THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOOD.

Given that Barack Obama is now referencing Michael Pollan's food politics manifesto, it's probably worth continuing the discussion a bit from yesterday. Tom Laskawy at the excellent Beyond Green blog notes that "Pollan never mentions the L-word in his NYT manifesto...At least in this case, Pollan is not trying to find a way to get everyone to eat food produced within 100 miles of their home year round. He is indeed trying to eliminate the industry's dependence on fossil fuel - which he says right up front by observing that 'when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.'"

Pollan does mention "local" a number of times, but put that aside for a second. I have enormous respect for Pollan as an author, so it's odd to say this, but I think some of the problem here might have been in the writing. The discussions of subsidies -- the key issue in food policy -- is subsumed within section one's discussion of polycultures. They exist in the piece, but not clearly, and not with sufficient force. Sections two and three, on "reregionalizing" food and changing our food culture, are important, but from a policy perspective, rather muddled. The polycultures portion did come first, so there's evidence that Pollan thought it most important. But I think he's focusing on the wrong end of the issue: We need to dismantle the subsidies before we can really talk about incentivizing different agricultural behavior. To do otherwise is to put the tractor before that weird machine that sprays pesticides.

Laskawy also links to the Q&A with Pollan, where he engages the political economy of the issue. And I'd argue that this is actually a more compelling and important idea than anything that appears in the actual piece:

I have no illusions that these proposals would be easy to push through. Even in a Democratic administration with a Democratic Congress, you have agriculture committees that would thwart significant reform — as we just saw during the farm-bill debate. In the house, make Agriculture an "exclusive committee" — one of the major committees, like Financial Services or Energy and Commerce, that strive for geographical balance in their membership. This would require the Ag committee to have urban and suburban representation, and dilute the influence of the farm states. That way, eaters would be as well represented as farmers. The second thing you need to do if you really want reform (speaking of the leadership) is to split food-assistance programs out of the farm bill and deal with the commodity programs and food assistance in separate pieces of legislations. In the past, the food-stamp community has supported subsidies in exchange for farm-state support of food stamps. But now there is a much great constituency for food assistance than commodity, and the food-stamp people are doing more for crop subsidies than the other way around. All of which is to say that the key decisions in making farm-bill reform possible are Nancy Pelosi's.

The Ag Committee, as Pollan implies, is almost entirely given over to representatives from rural, farm-heavy, states. The Chairmen are from Iowa -- those corn subsidies again -- and Georgia. You can see the lineup here. It's an interest group masquerading as a committee. And the interest group is producers of food. Rural producers of food. Not eaters of food. Not communities with high diabetes rates. Just producers. Whose interest in agricultural policies can be summed up as more subsidies." But producers are not the only ones with a stake in agricultural policy. And their dominance of the Ag Committee a structural reality that makes sensible reform of our food policy impossible.

But there's precedent for overriding this. Last year, Nancy Pelosi decided she could not address global warming so long as Michigan's John Dingell chaired the relevant Committee. So she created the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Ed Markey, of Massachusetts. The only problem is the turf war with Dingell left the body toothless: "The select committee shall not have legislative jurisdiction and shall have no authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution. Its sole authority shall be to investigate, study, make findings, and develop recommendations." It's an effort to put pressure on Energy and Commerce, not sideline it. Which is all to say, radical committee reform is hard. But Pollan is right to highlight it: Little could be more important. My only regret is that Pollan's explanation of the political economy that lies at the root of the problem was in the Q&A, not the article. That's the sort of thing it would've been great for Obama to read.

Also: Sam Boyd has more.

Image used under a CC license from Escape to Christel's.