How About a National Food and Agriculture Summit Early in Obama’s First Term?
November 16th, 2008There is surely a whirlwind of activity within the sustainable agriculture community as we gear up to meet head-on the opportunities suddenly afforded us in the changed political climate. And as usual, there are many organizations operating more or less independently of each other working up often duplicate policy campaigns without enough communication between them to maximally utilize the collective energies of their constituencies. I hope to see a bit more collaboration and unity in these efforts as we move forward(while recognizing that independence and diversity of thought also have their places).
Michael Pollan’s “Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief” seems to be a blueprint capable of unifying the sustainable ag/food security/environmental stewardship/nutritional health/green energy communities. In a blog post more recently, Pollan calls for a Food Policy Czar: “progress on the all-important issues of energy independence, climate change, and health care costs depends on reform of the food system–and, crucially, an ability to connect all those dots when making policy. The challenge is to align the goals of federal agricultural policy with the goals of public health, energy, and environmental policy (for the first time)…”
Pollan has committed to writing what I’ve felt for all of the 30 years I’ve been involved in the organic movement and sustainable ag - food and agriculture policy and practice are so central to just about all other human activity that the choices we make as a society in this arena profoundly influence the nature of that activity, and of our society. I continue to feel one of the best places to exert pressure to “change the world” is with food and ag policy. So a Food Policy Czar could be a great thing.
That being said, others have written that such a Food Policy Czar might just be a vestige of old-style thinking and that now is the time to explore revolutionary new approaches to solving the unprecedented problems facing humanity.
Perhaps what might be in order then would be to try and get the Obama administration to organize a domestic food and agriculture summit with the question on the table at the outset of whether a Food Policy Czar should be appointed and what might the charter for the position look like, or whether other approaches offer better prospects for the fundamental changes needed. To have a successful summit, it would be important to have some really good people in place within the USDA bureaucracy beforehand. To have a voice in this process, see this.
UPDATE (11/25/2008):
I’m sure many of you heard these two stories on NPR this weekend on Obama’s farm and rural policy agenda. For those of you who missed them, I’ve copied the links to them here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97309054
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=7
I took note of the following: “[Obama] pledged to hold a “rural summit” and deliver a package of rural initiatives to Congress in his first 100 days as president.” If it’s going to happen in time for Obama to have a legislative package ready in the first 100 days, then it must be in full planning swing already.
Here’s what I think: Rural affairs are about a lot more than agriculture and agriculture (and the food it produces) are about a lot more than rural affairs. So I propose we try and urge the Obama administration to hold two, parallel and simultaneous summits, in Washington DC– one for rural issues and the other for food and agriculture issues.
Why? Because while agriculture is intimately involved with rural America, it doesn’t define rural America in the 21st century and, increasingly, agriculture is becoming an urban issue as well (urban agriculture, development encroachment on farmland, food security, etc.) and food affects us all.
I also wonder if the best venue for the twin summits isn’t Washington DC– since they would be Presidential summits and having them in that city would be symbolic of the national, rather than regional, scope of the discussions. I think they might get more publicity in DC as well.
What do y’all think? Do you feel like you have energy to make a push for twin summits?
You could, individually or collectively contact your congressional delegation and urge them to try and influence the Obama Transition Team to organize twin summits. Also, you can send ideas about the summits to the transition team via:
http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople