Secretary of Food
I really want to write about woks. But how can I contemplate the appearance of woks in the 3rd or 4th century AD in China when one of the burning issues of American policy is upon us. Should the Secretary of Agriculture be re-named the Secretary of Food?
Really, I have to pinch myself. Nicholas Kristof is devoting an op-ed to this in the New York Times today. I have no particular brief for one government department or another. Cumbersome as government is, ideally they should change as circumstances change. If the Department of Agriculture no longer fulfills a national function, then it should go.
But I don’t see any argument to this effect in Kristof’s piece. He just meanders about: his childhood on a cherry farm and two-liners against industrial agriculture. As near as he comes to an argument is that when 35% of Americans (working Americans? families?) engaged in agriculture, a Department of Agriculture made sense. Now only 2% work this way, it would be better to change it to Department of Food since all Americans eat.
Well, hmm, yes. It’s true all Americans eat. But are government departments created and closed on the basis of how many people engage in an activity? I thought it had more to do with considerations of the national good. But leave that to one side.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Agriculture is not just about producing food. It produces raw materials for industry.
For example, the US is the second biggest producer of cotton in the world. Cotton is a 25 billion dollar a year industry (the proposed bailout of the automotive industry is for 14 billion) and it creates 400,000 jobs. And what about timber for building, and paper pulp, and starch? Forget about the misbegotten ethanol scheme. Even without that the Department of Agriculture oversees far more than food.
And then there’s the small point that the Department of Agriculture oversees a huge export industry.
And what would this new Secretary of Food do? Would he compete with Health and Human Services on nutrition? With the FDA on safety? With the EPA on the environment? And if he’s really concerned about food, would he start policing food processors? After all, food processors play at least as big a role in creating the food we eat as do farmers.
Look, there are serious issues about food. But once again the New York Times is just blowing the opportunity to address them.
‘Secretary of Food’ sounds Orwellian to me.
Dear Rachel–
I think Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed is meant to open the discussion on the food emergencies (economic, nutritional, and social) in the United States.
He’s not suggesting that we ignore what else agriculture means (and of course, you are right to point out that much of what is cultivated is raw material for industry). But no writer in NY TIMES has the luxuries of time and column-length that we bloggers enjoy. So his piece is meant to be arresting. And by the volume of comments– which the TIMES had to finally curtail– Mr. Kristof DID get people thinking and writing….
Though Mr. Kristof is less strident a satirist, he knows the value of an over-the-top utterance. The tradition is a long one: look back back to Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” That shook up people in1729. Kristof and a great many others, ourselves included, want to do it in the 21st century.
Holly Chase
holly@almostitalian.com
THX4 your comments!
Wishing to turn narrow sentimental ideas into governmental policy is a frightening stance in any department.
Thanks all, for the comments. Holly, I have problems too with food in the US though I tend to think that few nations at few times in history have had fewer problems than the US now does. But that’s by the by because problems always need to be tackled.
And my worry with Kristof (and with Pollan whom he appears to buy hook, line and sinker) is that I am not persuaded either by their diagnosis–big industrialised agriculture is the cause of America’s food problems–or by their solution–turn back the clock, return to the small family farm, etc. etc. This comment is not the place to follow that up. I’ve begun to address it in some posts on Pollan’s Commander-in-Chief and will return to it on a regular basis.
Ciao Rachel! I thought it was an odd article for Kristoff and an odd follow up to his editorial on iodine, which had me googling around for info on natural sources of iodine. Maybe he’s just waking up to the food issues on the home turf? Most born-again eaters seem to start with Pollan before they start to think for themselves.
I think he was just trying to punch some buttons and gauge sentiment from a wider segment of the population. I have to agree that it does sound Orwellian.
Thanks Judith. And I think you are perhaps right that Pollan is a good first wake up call.