In his State of the Union address last Wednesday, President Obama covered a lot of ground. His primary goal was to focus on job creation, but he left out one important occupation–in a nation where the average farmer is 57 years old, we need farmers. He mentioned the obesity crisis, noting that the First Lady would be dedicating her efforts there, and then made this comment about doubling our trade in goods and commodity crops in the next five years:

To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security. We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are.  If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.

He has thus far stuck to his word. According to the USDA, $234.5 million is being given to 70 U.S. trade organizations to help promote American food and agricultural products abroad (you can see who this money is going to, from the Cotton Council International, which received a whopping $20 million, to trade reps for perishables like the California Prune Board, which received nearly $3 million). The Farm Bureau is thrilled that this administration is poised to aggressively pursue trade agreement negotiations with other countries as it clearly benefits big producers. So is Republican senator and erstwhile Bush Jr. Secretary of Agriculture nominee Mike Johanns from Nebraska, who had this to say:

With unemployment at 10 percent, we should be pursuing every possible avenue to promote good opportunities for job growth and business investment. Our businesses, farmers, and ranchers produce the highest quality products in the world and deserve an opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

The problem is that places like South Korea have expressed that they don’t want our goods if they contain hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Worse, though, is that our products are not traded on a “level playing field,” but instead are sold at an unfairly low prices in developing countries, made falsely cheap by our subsidy system. Developed world subsidies have been the prime barrier to negotiations at the Doha Development Round trade talks, which began in 2001 and continue to this day with no agreement–which many consider a victory for developing nations. And while Obama seeks to cut subsidies in his budget, it will be an uphill battle, especially without a stricter definition for who is a farmer.

Ben Lilliston, Communications Director for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy had this to say about the administration’s plan for increasing trade:

The goal of doubling commodity trade is not feasible or wise. This emphasis on export markets is odd given that it runs directly counter to a lot of the Administration’s work to support local food systems. And expanding exports would definitely come at the expense of local food systems. The reality is that we’ve tried to expand agriculture exports for the last 50 years. That goal represents a lot of what is wrong in U.S. farm policy: a push to lower commodity prices–to make us more competitive internationally; an emphasis on just a few commodity crops; and support for large-scale operations over smaller, more diversified farms. An emphasis on exports has benefited multinational agribusiness firms, but not farmers either in the U.S., or in other countries. U.S. agribusiness companies have a several decade record of exporting commodity crops like corn, soybeans, rice and wheat at prices below the cost of production–a practice known as dumping. The result has been devastating to poor countries trying to develop their own food production. The loss of food production in many poor countries is a major contributor to growing hunger around the world. What makes the proposal so strange is that the Administration has to know this is not possible. Even agribusiness companies–who I’m sure love the proposal–know it’s not possible to reach.

Here is what trade agreements looks like in action: as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. corn sold cheaper than it could be produced, putting millions of Mexican farmers out of business–simultaneously quashing the diversity of the corn varieties and genetically contaminating locally grown corn with GMOs. As a result, these jobless farmers have made their way across the border to pick fruits and vegetables in America (often in slave-like conditions), or work mind-numbing jobs in slaughterhouses. But NAFTA’s destructive legacy runs deeper still. Last October, Mexico was ordered to pay the corn-processing giant Cargill a $77 million dollar fine for imposing a tax on high fructose corn syrup in an attempt to protect their domestic sugar farmers.

Vilsack’s op-ed focused on rebuilding rural America. However, when dollars leave the farm community headed to corporate multinationals for seed, chemicals and equipment, and the products produced on the farm are not food but commodities that then leave the community too, how can broadband and increased trade be anything more than band-aids for rural America? In the face of facts like climate change, to which agriculture contributes at least 30% of carbon emissions, decreased water availability and uncertain oil resources, trade veils the real problems facing the food system. What we need is balance: balanced opportunities in rural areas, a balanced ecosystem with diversified crops that feed local populations, and a balanced number of farmers to knit that community together. More farmers means more jobs, more stewardship of the land, and better quality food–and as a result, a thriving rural economy.

Up next, watch for the administration to start pressuring Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) to release his hold on Islam Siddiqui, Obama’s nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, who’s pesticide lobbying past is not behind the pause. Indeed, who else but a Big Ag lobbyist could they get to take on such a mission seemingly bound for disaster?

Why does it matter if the Vice President from the trade association representing pesticides and other agricultural chemicals takes over the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the USTR? Well, because that office, according to the USTR website “has overall responsibility for negotiations and policy coordination regarding agriculture.” That means he would oversee the office dedicated to:

Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) Development Agenda (Doha) negotiations on agriculture, operation of the WTO Committees on Agriculture and on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, agricultural regulatory issues (e.g., biotechnology, cloning, BSE, nanotechnology, other bilateral SPS issues, and customs issues affecting agriculture), monitoring and enforcement of existing WTO and FTA commitments for agriculture (including SPS issues), and WTO accession negotiations on agriculture market access, domestic supports and export competition, and SPS matters.

The Chief Agricultural Negotiator is essentially a ‘spokesperson’ for American agriculture (perhaps the ‘bad cop’ to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s ‘good cop’) who is in charge of selling our agricultural products abroad — products of a synthetic agriculture that is dependent on too many oil inputs, too much water and a stable climate to persist as the norm into the future. Here is an official job description for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator from the website Progressive Government:

The Chief Agriculture Negotiator for the United States conducts critical trade negotiations and enforces trade agreements that relate to U.S. agricultural products and services. Also works to expand the access for America’s farmers and agricultural producers to overseas markets and is responsible for directing all U.S. agriculture trade negotiations anywhere in the world. This includes multilaterally in the World Trade Organization (WTO), regionally in the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and bilaterally with various countries and groups of countries such as Australia, Central America, Chile, Morocco, and the South African Customs Union. The ambassador also resolves agricultural trade disputes and enforces trade agreements, including issues related to new technologies, subsidies, and tariff and non-tariff barriers and meets regularly with domestic agricultural industry groups to assure their interests are represented in trade. He or she also coordinates closely with U.S. government regulatory agencies to assure that rules and policies in international trade are based on sound science.

What might a former employee of CropLife think is sound science? And what might his agenda be for expanding our markets abroad? I’m sure Siddiqui is already a regular at agricultural industry meetings, and will be ready and willing to say just what they’d like to hear. (Before CropLife, Siddiqui also served in the Clinton administration under former Ag Secretary Dan Glickman, the Ag Secretary best known for taking part in the sign-off of GM seeds as ‘substantially equivalent’ to other seeds, thus an argument for why they should not be labeled.)

Here is a little bit more about CropLife from Sourcewatch:

The image [the pesticide industry] presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to “promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation.”
…
In March 2004, CropLife poured funding into a campaign to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative – known as Measure H – that would make the country [sic] the first to ban genetically engineered crops. In the lead up the the vote CropLife contributed over $500,000 – more than seven times that of the initiative supporters – to defeat the proposal. Despite the massive campaign against the initiative, the bio-tech industry suffered a humiliating defeat. The measure passed by a margin of 56% to 43%.

In other words, the Obama administration has chosen someone from an organization dedicated at all costs to chemical-based agriculture to represent our trade interests abroad. All in the name of selling more Round-Up and GM seed, as well as siphoning off our excess commodities to China for their growing CAFO industry, all for our own short term economic interests.