AFF Sentinel Vol.5#45

Replacing Oil in Agriculture with Solar Energy

Recently, Barack Obama spoke specifically about agriculture in an interview with Time magazine's Joe Klein. His comments could shock American agriculture.

Obama evidently buys into whatever is published in the New York Times and specifically into radical agricultural transformation theories from Berkeley professor Michael Pollan. In the Time interview, Obama referred to the "fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agricultural sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sectors." Pollan's "One Big Idea" is that "most of the problems our food system faces today are because of its reliance on fossil fuels." Government policies must replace oil with the "energy of the sun," which will "improve the state of our health, our environment and our security." Besides the fact that such statements are incomplete, misleading and simplistic, it also reveals something about - to use Obama's own words - how this guy operates in solving problems."

The article to which Obama was evidently referring +was Pollan's extensive diatribe on America's food production system -- a transformation blueprint for America's next president entitled, "Farmer in Chief," (New York Times, 10/12/08). Pollan discusses farm and school lunch programs and charges the next president to "take control of this vast federal machinery and use it to drive a transition to a new solar-food economy." By that, he means using crop, animal and pasture "sustainable" rotation systems instead of diesel, commercial fertilizers and herbicides.

Pollan indicts American agriculture for using oil for food production, for using fertilizer and herbicides and worse than "wasting" manure, allowing it to become a pollutant. He wants government policy to get farmers everywhere to raise fruits and vegetables, instead of just corn or wheat and draw "millions" more American farm workers back to raising food. Under his system, it would take millions more people, more acres and more time. His appalling ignorance of American agriculture, soil, terrain, climate types and water supplies is exceeded only by his zeal to use the power of the federal government to force a host of other changes - reversions really -- on American farmers and consumers. He also views transporting food around the country as wasteful, as food should mostly be raised -- year-round, of course - within 100 miles of where it's consumed. Global food trade also makes no sense.

Meat production is too energy intensive Pollan claims and beef should only be grass-fed, like Argentinean beef, "the world's best beef."

"There is nothing inherently efficient or economical about raising vast cities of animals in confinement," Pollan goes on. Rising costs of grain will make it more difficult for CAFOs to survive. The FDA should ban the use of antibiotics in feed on public-health grounds (resistance claims) and regulate CAFOs regarding the waste they produce (obviously uninformed again).

Where does Pollan's vast reservoir of knowledge and background on food production come from, his basis for creating a "post-oil" agriculture? He is a journalism professor at the University of California - Berkley. Obama was evidently quite impressed.

Obama particularly seized on another of Pollan's theories, that the foods we produce and eat "are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs." Pollan favors a new federal definition of food. "We need to stop flattering nutritionally worthless foodlike substances by calling them `junk food' ...making it clear such products are not in fact food of any kind."

Obama told Klein that "once we've done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation," "we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy... that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office," he said.

Some of Pollan's ideas are just plain silly - like putting a vegetable garden on the White House South Lawn or replacing global food trade with trading recipes. Others are just plain ignorant.

But that a candidate for president should rely on this "expert's" blueprint for totally revamping the American food system is a bit staggering. Perhaps it clicks with Obama because Pollan's penchant for centralized government planning and control fits in with Obama's existing policy philosophy. Biden may bristle at those ideas being described as socialist but coupled with a huge boost to unionizing the economy - including agriculture - it seems to quack an awful lot like a duck.

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