Second reason Obama will kick ass: He says he will. So there. And he’s smart.
I’m not one to buy into the Republican logic of “Obama’s policies are so centrist, he must be a socialist”. Basically, when predicting what an Obama USDA would do, we don’t have much to go on other than what he has said he will do. And that, according to Tom Philpott, ain’t all that bad:
Overall, his Real Leadership for Rural America [PDF] is scant on details, but contains plenty to cheer food-system reformers…
Even more impressively, Obama talks big about challenging the dominance of agribusiness over the nation’s food supply. In a section that reads like music to my ears, the document declares that: “in an era of market consolidation, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.”
I’m a big Philpott fan, and I happen to think in this instance he’s right. So if we’re to go by Obama’s stated positions, sustainable ag- and rural communities- could be in for some good times. A great many people contributed to Obama’s rural policy work, and I happen to know a couple of them. I can certainly testify to their good intentions, and that’s important.
Moreover, Obama ain’t dumb. Recently, he approvingly quoted the latest Michael Pollan article that put the blame for global warming, obesity and fossil fuel dependence directly on our current dominant agribusiness model (this, of course has the farmer queens all in a tizzy). He’s clearly intellectually curious, and there’s not much that rouses the intellectual curiosity like the blatant contradictions and stupidity within federal farm policy. So if he pays attention to the USDA, there’s real hope that big changes- and progress- will occur.
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