I was on the phone with noted organic-industry watchdog and thorn-in-the-corporate-side Mark Kastel today, asking about imported organic food (more on this story as it develops) and decided to ask for his take on Pres. Obama’s appointment of Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy USDA Secretary.
"Best thing since sliced bread."
Whatever else one might thing of Mark Kastel and the Cornucopia Institute, Mark and co-conspirator Will Fantle are nothing if not hyperactively tenacious when it comes to, ahem, all things organic. Charging at giants like "Wal-Mart Organics", Dean Foods, and Aurora Organic Dairy, these watchdogs don’t give an inch when it comes to battling Big Organic. In fact, if you’re at all cynical about the organic industry, chances are, your cynicism is traceable to Cornucopia’s whistleblowing.
So if there was a whiff of b.s. in Merrigan’s appointment, Will or Mark would smell it.
"I like Kathleen for three reasons, " Kastel told me. "First, she’s a former [USDA] Agricultural Marketing Service administrator under the Clinton administration. So she was the lowest level political appointee with authority over the National Organic Program. This is the first time that a former AMS administrator has been appointed deputy. So I like that."
"Second, when she was an agricultural advisor for Sen. Patrick Leahy, she wrote the Organic Foods and Production Act. of 1990. We’ve never had such a high-ranking organic rule writer in the USDA before.
"Thirdly, she’s been teaching at Tufts, which is one of the top food colleges in America."
What’s more? She sounds ready to rock the organic world. Kastel said he sent Merrigan a congratulatory email this week and she responded saying that her appointment would probably not go through till April, but, as far as she was concerned, organics was first on her list when she got behind her new desk.
It warms my little organic heart to hear we’ll have someone high up who knows what we’re talking about. After the rogue’s gallery that were short-listed for Ag Sec, this appointment speaks well of Obama’s strategy: keep the mainstream happy with the top pick, but sneak in a reformer at number two.
The news out of the Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse is good, too, in the wake of this appointment. The National Organic Action Plan meeting was held on Thursday before the conference, and there’s going to be a concerted effort to take advantage of the organic movement’s strong ally at Deputy.
Also, with the stimulus bill signed and talk of restructuring payments to farmers, there’s great optimism that money for carbon banking and conservation efforts will flow naturally toward organic farms, production, and research.
Astounding to me. It seems like the whole "real foods/sustainable farming" landscape has been completely altered from the way it looked even a month ago.
(By the way, good to see you, TM!)