Petition to recommend Michael Pollan for Agriculture Secretary under Obama

November 17, 2008 11:56 AM

Pollan for Agriculture Secretary?It has been suggested (and previously) that Michael Pollan, author of Second Nature, The Omnivore's Dilemma, might make a good Secretary of Agriculture. This would be a dramatic departure for an office that has a decades-long history of steering US agriculture policy to the advantage of the largest agribusiness corporations. Especially given Obama's potential connections to Big Corn, how silly would we be to anticipate real change in US ag policy, relevant as it may be to the economic, energy, climate, and national security issues he campaigned on? Via the Brian Lehrer Show.
posted by maniabug (66 comments total)

Especially given Obama's potential connections to Big Corn, how silly would we be to anticipate real change in US ag policy, relevant as it may be to the economic, energy, climate, and national security issues he campaigned on? Via the Brian Lehrer Show.

We would be so silly! Silly enough to post an on-line petition to MetaFilter, even.
posted by pardonyou? at 12:01 PM on November 17, 2008

Do want.

That said, a petition FPP?

That said, I signed it.
posted by Rinku at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2008

I approve the idea. Linking to petitiononline.com is like linking to YTMND.
posted by Plutor at 12:05 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Does Pollan have any qualifications for AgSec? This reminds me of when people stupidly wanted Jon Stewart to run for President just 'cause they like the guy.

It isn't really enough just to have an understanding of the problem. And it isn't even clear to me, having read Pollan, that he has a particularly good understanding of the problems at the level that would be necessary for something like this.

If we're going to fantasize, let's talk about Wendell Berry!
posted by OmieWise at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2008 [19 favorites]

Thanks for your first post maniabug. Don't take snark personally. It comes with the territory.
posted by netbros at 12:08 PM on November 17, 2008

I'm going to start a petition to make Cortex Secretary of Really Big Donuts, which will be just as effective as this one.
posted by bondcliff at 12:09 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

While OmieWise is right to have reservations, were Pollan appointed to the post I'd still have to pinch myself every day to make sure I wasn't dreaming.
posted by bluishorange at 12:10 PM on November 17, 2008

I love Pollan. I think he's brilliant. Both of his recent books opened my eyes to the way my food is produced and encouraged me to be far more aware of how my food is prepared.

But I don't think the man is qualified to be Ag Secretary. Let him head up a President's Special Commission on Agri-business Accountability or something.
posted by grabbingsand at 12:17 PM on November 17, 2008 [4 favorites]

Especially given Obama's potential connections to Big Corn

Potential? You realize he was a Senator from Illinois right? Yeah that Illinois. The Illinois that's the home of ADM.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:23 PM on November 17, 2008

I think Pollan has great ideas about Ag reform, but is there any indication from him that he would accept this position? I didn't see any during my brief click-through, and I find it kind of hard to imagine that he would.
posted by trip and a half at 12:29 PM on November 17, 2008

This is beyond silly, it is enormously misguided. Proposing a politically correct (in the original sense of the word) journalist for Secretary of Argriculture sounds more like a Bush administration move than what we hope for from an Obama administration.
posted by Herodios at 12:30 PM on November 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

If this happened, it would really be the first time I ever felt that my vote mattered.

But, the reality is that Pollan would make a better special advisor than the head of a multilevel bureaucracy.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 12:32 PM on November 17, 2008

This would never work. He's an advocate, not a bureaucrat. As much as I prefer advocates over bureaucrats in most ways, that doesn't extend to the job of running a bureaucracy. We need people like Pollan writing about the issues, and different people fixing what's broken.
posted by Tehanu at 12:34 PM on November 17, 2008 [4 favorites]

How disappointed people will be when we eventually have the whole cabinet, and it's all made of politicians.

Dreaming is nice and all, and I hope Obama appoints a bunch of politicans willing to listen to some of the good new ideas being put out there by people like Pollan, but politicians are professionals at getting politics done. My read is that Obama knows this full well -- Rahm Emanuel anyone? I just hope he doesn't take too much of a public support hit from doing it.
posted by rusty at 12:36 PM on November 17, 2008

Proposing a politically correct (in the original sense of the word) journalist for Secretary of Argriculture sounds more like a Bush administration move than what we hope for from an Obama administration.

Amen to that. I voted for Obama because I thought that he would appoint competent, qualified people to important leadership positions, even if they were (gasp!) Republicans. Appointing unqualified friends, ideological allies, lobbyists, and crowd-pleasers is the kind of thing I expect from Bush, not Obama.

Oh, and sign me up with the petitions-don't-make-good-FPPs crowd, too.
posted by googly at 12:37 PM on November 17, 2008

I agree. Get someone like Pollan and maybe Alice Waters on an advisory committee, but get an experienced administrator to hold down the job, so it can get done effectively.
posted by trip and a half at 12:37 PM on November 17, 2008

And then maybe Obama can make the Steward of the International Arabian Horse Association head of FEMA!

Not to snark on Pollan, who's obviously smart. But after the last eight years I would hope that relevant experience and competence are minimum requirements for cabinet posts in Obama's administration. And not to snark on freelance writers and authors, but such folk have very little relevant experience and competence in, well, anything but freelance writing.

Pollan as Secretary of Narrative Journalism? Absolutely.
posted by william_boot at 12:37 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Accepting well deserved snark and vowing never again to post a petition on Mefi... And agreed appointing someone like MP without political background might not be wise. Now on to this more realistic scenario.
posted by maniabug at 12:38 PM on November 17, 2008

Knowing everything there is to know about a topic makes you a good consultant.

Knowing how to manage everybody involved in that topic is an entirely different set of skills.

Has anybody asked Pollan yet if he wants the job?
posted by ardgedee at 12:39 PM on November 17, 2008

Also I'll note that I don't want Gore to be anywhere near the EPA for the same reason. Gore needs to be the guy who speaks about what we need to be doing about climate change, not the guy managing the EPA/
posted by Tehanu at 12:39 PM on November 17, 2008

While I suppose I have some reservations about Pollan's qualifications, I think there's virtually no chance of anyone more qualified than he being selected for the job, so it's sort of a moot point. Unless you mean "qualifications" in the Washingtonian sense of "is acceptable to the entrenched, vested interests who operate the levers of power" in which case, sure, he's probably not qualified at all.

More seriously though: not a chance in hell. You're deluding yourself if you think Obama isn't owned by ADM.

The best thing I think it's reasonable to expect out of his tenure is a relaxation of the rules prohibiting cash-crop farmers in the midwest (those who receive Federal subsidies) from planting produce. That rule was basically the punishment exacted upon the corn industry by the produce and citrus industries in response to all the subsidies that corn (and soy) gets: "fine, you get subsidies but you'd better grow nothing but commodity crops." I could see that one going away since it would probably help, not hurt, midwest corn and soybean farmers by letting them diversify into produce, which they'll become more and more attractive suppliers of as transportation costs increase.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:40 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was kind of thinking that the rumor that Tom Vilsack might end up with the post makes more sense, but there you go with my assumptions.
posted by mikeh at 12:44 PM on November 17, 2008

I think there's virtually no chance of anyone more qualified than he being selected for the job, so it's sort of a moot point.

It's a huge agency. It needs to be run by someone who knows how to manage lots of people and programs. Pollan is not remotely qualified for that. He's a good science writer and public figure, and those are not the skills the head of the USDA really needs most.
posted by Tehanu at 12:44 PM on November 17, 2008

I have great admiration for Michael Pollan, but Michael Pollan is a writer. He's not an agricultural policy expert.

There are without a doubt hundreds of people in the country with much better qualifications for this post - people with an equal interest in changing our food system, but who have spent their lives mastering the knowledge necessary to make positive change.
posted by Miko at 12:46 PM on November 17, 2008

No.

Pollan's screeds against "nutritionism" have been rooted in politics, not in fact. Appointing him to the USDA would piss off just about every nutritional science program in America.

Yes, the USDA has been functioning as a subsidiary of agribusiness for at least 40 years now, but putting Pollan in that role wouldn't fix one iota of that problem. He'd spend his first year fighting with the department he was appointed to oversee, and I'm not sure he'd have a second year.

You want a "politically correct" (per Herodios) choice? Mark Retzloff, who co-founded Alfalfa's and Horizon Organic. Far better choice than Pollan.
posted by dw at 12:47 PM on November 17, 2008

Has anybody asked Pollan yet if he wants the job?

From maniabug's more realistic scenario link above.

One last note: Before one becomes Secretary of Agriculture, he or she must actually desire to take on the job managing a sprawling, $94 million a year bureaucracy. I was curious about whether Michael Pollan was actually up for the job, so Bonnie asked him whether, as we suspected, he was not at all interested. He replied, “Confirmed. But maybe the floating of my name will push the center a bit.”

posted by Herodios at 12:49 PM on November 17, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's a huge agency. It needs to be run by someone who knows how to manage lots of people and programs. Pollan is not remotely qualified for that. He's a good science writer and public figure, and those are not the skills the head of the USDA really needs most..

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to anyone else?
posted by swift at 12:52 PM on November 17, 2008

I just cannot get the "Yes Minister" series out of my head whenever anyone talks about the bureaucracy, or I suspect, soon to be called barackracy. The career guys continue running things while the political appointments shuffle in and out and few things change.
posted by Bitter soylent at 12:54 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

If there's one thing Pollan's taught me, its that public policy - especially policies that most people wouldn't notice and don't know about - really shape our lives, and that one well appointed politician can make a very big difference for a really long time. We're still living inside an agricultural model designed by Richard Nixon and his ag secretary that was specifically designed to repudiate certain aspects of the new deal they ideologically opposed and to shore up food prices in the short term (in the 1970s!). Those policies are why small family farms are going under, its why everyone eats so crappily, and its why food prices are so artificially low that sooner or later we're going to have some sort of major food crisis when it becomes clear we cannot continue to farm in the way we do now. So, yes, I think that someone like Pollan is really important in that post - someone who doesn't just have monetary concerns, but health concerns, environmental concerns and ultimately sustainability concerns.

That said, Pollan is like Al Gore in that he can probably do more good outside of politics than inside it. A lot of the issues Pollan wants to talk about seem less important than issues like gay marriage, because they don't get any ink; a lot of people don't know that these problems exist because they haven't been explained at all to them. Before those changes can be made, people have to understand why they have to be made, because otherwise they're just going to notice the after effects (particularly higher food prices) and be very upset. Someone who can talk through the practical side of it, be calm and likeable and optimistic - that person could do a lot of good by laying the ground work for a seamless transition from our backward thinking policies to a more stable and longterm policy.

Still, I've read a few times that Obama has read Pollan, and he seems to understand the issues at hand, so that's good. But ultimately, it's better to have a tag team of Pollan (and other people like him) as spokespeople teaming up with policy wonks inside the system rather than just co-opting the popular face into the system. That would give us half as many people working towards issues like, say, stopping us from growing most of our food in monocultures, which has been known for centuries to put you at the risk of a blight.
posted by Kiablokirk at 12:56 PM on November 17, 2008 [3 favorites]

How about Kucinich?

Nothing like an elfish vegan to manage our agriculture policies.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:00 PM on November 17, 2008 [6 favorites]

How about Kucinich?

Cookies for everyone!
posted by rokusan at 1:04 PM on November 17, 2008

Wait, where is the Willie Nelson petition?
posted by snofoam at 1:04 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Personally, I think if Obama wants to choose an Ag Sec from among non-politicians, he'd be better off with Waters. At least she has achieved some real change and established some programs that deal with the issue at hand. A bit more experience than Pollan at administrating stuff.
posted by trip and a half at 1:04 PM on November 17, 2008

Oops: I meant to say also that I don't think she'd accept, either. I think both would be willing to serve on an advisory committee, though, and I think that would be a good thing.
posted by trip and a half at 1:06 PM on November 17, 2008

As long as our new government passes a law changing the name of gardenburgers to freedomburgers, I will be happy.
posted by snofoam at 1:08 PM on November 17, 2008

Bitter Soylent: barackracy. Hm, I suspect you're right.

On the Pollan non-pick, I really think it's a bad idea to have folk heroes running big bureaucracies. It isn't good for either side: the hero-worshippers get disillusioned and the poor writer/ethicist/scientist or whatever has to either battle or be crushed by his senior managers day in, day out.
posted by athenian at 1:21 PM on November 17, 2008

This is one case in which I think that Obama is going to show his moderate stripes. It wouldn't take more than a few months before Pollan finds himself in a Joycelyn Elders situation where a rather mild comment is spun into a broadside attack on the cherished American farmer.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:38 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Former Presidential candidate (also former Iowa Governor) Tom Vilsack gets a lot of buzz for this, but that may just be an Iowa thing.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:50 PM on November 17, 2008

Nothing like an elfish vegan to manage our agriculture policies.

Heeeey! stop picking on my super-awesome congressman. Besides, add him to his wife and divide by 2 and he's totally normal height.

Anyway -- to Pollan. Love his writing and the thought behind it, but would rather see him as the public face of an initiative than as a mere manager-y person. We DO need to get the nutrition stuff out of the hands of the corn syrup lobby et al, but I think we're better off having him on the outside, doing what he's doing.

That said, I did sign a petition to have an organic veg garden installed on the White House lawn... oh, and I'd love to see Alice Waters heading up an Ag/Education cross-pollinated program on school lunches...
posted by bitter-girl.com at 1:55 PM on November 17, 2008

Good author, good books, dumb idea.
posted by fixedgear at 2:00 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

This would never work. He's an advocate, not a bureaucrat.

See also: Lawrence Lessig as a Supreme Court justice.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:07 PM on November 17, 2008

That said, I did sign a petition to have an organic veg garden installed on the White House lawn... oh, and I'd love to see Alice Waters heading up an Ag/Education cross-pollinated program on school lunches...

Oh yeah; and I don't think we need to worry that this movement isn't going anywhere. There will most definitely be things happening over the next several years to improve agriculture policy, thanks to a grassroots movement that has been building strength and power for decades now and is coming into mainstream prominence.

Alice Waters and Michael Pollan were among those who signed an important document, the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, at Slow Food Nation last September. This document is meant to circulate among legislators and form the philosophical platform for policy initiatives related to agriculture. Marion Nestle, Bill McKibben, and Wendell Berry signed it, too, but lest you fear it's the pipe dream of radicals, so did a coalition of policy wonks including former USDA staffers and other leading thinkers. You can sign it too, if you like.

The Victory Garden on the White House Lawn project is from Eat the View, a Maine-based group associated with Kitchen Gardeners International that's involved in promoting individual gardening as a part of the solution to harms caused by industrial agriculture.

There's no shortage of leadership in the citizen sector on agricultural issues, and I'm not worried that people like Pollan, Berry and Waters won't have a role -- they already do, and quite a prominent one. The challenge is to find someone who can manage the agency itself to re-align itself to change decades' worth of lousy policy. It's going to take a masterful manager and change agent.
posted by Miko at 2:12 PM on November 17, 2008 [4 favorites]

I think the point behind this drive is being missed. Michael Pollan has virtually no chance of becoming agsec. That's not the point. This has little to do with Pollan himself. He is simply the most visible person talking about how agribusiness has completely lost touch with natural cycles of farming; how factory farming and overuse of corn pose a real danger to American society. Whether or not Pollan gets in (he won't) matters little. What matters is that the next administration realizes that the eating habits (like Kiablokirk said) of the US are shaped by public policy, public policy that needs a swift kick in the ass.
posted by andythebean at 2:20 PM on November 17, 2008 [3 favorites]

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to anyone else?

I guess, if you mean some people characterized a lawyer who taught constitutional law and served as a state legislator and senator as merely a good public speaker with nice books and good looks. Otherwise no it doesn't.
posted by Tehanu at 2:55 PM on November 17, 2008

> Heeeey! stop picking on my super-awesome congressman. Besides, add him to his wife and divide by 2 and he's totally normal height.

I love your congressman in a way one does not usually love congresspeople.

And I was in fact, serious. I think Mr. Magic Hands could do pretty well in the roll, and having someone whose diet consists more of the pyramid on the right than the left should be the person to be spending the money.
posted by mrzarquon at 3:00 PM on November 17, 2008

I applied for Secretary Of Bacon, but I haven't heard anything back yet.
posted by spirit72 at 3:07 PM on November 17, 2008

OmieWise: "If we're going to fantasize, let's talk about Wendell Berry!"

Do you think he'd make his wife type up his policies?
posted by Toekneesan at 3:12 PM on November 17, 2008

Links to CounterPunch? If you're trying to frame an argument with articles try not to run to the most bias source you can find, unless we get to respond with WorldNetDaily articles.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:19 PM on November 17, 2008

OmieWise: "If we're going to fantasize, let's talk about Wendell Berry!"


Ok, Morgan Spurlock shows up at Wendell Berry's Kentucky farm to fix the cable, but he's not really there to fix the cable. Cue seedy music *boam chick'a boam boam*
posted by nola at 4:33 PM on November 17, 2008

*queue
posted by nola at 4:35 PM on November 17, 2008

Looks like Hillary's going to be SecState.

(Could be worse. Could be John Kerry.)
posted by Class Goat at 4:52 PM on November 17, 2008

Seriously, petitiononline.com? Seriously?
posted by paisley henosis at 4:54 PM on November 17, 2008

This would never work. He's an advocate, not a bureaucrat. As much as I prefer advocates over bureaucrats in most ways, that doesn't extend to the job of running a bureaucracy. We need people like Pollan writing about the issues, and different people fixing what's broken.

That is something I love to see: We need a bureaucrat.

Right

Overall, this is really healthy discourse for policies that has hampered us since the Nixon Administration. I hope this is only the beginning concerning all of the nation's policies.
posted by captainsohler at 5:12 PM on November 17, 2008

I signed the petition for Michael P., and not because his son played Little League with mine a few years ago, before Omnivore's Dilemma made him a food/agriculture/NYT shamelessly shilling its writers' work star, but because why not have a smart, dare I say erudite, UC Berekeley Journalism professor who knows how to do the research man (no offense girls) an important job? How's that for a run-on sentence, Sarah P.? Since when are writers and far-thinking accomplishers of difficult goals two mututally exclusive groups? As for the management of large numbers of underlings, delegation seems an appropriate road for lofty types like cabinet members. After eight, or more years of ineffable incompetence all around, I find it difficult to imagine a coherent writer and researcher like Michael Pollan unable to manage the situation. Of course, as has been remarked, he may not want to move to Washington, and I couldn't blame him. But neither would Wendell Berry (one of my heroes).

The more egg-heads in the cabinet, the better. I, for one, am sick of dumb people with loads of experience managing droves of others. Call me elitist; I will take it as a compliment, sort of.
posted by emhutchinson at 5:19 PM on November 17, 2008

Also I'll note that I don't want Gore to be anywhere near the EPA for the same reason. Gore needs to be the guy who speaks about what we need to be doing about climate change, not the guy managing the EPA/

Gore is busy making billions in cleantech (or trying too, I imagine the investments aren't doing very well. Mine sure as hell aren't.). I'm not sure why he would even want to give all that up to join the government. But I'm sure he would do a good job at the EPA. It's a lot easier to do something directly then through advocacy. And furthermore, there is no reason the head of the EPA can't also be an advocate.

What's scary is the guy who's name has been floated, Robert Kennedy. He's been heavily promoting the totally unscientific thimerosal-causes-autism theory.

Also, Tom Vilsack will probably be Ag Secretary. He's was a total non-entity as governor.

Looks like Hillary's going to be SecState.

(Could be worse. Could be John Kerry.)

What's wrong with Kerry? He was a crappy candidate, but it doesn't seem like there's really anything wrong with him. I would really liked to have seen Bill Richardson get the post though.
posted by delmoi at 5:23 PM on November 17, 2008

It would be great to have a visionary as the head of the USDA. There is no reason that a visionary can't get things done-that is why visionaries have staff. Some one like Pollan/Berry/McKibben/Hawken/Waters would bring some humanity back into a system that has been hijacked by big oil and exploited untold acres of land and untold numbers of humans. Our agriculture system is wrecked, and leaving behind a wake of wrecked wreckage.

Last week when I learned that Vilsack was at the top of Obama's list for USDA Secretary, my mood quickly soured. The planet can not sustain much more of this shortsighted, profit driven abuse.
posted by tarantula at 6:11 PM on November 17, 2008

Oh, sure, he was great in Monty Python, and his travel series are highly recommended, but is he really qualified to head such a cabinet, and isn't he a citizen of Britain?

What's that? Oh ... Pollan.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:51 PM on November 17, 2008

I would really liked to have seen Bill Richardson get the post though.

Yeah, me too. He was born for a position like that.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:52 PM on November 17, 2008

Class Goat: "Looks like Hillary's going to be SecState."

I'll believe it when I see it in an American publication, or better yet, announced by the O-man hisself. That article seems to do a pretty good job of making it sound like a done deal but not actually saying that she has been offered the position (which I don't think she has).
posted by Plutor at 4:53 AM on November 18, 2008

Ah, Vilsack. Lovely. Never mind -- I retract my opposition to Pollan. Getting nothing done would be better than appointing the Governor from the Great State of Monsanto.
posted by rusty at 6:23 AM on November 18, 2008

Love Pollan.

After he's named AgSec we should make a petition to put Bruce Schneier in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.
posted by daHIFI at 10:41 AM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Obama and the USDA: Monsanto's man in the Clinton admin joins the transition team, and more
posted by homunculus at 4:34 PM on November 19, 2008

Engineering Our Own Extinction? GE Corn Linked To Increasing Infertility
posted by homunculus at 5:28 PM on November 21, 2008

Michael Polllan on Bill Moyers Journal
posted by homunculus at 10:13 PM on November 28, 2008

Today, Slow Food leaders received from the organization's President this petition for the secretary choice, including a shortlist of six names who have the qualifications and might be willing to do the job - neither of which is true of Pollan. They are:

1. Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.
2. Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE.
3. Sarah Vogel, former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, attorney, Bismarck, ND.
4. Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.
5. Mark Ritchie, current Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota's Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
6. Neil Hamilton, attorney, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, IA.

posted by Miko at 1:51 PM on December 9, 2008

Nicholas Kristof asks, who should be "Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? "
posted by Toekneesan at 9:15 AM on December 13, 2008