Tom Vilsack is Biden’s pick for Agriculture Secretary according to Politico, though a formal announcement hasn’t been made yet. Vilsack has already served in that role under Obama, and advised on rural and agriculture policy during Biden’s campaign.
He is definitely not a wild-eyed reformer. I suppose that means he’d be easier to get confirmed, easier for everyone in Washington to work with, and completely unlikely to curb Big Ag in any serious way.
This 2012 article in the Washington Monthly was brought up in an online farming group to remind people of who Vilsack is. It’s long. In brief, it details how anti-trust laws were reinterpreted during the Reagan era to make it easier for large companies to buy each other out. One result was growing concentration in agriculture, to the detriment of small, independent farmers. This has been a tremendous change and is ongoing. During Vilsack’s tenure as Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, he led a doomed effort to reign in the power of Big Ag.
By November 2011, it was clear that the reformers had lost. … The most ambitious, far-reaching campaign to reform the agricultural industry in forty years was over, less than two years after it had begun.
Obama’s Game of Chicken
If it’s major reform we’re looking for (I am), Vilsack is probably not the best person to count on. And, by the way, David Scott, the new chair of the House Agriculture Committee, is also mentioned unflatteringly in the Washington Monthly article as one of a group who opposed the reforms.
City Farm Policy 
Agricultural reform is one of the goals of the Biden climate plan, Cindy, so perhaps this time things will be different — that the holistic approach to addressing our problems might succeed where piecemeal efforts previously failed. All the more reason to double down on grassroots organizing in ’21!
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It’s true I’m not convinced the new administration will make the kinds of sweeping changes I’d like, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. I’m just trying to figure out how to work from the bottom up. Consumers are one source of power, so consumer education makes sense. I also have some vague notions about information technology. Right now the supply chain from farm to fork runs through some huge, powerful and moneyed entities. What if we could use technology to circumvent that, connecting farmers to people who eat without going through industrial giants in the middle? That would take massive changes that I can only begin to imagine, but it seems doable to me. Know any IT people? You know, folk who don’t blank out (like I do) when someone says “blockchain”?
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Haha! No, I don’t know any IT folks and I’m definitely not savvy enough to understand concepts like “blockchain” — haha! — but I recommend this podcast with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff and permaculture expert Viktor Zaunders that addresses a number of the things you talk about here, Cindy! (The interview starts at the 13:00-minute mark.)
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Yes, you’re right, Zaunders was talking about exactly what I’ve been thinking! Start local, then change legal or regulatory structures as you run into them, which is bound to happen. I’m also interested in permaculture (though I’d like to leave out some of the stranger stuff left over from Steiner). I wish there had been more discussion of the supporting technology — he hardly mentioned it at all except for vague references to “the site.” Who designed it, who hosts it, how big can it get? I’ve been wondering, too, about something else he mentioned: making sure everything gets used. If you stop to think about it, you realize its very complicated. Some people don’t eat meat, but they’ll drink milk; but the cows have to be impregnated to produce milk. What happens to the calves? When you harvest corn, you end up with a lot of corn stalks. What do you do with them? And the ultimate question, for me: does industrial agriculture do a better job of using everything than small, independent farmers could do? Could a computer system that finds markets for lettuce and tomatoes and eggs also find markets for cow hides and corn stalks? I’ll have to spend more time looking into Zaunders and Team Human. Thanks for the tip.
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Team Human is a wonderful podcast, Cindy, and many of Rushkoff’s books, including Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, explore the very issues you raise here, including how our culture might restore a peer-to-peer economy in which we exchange value in a marketplace rather than sell our time to corporations. I’d love to see you develop more posts that consider how such ideas could be applied to agriculture/permaculture; that would provide a unique focus and identity for your burgeoning climate blog!
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I’ve ordered the book. And I noticed in the description a mention of blockchain, so my notion that it’s relevant somehow, even though I’m not sure how, was apparently right on. lol
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Rushkoff is an expert on all these issues, but he talks about them from a very humanist perspective: How can we use the tools of civilization — the free market, the Internet, etc. — to promote humanist values, not capitalistic agendas? Be sure to let me know how you enjoy the book!
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