I e-mailed Michael Pollan to get his reaction to the trial balloon floating Iowa's Tom Vilsack for agricultural secretary. He responded:
And there are concurrent trends worth keeping in mind. In the 1930s, you're talking a country of about 125 million people. Today, with less than a third as many farms, we're a country of 300 million people. Additionally, in the 1930s, farms were extremely labor intensive. Today, they're heavily mechanized, at least in comparison to the labor demands of yesteryear's agricultural sector. Meanwhile, back then, what people ate came out of the agricultural sector. Food essentially equaled agriculture. Today, what we eat is considerably more complicated than what we grow and what we raise. Which is all to say, the Department of Agriculture was built when agriculture was a major employment sector, our primary export, and synonymous with our diets. As an industry, it was integral to our economy and our lives. Today, it's an interest group. It begs subsidies and mainly supports massive corporations.Which brings us back to Pollan's point about a food policy adviser. I'm not sure I'd agree that that's a White House position rather than a cabinet agency or even a sub-cabinet agency. But the general framing is correct: Our country once needed an agricultural policy. Today, it needs a food policy. The agricultural industry no more deserves a cabinet-level agency than the automotive industry or computing industry. But food is a different issue. An array of federal programs deal with nutrition and food security. Given the federal share of health costs, there's a compelling national interest in aligning public policy with public health. Supply chain safety is a relevant national security concern. Coordination among those competing priorities is important. Agriculture is a part of the equation. But in 2008, it's not the whole of it.
Vilsack would be pretty much business as usual, and a disappointment to all the people seeking reform of the food system. From what I've been able to find out, he has not shown much inclination to challenge agribusiness. It could be worse, though-- Collin Peterson has also been on the short list. But as important as USDA is, we also need someone in the White House, a food policy advisor, to help coordinate policy across the Cabinet departments, so that health impacts are considered when write USDA rules, or food safety when writing trade rules, or climate change impacts when drawing the farm bill, etc etc. You need someone who can connect the dots between agriculture and health and energy and climate-- as Obama himself clearly is inclined to do. That won't happen at any one department.Interesting point. There's an argument to be made that the Department of Agriculture is an anachronism. It was first established by Abraham Lincoln, in 1862, as an independent agency headed by a commissioner who did not have cabinet secretary status. Farmers spent the next few decades lobbying, and in 1889, Grover Cleveland elevated the agency and made the Commissioner of Agriculture into the Secretary of Agriculture. Crappier title, but more important meetings.That said, the domestic agricultural industry was rather different in the 1800s than it is in 2008. It was, for one thing, larger. In 1862, farm products made up 82 percent of American exports. And we had a lot more farms. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: That's all well and good, but can you express this in convenient graph form? You know the answer:
And there are concurrent trends worth keeping in mind. In the 1930s, you're talking a country of about 125 million people. Today, with less than a third as many farms, we're a country of 300 million people. Additionally, in the 1930s, farms were extremely labor intensive. Today, they're heavily mechanized, at least in comparison to the labor demands of yesteryear's agricultural sector. Meanwhile, back then, what people ate came out of the agricultural sector. Food essentially equaled agriculture. Today, what we eat is considerably more complicated than what we grow and what we raise. Which is all to say, the Department of Agriculture was built when agriculture was a major employment sector, our primary export, and synonymous with our diets. As an industry, it was integral to our economy and our lives. Today, it's an interest group. It begs subsidies and mainly supports massive corporations.Which brings us back to Pollan's point about a food policy adviser. I'm not sure I'd agree that that's a White House position rather than a cabinet agency or even a sub-cabinet agency. But the general framing is correct: Our country once needed an agricultural policy. Today, it needs a food policy. The agricultural industry no more deserves a cabinet-level agency than the automotive industry or computing industry. But food is a different issue. An array of federal programs deal with nutrition and food security. Given the federal share of health costs, there's a compelling national interest in aligning public policy with public health. Supply chain safety is a relevant national security concern. Coordination among those competing priorities is important. Agriculture is a part of the equation. But in 2008, it's not the whole of it. 
