|
|
Wednesday, October 7
Secretary Vilsack Hailed as the “New Champion of Local Food”
by
Trish Nelson
on Wed 07 Oct 2009 01:00 PM CDT
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Hailed as the “New Champion of Local Food”
 by Francis Thicke
Francis Thicke (Tic-kee) is running as a Democrat for the office of Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in the 2010 election.
A recent story on National Public Radio highlighted the Obama administration’s push to encourage Americans to buy more locally grown food. [Listen to the audio here]
The Obama administration’s Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has become an articulate spokesperson for local foods. Said Vilsack, "There is, I think, a movement in the country where people are very interested in knowing where their food comes from."
"There's a disconnect between the food that we eat and our awareness of where it comes from," Vilsack said. "We think it comes from a grocery store. It doesn't. It comes from family farmers across the country working hard every day."
Speaking about the potential health benefits of locally grown food, Vilsack said. "As we focus on health care, and as the health care debate focuses more specifically on prevention and wellness, people are going to be exceedingly interested in fresh food and food that's nutritious."
Last month, Vilsack’s Agriculture Department launched a program called "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" to help people understand where their food comes from, so they can make more informed choices.
When rolling out the new program, Vilsack pointed out that creating new markets for local food will create wealth in rural communities. Said Vilsack, “An American people that is more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture.”
“Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food,” he added.
Vilsack pointed out that there is a growing number of small farms in the U.S., many of which grow food for their local communities. "In the last five years, we saw 108,000 new farming operations get started with sales of less than $10,000," Vilsack said. "These are very small farms, but they are a very important component of our agriculture.”
In Iowa, during the same five-year period, we saw an increase of 4,000 new small farms. The growing number of new small farms—juxtaposed with a report from Iowa’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture that there are over 60 grassroots organizations in Iowa working on expanding local food production and consumption—bodes well for the potential growth of local food systems in Iowa.
Strategic state-level coordination of these many efforts towards development of local food systems could be very effective. If elected Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, I would work to revive the Iowa Food Policy Council and provide a home for the Council in the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. I would encourage the Council to make recommendations for where statewide efforts could be most effective.
Check out the candidate's website ThickeforAgriculture.com
BFIA ACTION ALERT:
Grassley Challenger Tom Fiegen Talks to Blog for Iowa about Global Warming, Guns and Butter, and Heroes
by
Dave Bradley
on Wed 07 Oct 2009 05:00 AM CDT
Grassley Challenger Tom Fiegen Talks to Blog for Iowa about Global Warming, Guns and Butter, and Heroes
 by Dave Bradley
[Note from BFIA: After reading this great interview by Dave, please check out the BFIA action alert below]
Dave
Bradley and his wife, Carol, are activists from West Liberty. Both feel
that retiring Chuck Grassley and finding the person to do that job, are
the most important tasks for Iowa Democrats next year. Dave has known
Tom Fiegen since his re-election campaign for the Iowa Senate in 2004
in Senate District 40, where both reside. Dave and Carol met with Tom
in Tipton at a new coffee shop called "A Place To Land."
This is the fourth and final segment of BFIA's exclusive interview with Tom Fiegen. Click here to read Part I , Part II, and Part III.
BFIA: What are other long-reaching issues besides the economy?
Fiegen: I think we've got to look at global warming and carbon build-up. I took my youngest daughter to see An Inconvenient Truth, and she came out and said, “this may not affect you, Dad, you might be dead before the polar ice caps have melted, but it's going to affect me.” I think the reality among the younger generation is that this is a pressing concern, and we have to address it now. The question is, will the U.S. step up and take the lead? The rest of the world is waiting for us.
BFIA: But our political system just seems to literally stand in the way, a major obstacle in terms of getting anything done.
Fiegen: Let me pick on MidAmerican Energy and coal fired power plants. I think everybody can agree that coal fired power plants are are a bad way to generate electricity. That said, MidAmerican has a ton of money in them and if we transition away from coal or penalize coal under Cap and Trade, their shareholders are going to take a hit. Major corporations find ½ of 1% or 1% of their revenues invested in political campaigns of opponents of Cap and Trade or opponents of fixing the problems, yields great dividends.
I think that the politicians and consumers have to say to MidAmerican, I understand how this affects your bottom line, but it more importantly in the long term affects us, our children, and our grandchildren. It's not a question of, if we're going to make the transition from coal plants, only when. And sooner is better than later. The political solution may be to buy them out of their older, dirtier coal plants and not allow them to build any new ones, because we know that's not the answer. The answer is wind, renewables, conservation, but it's not another new coal fired plant, and I was heartened by the decision to not build a new one in Marshalltown.
BFIA: With the concern about health care and the deficit and all the other things that are going on right now, an issue that has been pushed to the background is voting machines and integrity of the election process. How do you feel about that? What would you do?
Fiegen: I do not know enough about the techonology of the machines. I read many of the concerns about Diebold and some of the other companies having machines that are not secure. As a U.S. Senator, I would talk to the Iowa Secretary of State and ask him what's working, whats not working, what's verifiable. I think the two big concerns about a transition from paper ballots from electronic voting is security and verification.
BFIA: Is this something where the federal government should have some input?
Fiegen: The short answer is yes. The transition to secure, verifiable, voting machines is going to cost a lot of money, and the states now are in a tenuous financial condition because tax revenues are down. I think the federal government has to provide standards and money to make sure the elections are uniformly clean around the country.
BFIA: What other issues are you concerned about?
Fiegen: At some point we have to look at campaign finance reform. I live in a modest house in Clarence. I work for people that pay me in garden produce and chickens, so I'm not a multi-millionaire. Chuck Grassley is going to have 15-16 million dollars to inundate the airwaves
BFIA: ….a lot of which he is getting from corporations who are affected by legislation....
Fiegen: Right. The second largest group of [Grassley's] contributors is Wall St. They're buying favorable legislation from him. There's no other way around it. His largest group of contributors is the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industrial complex. These are people that are buying the status quo because it serves them. The reality is, this guy and Max Baucus are standing between health care reform and coverage for 47 million people
I've been to half a dozen public events where people have said, keep government out of my healthcare. I haven't talked with anybody who's unhapppy with Medicare. I'm sure they exist, but I just haven't talked to them. Ive talked to lots of people that are unhappy with private insurance. Given that, why would you take the public option off the table?
BFIA: That, of course, is what Grassley and Baucus want
Fiegen: If their only answer is cost, we just threw a trillion dollars in a hole in the ground in Iraq.
In the choice between guns and butter, I'm always going to pick butter. With regard to the war in Iraq, my position is that we can't get out fast enough. My only concern is how to keep the Sunni and Shia from killing each other when we pull out. One of the problems with pulling out, now that we've broken it, is that potentially, Iran could annex parts of Iraq and create a greater Iran. And you want to just say, what the hell were we thinking? The answer is, we've got to find a way to get out, but not enlarge the power and influence of Iran in the region.
Afghanistan is a problem. I don't know what the answer is. I understand the need to battle international terrorism and I think between the two, Afghanistan has to be the bigger priority, but I think we have to turn to the international community for help.
The other complicating factor with Afghanistan is Pakistan. Pakistan has the bomb, is run by a military junta that plays nice sometimes, sometimes doesn't. We gotta play friendly with them but they're not doing a whole lot to help us defeat the Taliban, who flip back and forth in the mountain passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. One of the misguided things about the Bush administration is that they believe they can export American style democracy around the world. I don't think that we can.
One of the things I appreciate about President Obama is he is really about consensus building. He is about building coalitions, and he has brought us back from the cowboy mentality of the Bush administration, where we told the rest of the world, we do it our way and the hell with the rest of you.
BFIA: Let's wind down with something a little lighter. Political hero?
Fiegen: Three people – the first one is Humbert Humphrey. He grew up in a very modest family, went on to become the mayor of Minneapolis, and was one of the first people to introduce desegregation to local government. Second hero is George McGovern. My mom was one of the original Mcgovern supporters. I was actually born in Mitchell, South Dakota, which is McGovern's hometown. Two things I appreciate about George McGovern was his commitment to battling global hunger. The third hero of mine is a guy by the name of James Abourezk. He is an Arab-American - his parents are Lebanese. He served one term in the U.S. Senate and then went back to his law practice, but his folks run a general store on the reservation in South Dakota. When James Abourezk was in the Senate, he was a spokesperson for Native Americans about their condition on the reservation.
BFIA: What kind of music do you like? How do you relax? What do you do for exercise?
Fiegen: I had a friend give me an ipod two years ago. I have a collection of 450 CDs and I have over 9000 songs on my ipod. I have a lot of classic rock. I have a fair number of marches and drum roll stuff. My kids are always introducing me to new music.
Exercise - I own a Trek 300 hybrid bike. I ride that quite a bit. I play basketball on Sunday nights - during the school year, they have pick-up games at North Cedar High School on Sunday nights, and the age range is - I think the oldest guy is 60-some on down to 8th graders - and I'm the big guy in the middle. ~
 ACTION ALERT: Congressman Bruce Braley was on the Stephanie Miller progressive talk radio show today and had some very interesting things to say about the health care debate....too bad we can't get the Stephanie Miller show on the air anywhere in Iowa....
|
|
