Farmer in Chief Redux

I’m still thinking about Michael Pollan’s NY Times article, An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief, which I blogged about yesterday. Pollan’s main thrust is that the next president could address three major "crises du jour" (energy independence, health care costs, and global warming) through a sane farm policy, which Pollan has long advocated calling "food policy."

One of his key strategies is to take down commodities as the central method for feeding ourselves by replacing monocrops of corn, soybeans, etc, with fruits and vegetables, biodiversity, and seasonal growing strategies — what he calls a "resolarization" of U.S. farming. By converting farm fields currently dedicated to Farm Bill commodity crops to real ingredients that people can actually cook with, we’ll create a true food system, according to Pollan. Read the article if you want to read his specifics on how this would benefit the environment and public health — chances are his arguments are self-evident to most readers of this blog.

But because the article is cogent, penetrating, and proposes a wildly ambitious ag agenda, I decided to pull up the two candidates’ position papers on agriculture to see if either of them come close to addressing the dismantling of King Corn, the way Pollan does. Neither do — I know, you’re shocked.

McCain, in particular, draws only a vague distinction between industrial and small-scale farming (he refers to all farms as "family farms,"  though he does fire off a few bullet points on small farms as small businesses), doesn’t bother to even mention organic farming though it’s the fastest growing sector of US ag, and the word "local" in relation to farming and food does not appear at all. One could sum up McCain’s ag position as "deregulate and cut taxes," which is exactly the ag policy of the last eight years — it’s gotten us nothing except a fatter populace and a filthier environment.

Judging by his position paper, Obama has at least heard of the issues facing rural america and small farmers. But damn he’s a windy son of a bitch. And breezy too. Check this one out:

 Support Local Family Farmers with Local Foods and Promote Regional Food System Policies

Nice header, right? At least the dude’s addressing exactly what needs to be addressed. But here’s how Obiden will "promote" and "support" such policies: 

Farming is a vanishing lifestyle. Less than one million Americans claim farming as their primary occupation. Those farmers who sell directly to their customers cut out all of the middlemen and get full retail price for their food – which means farm families can afford to stay on the farm, doing the important work which they love. 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 he will implement USDA policies that promote local and regional food systems.

Our policy is to promote policy. Hooray!  

That’s not to say that Obama doesn’t get it. He does. Probably the biggest, coolest promise in his position paper is how to address confined livestock operations, called CAFOs:

Regulate CAFOs

[Obiden] has supported legislation to set tough air and water pollution limits for livestock operations, including limits on nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and other pollutants. In the Obama Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will strictly monitor and regulate pollution from large CAFOs, with fines for those who violate tough air and water quality standards. Obama strongly supports efforts to ensure meaningful local control.

It’s all right there in the header. Thank you for this, Barry. Thank you for treating me like a grown up and for addressing the issue like one, too. Because here’s what the Bush administration’s EPA is proposing for CAFO’s and reporting such pollutants.  Awesome!

This is cool, too, though less exacting:  

Bring Farms to Schools

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will … allow schools to give priority to local sources when ordering food. Currently the USDA prohibits schools from requesting local products during the bidding process. 

That’s pretty good. Meager, but it’s a potent little initiative that could really open up local markets. Unfortunately, school systems are so overspent that it’s hard to imagine how this would really work without broader spending and more infrastructural changes (will we actually hire cooks to prepare food at schools, to replace the professional can openers who currently run school kitchens?)   

As for organics?

Encourage Organic and Sustainable Agriculture:  

…Increase funding for the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program to help farmers afford the costs of compliance with national organic certification standards. [Obiden] will also reform the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency’s crop insurance rates so that they do not penalize organic farmers.  

Eh. This is barely bare minimum support, hardly the kind of "encouragement" we might expect, and it keeps organics at the "back of the bus" of U.S. ag. You want to impress me on organics? Promise to name a sec of ag who is actually friendly to organics. Make the integrity of organic standards a priority of your USDA. We’re no where near Pollan’s bold resoalrization plan, not by a country mile.

But while I’m left smirking at McCain and I’m completely underwhelmed  by Obama, I do sense the framework, the seeds, if you will, of a response that could grow into something bolder. for US food policy in Obama’s positions. Indeed, by singling out school lunches, regional food systems, CAFOs, and "encouraing" organics, I sense that Obama is sending signals to our community that he gets what we’re doing. And judging by Pollan’s far-bolder food policy proposals, which take those same seeds but puffs them up into a fully flowered program, I sense that Pollan read Obama’s position paper and decided to address the democrat’s points under the conceit of talking to the "president elect."  (Safe bet.)

I find all this very intriguing, since Pollan has a history of single handedly changing the minds of people in positions of power. The famous dialogue between Michael Pollan and John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, led to Mackey creating a broader local foods initiative for that corporation. Could Pollan have such an influence on the next president?

Maybe, but more likely, if anyone is going to take down King Corn, it’s going to be an obese diabetic and an enterprising lawyer following the tobacco litigation model. No politician had the political will to take out King Tobacco, one on one, so it took a wide swath of cigarette smoking cancer sufferers and their lawsuits to finally knock tobacco down to size. Some plaintiff is going to have to come along and draw straight lines between the product liability of high–fructose corn syrup, the flagrant marketing of such products at children, and the complete lack of health warnings on such products ("drinking a twelve pack of Coke every day could lead to type 2 diabetes and obesity"), and  the serious public health threat that a Farm Bill supported national diet of fast foods and soft drinks creates. 

Litigation. That’s the only way that King Corn is going to topple, Mr. Pollan. Don’t pin your hopes on windy senators from a corn state who has close ties to Archer Daniels Midland.