Secretary of Agriculture Post Selection 2009 - Ask Obama for Change

Many of us who are or have been small farmers feel huge concern over the dismal future of small, sustainable agriculture. Despite the increasing interest in buying local and buying organic (thank you, Michael Pollan, thank you, Barbara Kingsolver), the US government support is always very pro-corporate large-scale, mass-production agriculture.

This makes sense - when you have to feed a nation of people who no longer know or understand where and how their food arrives, what it takes to produce it or - heavens! - how to produce it themselves, and when hundreds of thousands of people have to be fed by a relatively few farmers... well, mass production agriculture is the only way to keep starvation (and I do mean starvation) at bay.

For instance, I look at our own city and surrounding area, Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads. Most folks in this area (over a million) eat chicken in some form at least once a week. Start thinking about how many chickens we're talking about here. Thousands and thousands every day. Now add in the chicken mcnuggets, fried chicken..... fast food..... No one (well, me and a few wacky others - and I don't eat my chickens, only their eggs) are raising their own chickens..... the rest simply go to the store and pick up a package. So, where are all these chickens coming from? For our area and much of the east coast, it's mostly the huge poultry farms on the Eastern Shore. Are they humane? Well, no. You can't produce thousands of chickens, butcher them and get them wrapped & shipped every darned day and treat them well. The birds are crammed full of hormones to speed their growth, jammed into small spaces to economize and killed in whatever way works fast (you hope). It's not fun, it's not friendly, it's not even sanitary. It's factory farming. Simple. That's what it means.

BUT - we are all hoping for more support for small family and community sized farms, support that would allow agriculture to diversify and allow for independent, small-scale producers to raise livestock (and vegetables) in thoughtful, sustainable and humane ways while still making a profit and providing affordable food to the community. I'm not talking about the "la la" upscale, specialty farming here - that venue is going to hit very, very hard times in the recession. I'm talking about practical but smaller and more local farming. And that's farming that needs the same kind of government breaks and support that the corporate farms -- you know, the ones that can afford the expensive lobbyists -- have been getting for years. (Check the 2008 Agriculture Bill if you want to see whether your dollars are being spent in ways your conscience can support.)

What to do? Hike over to www.fooddemocracynow.org/ and join folks like Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters, Rosiland Creasy, Frances Moore Lappe, John Jeavons and... me!.... in signing a simple online petition asking the Obama transition team to consider candidates for Secretary of Agriculture who support "sustainable revitalizing our rural economies, protecting our nation's food supply and our environment, improving human health and well-being, rescuing the independent family farmer, and creating a sustainable renewable energy future."

Hey, it can't hurt. You can read the entire proposal - and the suggested candidates - at the http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/ website.

Small Farmer Sybil