Our Food System Is Broken and Biden’s USDA Pick Won’t Fix It – Tom Vilsack showed his pro-corporate colors when he served as Obama's ag secretary. To build a just food system under his leadership, we will have to push from below.

In 2009 Tom Vil­sack was among five of Pres­i­dent Obama’s cab­i­net nom­i­nees to be con­firmed by unan­i­mous con­sent of the U.S. Sen­ate. That he was a non-con­tro­ver­sial pick for Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary (USDA) spoke to the fact that, like his pre­de­ces­sors in pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions, his strong ties to cor­po­rate agribusi­ness made him very accept­able to farm-state law­mak­ers. He was a safe choice then and as Pres­i­dent-elect Biden now fills out his cab­i­net, Vil­sack is, again, a safe choice at USDA.

While Vil­sack is more than accept­able to Repub­li­cans and the cen­trist wing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, his nom­i­na­tion was a red flag to reformist pro­gres­sives, small farm and envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates. Vil­sack­’s nom­i­na­tion means step­ping back to the same old same old of Obama’s ag pol­i­cy that did lit­tle to pro­mote pro­gres­sive poli­cies that would give farm­ers fair prices, lim­it cor­po­rate con­sol­i­da­tion, rebuild rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, dis­cour­age overuse of pes­ti­cides and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Con­fined Ani­mal Feed­ing Oper­a­tions (CAFOs) or pro­vide land access to women, peo­ple of col­or and begin­ning farmers.

No doubt almost any­one mov­ing into the ​“big office” at USDA would be an improve­ment over cur­rent Ag Sec­re­tary Son­ny Per­due, with his sup­port for the con­tin­u­ing trend of con­sol­i­da­tion in agri­cul­ture, his ​“the big get big­ger and the small go out” phi­los­o­phy, pen­chant to de-reg­u­late agri­cul­ture, dis­dain for organ­ic farm­ing, per­pet­u­a­tion of racist poli­cies with­in the USDA, sup­port for fac­to­ry farm­ing and his feel­ing that cli­mate sci­ence is a ​“joke.” Not a high bar.

Being the safe choice for the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion hard­ly equates with Vil­sack being the choice of rur­al Amer­i­cans. Of course agribusi­ness cor­po­ra­tions and com­mod­i­ty farm­ers wel­come his return to USDA, but the ​“agri­cul­ture in the mid­dle” got lit­tle sup­port from Sec­re­tary Vilsack.

Under Vil­sack, coun­try of ori­gin label­ing for beef and pork was repealed. A series of cross-coun­try lis­ten­ing ses­sions on com­pe­ti­tion and anti-trust enforce­ment with­in the ag indus­try joint­ly host­ed by USDA and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice in 2010 drew thou­sands of farm­ers to tes­ti­fy about the unfair prices they were paid in a high­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed mar­ket­place. The hear­ings, it was thought, offered hope. Vil­sack lis­tened yet did noth­ing to foment change.

Under Vilsack’s lead­er­ship USDA failed to reverse decades of insti­tu­tion­al racism against Black farm­ers, even as USDA was forced to set­tle law­suits for bil­lions of dol­lars admit­ting dis­crim­i­na­tion against African Amer­i­can, Native Amer­i­can, Lat­inx and women farm­ers and ranch­ers. No won­der USDA has been called ​“the last plan­ta­tion”.

His impru­dent fir­ing of Shirley Sher­rod, USDA’s Geor­gia direc­tor of rur­al devel­op­ment, is still remem­bered in Geor­gia and makes one won­der if Geor­gians see him as a safe choice. Despite pres­sure from farm, envi­ron­men­tal, labor and hunger groups both urban and rur­al to nom­i­nate Ohio Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­cia Fudge as USDA Sec­re­tary, a posi­tion she was well qual­i­fied for and active­ly pur­sued, she was instead nom­i­nat­ed for Sec­re­tary of Hous­ing and Urban Development.

Pres­sure from cor­po­rate agribusi­ness demand­ed a con­tin­u­a­tion of the sta­tus quo that serves their inter­ests, not that of rur­al or urban Amer­i­cans, food chain work­ers or those who depend on the USDA nutri­tion pro­grams that Mar­cia Fudge knows so well. The sta­tus quo isn’t work­ing. ​“We need some­one with vision for a just food sys­tem,” said Joe Maxwell, pres­i­dent of Fam­i­ly Farm Action. John Boyd, pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Black Farm­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, who cam­paigned for Mr. Biden and worked with his tran­si­tion team, said, ​“I want­ed some­one new” at USDA.

While in his first go-round at USDA, Vil­sack did state that ​“local and region­al food sys­tems are about oppor­tu­ni­ty,” there seemed to be lit­tle effort to make those sys­temic changes hap­pen. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma select­ed organ­ic advo­cate Kath­leen Mer­ri­g­an as Deputy Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture and Vil­sack seemed com­mit­ted to rais­ing the pres­ence of organ­ic agri­cul­ture at USDA. Plant­i­ng the ​“Peo­ples Gar­den” and plac­ing a bee­hive on the roof of the USDA build­ing in Wash­ing­ton along with Michelle Obama’s organ­ic White House Kitchen Gar­den and bee­hive on the South Lawn of the White House gave an indi­ca­tion that per­haps the admin­is­tra­tion and Vil­sack were ready to take the USDA in a new direc­tion. But old habits are hard to break and Vil­sack, once named the ​“Biotech Gov­er­nor of the Year,” was more inclined to approve bio-tech crops than he was to sup­port organ­ic farmers.

In his posi­tion head­ing the U.S. Dairy Export Coun­cil (USDEC) for the past three years, Vil­sack found him­self in a real conun­drum. The cheese he want­ed to export is a com­mod­i­ty no one real­ly wants. Last fall, Rogue Riv­er Blue was named ​“Best Cheese in the World.” It is made exclu­sive­ly with milk from Rogue Cream­ery’s Cer­ti­fied Organ­ic Dairy Farm, where cows graze on pas­tures bor­der­ing the Rogue Riv­er, in Ore­gon, a far cry from the com­mod­i­ty cheese from CAFO farms that’s pil­ing up in cold stor­age. Vil­sack just­ly applaud­ed Rouge Riv­er. ​“This is more than a win for Rogue Cream­ery of Cen­tral Point, Ore­gon,” he said. ​“The ​‘Best Cheese’ title cre­ates a halo effect that will cause glob­al cus­tomers to look at all U.S. cheeses in a brighter light.” Real­ly? Amer­i­can cheese sin­gles may sell at the con­ve­nience stores, but clear­ly not on the world market.

As head of USDEC, Vilsack’s answer to the sur­plus of U.S. dairy pro­duc­tion was to demand an open mar­ket into Cana­da, in effect forc­ing the Cana­di­ans to dis­man­tle their wide­ly sup­port­ed dairy sup­ply man­age­ment sys­tem that has kept their farm­ers prof­itable. That trou­bles many small and medi­um-sized U.S. dairy farm­ers who feel imple­ment­ing sup­ply man­age­ment here might be their last, best hope to end the wild fluc­tu­a­tions in milk prices which, for decades, have been con­sis­tent­ly below the cost of pro­duc­tion. Mr. Vil­sack­’s solu­tion for low farm-gate prices and the grow­ing prob­lem of sur­plus dairy pro­duc­tion — increas­ing dairy exports — has not worked.

In a Sep­tem­ber inter­view, Mr. Vil­sack (at the time an advis­er to the Biden cam­paign) said ​“I don’t think most farm­ers want gov­ern­ment pay­ments,” not­ing a ​“need for new poli­cies that sup­port a more resilient farm sec­tor.” Under a Biden admin­is­tra­tion, he added, ​“the USDA could set up region­al food-sup­ply mar­kets and direct fed­er­al incen­tives to farm­ers who adopt cli­mate-friend­ly prac­tices.” Right on!

Let’s give Vil­sack cred­it for embrac­ing that kind of think­ing. And let’s lift up the idea of a just food sys­tem, feed our­selves, pay our farm­ers and farm work­ers fair­ly and pay every­one else a fair wage — as Bernie Sanders says, ​“a min­i­mum of 15 bucks an hour.” Let’s admit that forc­ing over-pro­duc­tion of dairy, or any com­mod­i­ty, on the world mar­ket is a los­ing game. If folks like Rogue Riv­er and oth­ers can export their spe­cial­ties, more pow­er to ​‘em.

Ricar­do Sal­vadore at Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists stressed that ​“any change in admin­is­tra­tion is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to strike in a new direc­tion. So, obvi­ous­ly, going back to a [USDA] sec­re­tary of the past is not the way to strike in a new direc­tion. That is sta­tus quo.”

Giv­en a sec­ond chance, will Tom Vil­sack be that ​“some­one with vision for a just food sys­tem” that Joe Maxwell hoped for, some­one who will Build Back Bet­ter, or will it be ​“déjà vu all over again”? The fate of farm­ers, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and our food sys­tem depends on the answer.