Vilsack, Federal Ag Research, and Biotechnology

By Courtney Lowery, 10-18-09

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has enjoyed a somewhat on-again-off-again relationship with those advocating for sustainable agriculture and food system reform since his appointment late last year and predictably, any mention of biotechnology is what changes those dynamics. So far this month, Vilsack has hit two rocky patches with the sustainable ag community.

First, and it’s not really about him, but more about the department itself, is the appointment of Roger Beachy, who comes from the Missouri-based Danforth Plant Science Center, as the head of the newly formed National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which replaces the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES). Ag and GMO-giant Monsanto has given funding to the Danforth Plant Science Center, a red-flag for the sustainable ag community. As Paula Crossfield writes at the Civil Eats blog, “The re-branding of CSREES worries sustainable food advocates who fear U.S. research priorities could shift with the private sector’s coaxing further towards a more biotechnology-oriented focus in an attempt to end world hunger, even though more viable solutions to hunger—a problem of distribution and not yield—exist on the ground that are both cost-effective and ready to implement now in the developing world.” (The Crossfield piece gives several good perspectives from experts on these issues—definitely worth a read.)

That worry was only heightened then, by Vilsack’s comments to the Community Food Security Coalition conference in Iowa this week. When one audience member (Jeffrey Smith, an anti-GMO activist, who writes about the exchange here on the Huffington Post) asked him about his stance on biotechnology, his response was anything but well received. From all accounts, it seems he played it well, saying he is essentially all ears when it comes to the criticisms of GMO, but then he did mention the hunger argument, saying, according to Dan Mitchell of Big Money’s The Daily Bread blog: “I’m telling you what people are telling me"—that genetic modification is necessary to feed the world. That alone elicited boos and hisses from the crowd.

However, despite the fact that most headlines were about the booing, Vilsack did make some friends at the conference. At one point he even got a standing ovation, namely for his comments on local food, comments like this one (via the Associated Press): “Locally grown food is a $5 billion business and growing,” Vilsack said. “There’s tremendous power in these ideas.”