We have to quit subsidizing agribusiness. We need policies that encourage the building of local food economies, not ones that depend heavily on fossil fuel transport. We need reform of regulatory codes that purport to protect the public's health, but really shield agribusiness from local competition. Joel Salatin is a libertarian Evangelical farmer who is a hero of us "small is beautiful" agrarian types. He argues that the best thing the government can do is to get out of the way and let America's small farmers compete in a truly free market. This is not what you're going to hear from ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, reportedly in the lead to be your Agriculture Secretary. Mr. President, selling out to Big Corn is not change we can believe in.May I suggest dinner? Let agribusiness lobbyists feed their faces at The Palm. You break bread at the White House with guests like Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan and Will Allen, the urban gardener who just won a MacArthur Foundation grant for teaching inner-city folks how to raise their own food. Lend them your sympathetic ear. And by the way, why not set a good example by planting a kitchen garden on the White House lawn?
Just so we're clear, we social and religious conservatives are going to stand against you when we think you're wrong. But taking care of the land and building traditional food cultures are areas where conservatives and liberals can not only find common ground, but sow seeds in it that will bear good fruit for us all.
Obama, food policy and a White House dinner
Friday November 21, 2008
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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we will still _need_ to move
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And here's another environmental campaign--join religious communities from all political persuasions in ending mountaintop removal.
http://www.ilovemountains.org/resolutions
George Mason University's Mercatus Center (admittedly of the free-trade/economic libertarian persuasion) released a policy memo last month critiquing the logic of "food miles." It's worth a gander.
I am certainly on board with enhancing local food networks - I just have no romantic illusions that these networks will, could, or should overtake the current trade system across state and national boundaries. I support a move toward localism as a matter of degree.
Vilsack will not be Ag Secretary. Look for Tom Buis of NFU, or possibly Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD). Both would be likely to largely maintain the status quo in American agriculture, especially given that the '08 Farm Bill is already firmly in place for the next five years. Dissidents to the current system should be mobilizing for 2013, when the next Farm Bill and the next major reform of the EU's agricultural system will take place.
www.2ndapology.wordpress.com
Apologies for the messy post and "Your Name."
Dear Rod,
I would gladly begin a write-in campaign at my college to support this idea. We have a significant body of faculty, staff, and students who greatly respect the canon of Berry and Pollan. I do not think your article alone can catch the attention of President-Elect Obama, but a stack of letters with your article and a personal letter in support of this concept may move his administration to consider inviting these prophets to the White House. What do you say? E-mail me if you are interested.
Regards,
Dan Webster
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