A lot of ink, airtime, and media megabytes are being used to cover the huge number of elections going on all around the nation right now. One of the most important is getting very little coverage, even though it affects every single person in my home state and indeed the US in very personal ways. It is the race for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture.

Unless you are part of the less-than-two-percent of America that are farmers, you might ask yourself why such a race could be important to you. Look at it this way, the issues in this race are only important to those who eat, and if you eat you are a part of agriculture.

Francis Thicke (it’s pronounced “Tick-ee”) is the only candidate for the office with the vision needed to put the power in the hands of the farmer. In one sense he means to do so literally, with a comprehensive plan for on-farm power generation that will free our farms from the choking yoke of foreign oil.

He also wants power back in the hands of local communities, seeking to overturn the legislation (forced through by large corporate interests) that keeps counties and other local governments from having a voice in whether to allow big polluting hog factories in their jurisdictions. He wants regulations with teeth and enough inspectors to carry out the regulations, so that horrible cases like the recent salmonella outbreak at two Iowa egg factories do not recur. Best of all, he wants crop diversity and local food production so that Iowa, an agricultural state, needn’t import 90 percent of its food as it does right now. That’s $7.2 billion that leaves Iowa every year, never to return. The more food we buy from local sources, the more of that money that stays here.

Consider it this way: Johnson County, for example, has about 50,000 households. If each of those households redirected just ten dollars of their existing weekly grocery budget toward something local–from a farmers market, a CSA, or eggs from the farmer down the road–it would keep $26 million in the local economy. Imagine the impact if that were to happen statewide, in all 99 counties, with all 3.5 million Iowans.

Some may feel that they don’t want government telling them what to eat. Bad news for them: the government is already telling you what to eat, successfully, and it is mostly very unhealthy for you and your children. It is however quite healthy for the bottoms lines of a few very large, mostly out-of-state chemical and biotech firms, which is why they want Iowans to re-elect Bill Northey, and why they’ve given so much out-of-state money to Mr. Northey’s campaign.

Francis Thicke has been a professional farmer for nearly 30 years. He has a PhD in soil science, and decades of hands-on farm and public service experience. He is beholden to no corporate or out-of-state interests at all.

For the most change you can create in this election, I urge Iowans to vote for Francis Thicke for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. If you’re from out-of-state, I urge you to lend your voices.

Originally published on The Huffington Post

Being Secretary of Ag is a big deal in America. The USDA is not only one of the oldest federal agencies, but one of the largest.  Boasting an annual budget of more than $90 billion, the USDA employs over 100,000 people throughout the U.S., many at the county level.  In addition to overseeing ag (including some aspects of food safety, like meat inspection), the USDA is also responsible for national nutrition programs, including food stamps and school lunches, programs that daily impact the lives of urban and rural residents alike. Perhaps more than any other U.S. agency, the USDA directly impacts the daily life of Americans. In a nation that has often defined itself by its agricultural productivity and special relationship with the land, the USDA has perhaps also been invested with larger meaning.  We were a nation of farmers at origin: we are still a nation of farmers at heart.

Anticipating an announcement of Vilsack’s selection early last week, I stayed up half one night rereading one of my favorite books, New Frontiers, written in 1934 by another Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Agard Wallace.  (There have actually been two secretaries of Ag named Henry Wallace. Henry A. Wallace’s father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, held the position from 1921-1924. Henry A. Wallace, the 11^th Secretary, held the position from 1933-1940, when he was elected to serve as FDR’s wartime Vice President. He also served as Secretary of Commerce for one year, under Truman).

Those who know me well quickly learn that I deeply admire Henry A. Wallace, who oversaw the most radical and sweeping restructuring of agricultural life in America’s history, as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.  My affection is not unexamined: Wallace’s work was controversial then, and the policies he helped develop and implement are often criticized today.   Some were indefensible; the destruction of crops when millions of Americans were starving led even Wallace to concede that these “were not acts of idealism in any sane society…”

But Wallace had vision. Grand vision. He understood agriculture. And he understood that his generation needed to face both ways at once: to pull strength from the lessons of American pioneers and frontier experiences, but also to develop new ways of thinking and responding to the enormous challenges presented by the Great Depression and a changing American cultural and economic landscape. We’re at the place again in American life.

Wallace sought economic equality and balance, and knew that any possibility of achieving that required some sort of reform that would challenge long-held beliefs.  “The hard but necessary first lesson we must all learn is that we cannot prosper separately,” he once wrote. While I could argue with Wallace’s acceptance of the inevitability of “bigness” in American life (government and business, including agriculture), he helped initiate changes that were needed during that period to make agriculture and the nation more vibrant.

If you’ve read VictoryGrower on more than a casual basis, you know that I believe that America needs a New New Deal, especially vis-à-vis the food system.  While Mr. Vilsack may not have been the first choice of many people, I think he has an opportunity to make an enormous and positive impact.

My advice to the incoming Ag Secretary: Channel another son of Iowa, Henry Agard Wallace.  Read everything he wrote. Focus on Wallace’s visionary nature and the size of his ideas. Don’t accept the inevitability of bigness in the food system. Instead, perhaps the “big idea” here represents a smaller focus: helping to recreate local and regional food systems.   Take incredibly good ideas – like school lunch programs – and incorporate new elements that encourage local sourcing. Take USDA-sponsored programs, such as the Master Gardeners and 4-H Youth Development Programs, and leverage these hundreds of thousands of youth and adult volunteers to create an army of foot soldiers to support school, home and community garden programs across the nation. (A bonus for you: coming full circle with 4-H in Iowa, which had some of the earliest clubs, and where the organization’s Clover symbol originated). Take a really good idea from the USDA/Food Administration, and revive Victory Gardens.  And like Henry Wallace did in WWII, make sure to cultivate your own garden at home.   As someone who has worked extensively with Master Gardeners, 4-H and the concept of Victory Gardens, I’d be happy to chat with your staff about these ideas, on my own dime. They’re good ideas. As Secretary of Ag, you could make them happen, and I pledge my full support.  Can we talk?

The basic idea of all of the above: use the USDA’s vast resource base of employees, volunteers and cooperating agencies (states, school districts, etc.), and capitalize on the agency’s geographical reach to build and rebuild sustainable and healthy American communities in all senses of the word.

I’d also suggest that you and your staff read about the cultural, intellectual and social life – and the policies – of the New Deal. Something tells me there are some good lessons there.  In addition to Wallace’s own words, David Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear is a rollicking good read (it won the Pulitzer Prize). If you don’t have time to get through all 936 pages, at least read the sections on the New Deal and agricultural reform.  (And to get an idea of how this all got set up, read chapter 13 of William Leuchtenburg’s Perils of Prosperity, appropriately entitled “Smashup.” Heck, read the whole thing – it’s short and you won’t be able to put it down).   You may also wish to snag a copy of Richard Pells’ “Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years”.

Near the end of New Frontiers, Wallace wrote “Too many of us want to see “normalcy” restored, in the old sense, and live again in plenty without facing facts. That cannot be. The world has changed.”

Indeed it has. And under your leadership, the USDA has an opportunity to respond in new and visionary ways to these changes. Please take the opportunity to effect real change, Secretary Vilsack. And count me in to help.

Today President-elect Obama announced that former Iowa governer Tom Vilsack, who has a history of dealings in favor of agri-business, will be his Secretary of Agriculture.  This is a disappointment for many grassroots organizers and food policy activists, who had hope that the President-elect and his team would take a leaf from the petition, signed by over 55,000 individuals, which suggested sustainable and qualified choices for the position and represented a true change for the way the government views food production in our nation.  It is clear that while our new president will bring much needed change to how we do business in other realms in Washington, that food has not yet become a part of that equation.

For some background on Vilsack, Tom Philpott gives a sense of his legislative history on food-related issues at Grist.  It is clear from what President-elect Obama said today, that he intends to further push biofuels and even biotech:

“To lead a Department of Agriculture that helps unlock the potential of a 21st century agricultural economy, I can think of no one better than Tom Vilsack. As Governor of one of our most abundant farm states, he led with vision, promoting biotech to strengthen our farmers and fostering an agricultural economy of the future that not only grows the food we eat, but the energy we use. Tom understands that the solution to our energy crisis will be found not in oil fields abroad but in our farm fields here at home. That is the kind of leader I want in my cabinet.”

I encourage those of you who, like me, are fighting for a better food system not to be discouraged.  It is our job to keep pushing and protesting until Washington understands how serious the issues surrounding our methods of food production in this country are.  I take inspiration from the workers at the Chicago factory that was shut down earlier this month, and by Obama’s encouragement of their protest.  We must insist that we be heard, and continue to ride the wave of hope, because we know that we have an incoming President who is at last receptive.

Yesterday evening, while we were all polishing off the leftovers of our Thanksgiving feasts, Bill Moyers Journal featured Michael Pollan speaking about the changes he proposed for our food system in his article Farmer-in-Chief, from the New York Times Magazine.  The article has developed a life of its own, and a following of individuals who have proposed Pollan be selected as the next Secretary of Agriculture.  But Pollan states that he has “an understanding of [his] strengths and limitations,” and that being a part of a government system so beholden to corporate agribusiness would make it very hard for any independent-minded person to get things done.  What he proposes instead, is the appointment of a White House food policy czar (another job he would not like to be selected for), who would connect the dots between the health crisis, hurtles to energy independence, failing education and immigration policies, and global warming, which all have roots in the food system currently in place.  His argument for this position was that there is “a war going on between the public health goals of the government and the agricultural policies. And only someone in the White House can force that realignment of those goals.”

While this interview focused more broadly and for the general public on the nuts and bolts of how exactly we are “eating oil” (fertilizer, pesticides and food transport over long distances), and how we are subsidizing fast food (commodity subsidies focus on corn and soy, which is mostly processed, and fed to cows and pigs), many important issues were brought up.  Not shying away from the debate over the future of oil resources, Pollan encouraged learning to grow some of your own food, and building relationships in the local economy.  “When the oil runs out, we’re going to need to be able to feed ourselves from within 100, 200, 300 miles,” he said.  He also touched again on our food insecurity, bringing home the point by example, “having a highly centralized food system such as we have where one hamburger plant might be grinding 40 or 50 million burgers in a week, where one pre-bagged salad plant is washing 26 million servings of salad in a week, that’s very efficient, but it’s also very brittle or very precarious. Because if a microbe is introduced into that one plant, by a terrorist or by accidental contamination, millions of people will get sick. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to your food safety. You want to decentralize.”

He also beat the drum on two of Alice Waters’ pet projects, school lunch (“Lunch should be educational. Right now the school lunch program is a disposal scheme for surplus agricultural commodities… Let’s look at it in a different way. This should be about improving the health of our children. So maybe it belongs in Health and Human Services. Maybe it belongs in Education. [Let's] get the Department of Agriculture’s hands off of it.”) and putting a garden on the White House lawn (“Eleanor Roosevelt put a victory garden in, in the White House in 1942… over the objections of the Department of Agriculture, who thought it was going to hurt the food industry if people started growing food at home… And by the end of the war, there were 20 million victory gardens… producing 40 percent of the fresh produce in America.”)

Its worth watching here, as there is also a video about the urban farming and farmer’s markets in East New York, Brooklyn.

Photo: Austin Kleon, Mindmap of Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food