Vilsack: Slow Change We Can Believe In

In announcing his choice of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture on Wednesday, President-elect Obama talked about how the Department of Agriculture is "designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence-peddlers, but family farmers and the American people." In his own remarks, Vilsack said much the same.

But the people who have been hoping for radical change in America's food policy will be disappointed, because Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, is all about industrial agriculture, subsidies, and ethanol.

Or at least, that's his history. No Iowa politician can be otherwise. It could be that Vilsack (not to mention Obama, who likewise had to sign on to Big Corn's agenda to win the Iowa caucuses) recognizes that our food system as presently constituted is not sustainable, and will push for change.

If so, however, that change is likely to be incremental.

Vilsack gets high marks from some environmentalists for his stances on global warming and conservation. But his support of federal subsidies, including for ethanol, has many of them worried.

The Des Moines Register on Wednesday noted that both Obama and Vilsack "are regarded as staunch advocates of ethanol and other bio-fuels as a way to reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil."

And ethanol will likely be at the top of the Vilsack's agenda, since that industry has requested billions of dollars in federal money, (on top of the billions of dollars it is already getting) as part of Obama's stimulus package.

In Wednesday's announcement, Obama said "Tom understands that the solution to our energy security will be found not in energy fields abroad but in our farm fields here at home."

But as much as Vilsack has been forced to pay fealty to Big Corn, he doesn't seem to be an outright patsy. As the Register notes, he co-chaired a task force last year on global warming for the Council on Foreign Relations. The group recommended phasing out subsidies for corn-based ethanol and reducing tariffs on biofuels such as Brazil's sugar-derived ethanol.

"Phasing out" is the key phrase here. Vilsack wants to shift subsidies away from corn-based ethanol, but when he says so, he doesn't mention that corn is a terrible crop from which to derive fuel; he says simply that there's not enough of it to support the biofuels industry.

"The current system is built on subsidies that are being provided and people have made investments based on relying on those subsidies," he told The Mac Weekly - the newspaper of St. Paul's Macalester College -- last month. "There isn't going to be enough corn to produce the kind of demand that we're going to have for ethanol.

"And then, over time, as that industry matures, there will be a need for ratcheting down the subsidies because the market will take over and there will be an opportunity for additional profits from the market the way it ought to be."

In other words, Big Corn need not worry much. Vilsack certainly wouldn't be the corn industry's first choice, but for the time being, he's not about to cut off its welfare payments.

During this period of deflation, it's difficult to remember that the long-term trend in the food economy is toward shrinking supplies and rising prices. Vilsack, in several op-ed articles in recent months and in his interview with The Mac Weekly, says that corn-based ethanol isn't to blame. Ethanol "may very well be a factor but it is by no means the most important factor, and there are a multitude of other factors that are more significant in terms of rising food costs."

More important is "the cost of oil and the cost of energy to put the crop in and to harvest the crop and to fertilize it, all of which is petroleum based."

Right, and that cost applies to the production of ethanol, and to all the other crops and meats produced by the industrial food system that is so heavily supported by federal largesse.

Vilsack allowed in the interview that "there are these forces, and you kind of have to transition from corn-based ethanol," but "at the same time recognize that as you transition, you don't want to harm what's already in place and you want to keep benefiting the people that are sort of the backbone of our agricultural system. And I think that can be done."

It's not yet clear how Vilsack might address other agribusiness issues, such as regulation of feedlots or genetically modified foods. But the environmental news site Grist notes that as a state senator, Vilsack voted to take away some of the power of counties to regulate environmentally nightmarish CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). Grist also notes that the Biotechnology Industry Organization named him "Governor of the Year" in 2001 because, that group said, of his "support of the industry's economic growth and agricultural biotechnology research."