The Department of Agriculture put on its "Agricultural Outlook Forum 2009" event last week. It was, as you can imagine, a star-studded event. Jay-Z played. Okay. Maybe Jay-Z did not play. But Secretary Vilsack spoke, and I thought this bit on Washington's inability to think about food politically was worth reproducing:
I was over at the White House not too long ago and a fellow who's fairly high up in the process looked at me, and he said, "Does ag have a building in Washington? I mean, are you in Arlington? Where are you?"[Laughter]I looked at him and I said, "Man, we own half the Mall on the other side!"[Laughter]But it is an indication. It is an indication of our need to speak more specifically and more often about what we do and who we are. Farmers and rancher are by nature a humble lot. They don't really want to talk too much about what they do. They don't want to really focus on how noble their undertaking is. They just go about their work, and they try to get the job done.But this is a day and an age where you've got to market and brand yourself. And if you don't, it will be easy to be forgotten, particularly in this discussion of climate change. When you hear about climate change you hear about the power industry; you hear about heavy industry. You hear about those folks. You hear about transportation; you hear about cars; you hear about emissions standards, CAFÉ standards. You hear about cap and trade applied to industry.And 20 percent of the problem and/or the solution is right in this room, in agriculture; and USDA has to be part of it.
Vilsack is trying to change the understanding of his own agency. Transform it from a department focused on the interests of food producers to a department focused on the policy questions raised by food production. He also said that the president gave him three priorities when he took the gig:
He had three goals for this department in addition to all of the obvious goals. He wanted to make sure that America's children in particular had more nutritious food. He's very, very concerned about the health and welfare of America's children.He wanted to make sure that we did everything we could at USDA to expand energy opportunities, the capacity of our land, our farms, and our ranches to produce alternative forms of energy and fuel. And he wanted to make sure that we worked hard at doing the research necessary to allow, over time, agriculture to transition away from its rather significant dependence today on fossil fuels.
Full speech here.
