Commentary

The bloom is quickly coming off the rose for USDA it seems. With the advent of 2012 Farm Bill discussions, ag interests are waking up to the fact that for the last 16 months, we’ve heard nary a word about conventional production agriculture out of the department charged with promoting our interests. The reality of how this Administration views conventional ag is starting to emerge, and some folks are speaking up.

The first major whack the department took was from Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK) who went after Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack last week and this week for appearing before the House Agriculture Committee to talk 2012 Farm Bill and not mentioning conventional production ag once in his prepared remarks. Lucas warned Vilsack to let the policy wonks at the White House know he will not allow rural America to be turned into bedroom communities of big cities, albeit with great broadband internet access. He also made it clear to Vilsack that bioenergy is not the silver bullet for all of what ails rural communities.

Then this week the Senate waded in. In a letter to Vilsack sent April 27, three very senior and ag-savvy Republican Senators are asking Vilsack to explain the “Know Your Farmers, Know Your Food” program, a USDA endeavor “that doesn’t appear geared toward conventional farmers who produce the vast majority of our nation’s food supply.”

Sens. John McCain (R, AZ), Saxby Chambliss (R, GA), rnaking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Pat Roberts (R, KS), Senate committee member and former chair of the House Agriuculture Committe, told Vilsack, “In addition to organizing college campus lectures and Facebook chats with USDA bureaucrats, the…strategy for reconnecting farmers with consumers also involves subsidzing the so-called locavore niche market. Last year alone, the Administration released over $65 million under Know Your Farmers banner and has pledged to deliver millions more in FY2011.”

What galls these Senators particularly, according to the letter, is a program that prioritizes city “locavore” markets — you should buy all your food locally — at the expense of rural areas. Specifically, they cited an August, 26, 2009, memo from USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, in which she allegedly encouraged agency chiefs to take programs “…like the Community Facilities Program, which is intended for financing ‘essential community facilities’ related to healthcare and and public safety in rural areas, and re-imagine them as grant money for community cooking classes or refrigeration units in urban areas,” said the letter. Further, the Senators talk about Merrigan’s intent to use $31 million in stimulus grants and another $930 million in stimulus loans for the “Know Your Farmers” program.

“Given our nation’s crippling budgetary crisis, we also believe the federal government cannot afford to spend precious Rural Development funds on feel-good measures which are competely detached from the realities of production agriculture,” the trio wrote. “The Department’s desire to play ‘match-maker’ between a small segment of specialty crop producers and urban consumers is a questionable use of Rural Development programs…” The three senior Senators want Vilsack to explain to them where he thinks he gets the authority to operate the “Know Your Farmers” program “as envisioned by Deputy Secretary Merrigan.”

And if that isn’t ugly enough, the Senators want “an itemized breakdown of all award announcements made under the Know Your Farmers initiative, including a decription of the award amount, receiving organization, date of issuance, purpose, location or locations and under which USDA program the award was made.”

I sense the gloves are coming off and we’ve just started the Farm Bill stuff…watch this space.

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Animal agriculture lost a hero this week, and I lost a close friend in the passing of Dr. Stanley E. Curtis, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois and former head of dairy and animal science at Penn State. Stan, only 68, had a heart attack that took him suddenly last Sunday.

Stan was a visionary, a keen thinker and a shrewd politician. He pioneered environmental management of swine operations, studied swine “linguistics,” and forced debates over just what constitutes animal welfare well before any institution of higher learning created an “animal welfare” sequence or had even heard of classes in ethology or eugenics.

Stan was the guy to who told me after I’d given my first speech on the threat of animal rights that if I didn’t talk about animal agriculture “warts and all” I’d have no credibility with the public. He was right.

Stan was the guy who insisted good animal welfare is a win/win for the producer, and he insisted that the farm family’s welfare must be balanced with benefits to the animal. He was right.

Stan was the guy who told audiences in all 50 states and 20 countries that until pigs could talk, the only defensible method of judging animal welfare was through science-based measureable production criteria. This is called “the performance axiom,” he said, steadfastly explaining that environmental criteria don’t cut it in as the sole criterion judging welfare. He was right.

Stan was the guy who explained that good animal welfare can exist within any number of production systems, and that no one system fits all animal needs all of the time. He was right.

Stan was the guy who taught Dr. Temple Grandin as a graduate student. He was right.

And Stan was the guy who never suffered fools easily, nor did he hold with zealots who, having never set foot on a farm, dared to tell a producer what was best for his or her animals. He was right.

We’re all poorer for the passing of this humble guy. I shall miss him.