House Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass:

Making this video was also an opportunity to announce the USDA’s pilot program (part of Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food) to encourage farmers to use high tunnels, or hoop houses, to inspire year-round growth and bolster local food systems. Growing in all four seasons is possible, and its great to see the USDA throw their weight behind this initiative in support.

Meanwhile, seed catalogs have begun to show up in my mailbox, and I’ve been thinking that seeds make great gifts this holiday season!

Two weeks ago she sent out a local foods memo with the lead in, “Imagine an NGO receiving USDA grant money to construct a community kitchen where farmers drop off produce and families join cooking classes that teach about healthy eating while everyone prepares fresh nutritious meals to bring home…Imagine a community using USDA money to construct an open-sided structure to house a farmers market…Imagine a school using USDA loan money to set up cold storage as part of a larger effort to retrofit the school cafeteria to buy produce directly from farmers and return cooking capacity for school lunch…Imagine…

Sounds like something I would write. But more importantly, it equates to promoting 1.24 billion of existing funds available to grassroots groups to finance the community kitchens, farmers markets, and farm to school distribution networks. That’s not chump change.

Next week she launches Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, a new campaign by the USDA to emphasize the renaissance of American agriculture: vibrant local and regional food systems.

Each day has a different theme:

Monday: General launch with focus on Rural Revitalization (economic development)
Tuesday: Farm to Institution (farm to school, etc)
Wednesday: Healthy Eating (including a celebrity chef cooking at the USDA)
Thursday: Direct Markets (White House starts its own FM)
Friday: Ag is Back! Website launched with national conversation including a live facebook chat with Merrigan

Ag is Back!

Mrs. Obama’s food policy team is led by White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass, and also includes Senior Adviser Jocelyn Frye and Melody Barnes. Over the last few months, Merrigan has been working closely with the First Lady’s team, as has her boss, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, and all of this has been fairly under the radar. But it’s clear the USDA is now completely in line with the First Lady’s goals of more nutritious, healthy foods for everyone, and that the USDA is also interested in supporting smaller and family farmers, with a new focus on local and regional food systems. All this food agenda work is in direct support of many of President Obama’s other goals, too, for a wide range of initiatives, such as saving billions of dollars in health care costs by reducing food-created diseases like obesity and diabetes; better educational achievement, because kids are nourished; keeping local wealth within local economies; reducing climate change…etc. Secretary Vilsack has been talking about these initiatives all summer on the Rural Tour (as well as handing out funding for hundreds of projects).

Merrigan opens her memo by writing “I suspect that many USDA programs are under-utilized by those seeking to build local and regional food systems. I would like to play the role of matchmaker during this administration…I will work to help USDA program administrators to understand how our programs may better serve your efforts to build local and regional food systems…”

Merrigan then continues the memo with a really aspirational “Imagine if” format, in which she sounds exactly like Mrs. Obama–and, more recently, like President Obama. She writes:

Imagine an NGO receiving USDA grant money to construct a community kitchen where farmers drop off produce and families join cooking classes that teach about healthy eating while everyone prepares fresh nutritious meals to bring home…Imagine a community using USDA money to construct an open-sided structure to house a farmers market…Imagine a school using USDA loan money to set up cold storage as part of a larger effort to retrofit the school cafeteria to buy produce directly from farmers and return cooking capacity for school lunch…Imagine…

The First Lady and her team have been busily “imagining” and talking about these things for months; Merrigan’s cooking class idea mirrors the First Lady’s cooking-is-critical initiative, and is perhaps the most unprecedented idea coming from USDA, which has historically given cooking little attention (food safety guidelines are where USDA’s interest in cooking has previously ended). But everyone now seems to be embracing cooking as a crucial component of healthy eating — including bestselling author Michael Pollan, who recently bemoaned the pandemic lack of cooking skills in America. Re-teaching America how to cook has emerged as a major element of the First Lady’s food agenda, under the assumption that it’s impossible to pursue a personal — or public — nutrition agenda if people have no idea what to do with their food. The East Wing, the West Wing, and the USDA have also been busily working to come up with ways to combat the fact that our national dinner plate is not so much devoid of nutritious foods, but swamped with bad foods, which was recently explicated, in grim detail, in this USDA study on food access. Cooking will help greatly. President Obama’s recent announcement of a White House Farmer’s Market is just one more piece of this same pie, so to speak. And it should be noted that encouraging the growth of more local and regional foodsheds will greatly improve food safety, too, which is another West Wing food/Ag initiative, under the rubric of the President’s Food Safety Working Group. Local and regional food producers, because they are smaller in scale, cannot create massive, national food poisoning outbreaks, such as happened with the Peanut Butter Corporation of America salmonella debacle.

After the imagining part of her memo, Merrigan gets completely technical, and provides careful guidelines on how to be successful at applying for what amounts to millions of dollars of state and local USDA cash, and includes eligibility details for funding from the Community Facilities Program, The Business Industry Guarantee Loan Program, and The Value-Added Producer Grant Program. There’s explanations and encouragement and weblinks for applicants on how to get their growing programs, facilities, and organizations funded. It’s one more giant, welcome step towards creating a more balanced food system, working within the structures that already exist, and creating new, complementary ones. For the first time, we’re beginning to have integration of goals and initiatives between USDA and the East Wing and the West Wing. And while a complete paradigm shift will also require private initiatives, especially for school lunch changes (such as United Fresh Produce Association’s new salad bars in schools project), this is an unprecedented move on the part of USDA to support real transformation. Seven short months ago, Merrigan’s memo was almost unimaginable. Today, it was released to little fanfare, proof of how far we’ve rapidly gone in the paradigm shift.

*H/T Deb Eschmeyer, of the National Farm to School Network & Center for Food & Justice, Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College

Originally published on Obamafoodorama

I met Kathleen my first semester at Tufts through two courses that she was instructing, both in the arena of policy and agriculture. Her approaches to teaching policy involved a mix of structural theory, ambiguous creativity, and story telling. One of the underlining themes, which she proposed the first day, was to “think big.” No idea was too ridiculous. While there may be a science to policy making, there is also a human element that keeps it imaginative and inspired. One of my favorite “big ideas” from class was the idea to build grocery stores in the shape of the food pyramid.

Kathleen holds an extraordinary appreciation for democracy and the role of government holding servitude to the people. She made it a point to show our classes how transparent the government really is, and the opportunity (and duty) that each of us has to participate in the rules that govern our land. Following a comment from a student on how struck they were at the “opportunities that exist for any citizen to try to influence policy by adding their voice, if they were just aware that they are out there,” Kathleen walked into the seats, requested the student stand and wrapped her arms around her in gratitude.

Kathleen’s classes were spent looking at many problems with solution based approaches, all the while peering through a historical window. Her background in the organic and sustainable agriculture, pesticides, animal and plant health, marketing, conservation and business, is impressive, but more importantly is her understanding of the processes of government and how to get things done by bringing all interests to the table.

So what can we expect from Kathleen? I think it is worth noting the text by Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, which she uses in class. From this we can see that Kathleen appreciates and utilizes the theories of government and policy that are flexible, yet strategic, that uphold equity and focus on real root problems when developing solutions.

Any special interest group that believes only their agenda is going to be served by this nomination is undermining the process that makes this country great. While this news is in fact the most exciting news for those citizens who know we are overdue for a revamp in the country’s food system, I would argue that the work has only just begun. While Kathleen will help implement Obama and Vilsack’s agenda, it remains our duty to be imaginative and vigilant in solving the problems facing our own communities.

On a personal note, Kathleen has had quite an influence on me. Some of that endearment probably comes from her time spent earning her Masters in my hometown of Austin, but moreover, she has always had an open door and honest and realistic perspective. She is pragmatic and powerful, yet modest and civilized. I am honored to have had the opportunity to learn from ‘the best.’ I know I speak on behalf of all of her students when I say how truly proud I am of her and how excited I am to be in this field during this time. It is a bitter sweet loss for the Tufts community, but I think our “policy window” is wide open.