Fast-Tracking Sustainability at USDA

A lot of rich and worthwhile discussion has taken place lately about what government could do to promote greener agriculture, healthier food, and small scale farming, most notably in the comprehensive NY Times article by Michael Pollan. Supporters have gone so far as to petition the Obama transition team to appoint Pollan secretary of agriculture (he demurred in a comment on Ethicuraean).

Rather than push a dark horse, however, people interested in sustainable food and agriculture do have a real opportunity to support a significant appointment at the USDA. I'm speaking of Tufts University professor Kathleen Merrigan, who has been raised as a possible candidate for Undersecretary of Marketing and Regulatory Programs.

Who is Merrigan and why should we care?

I first heard about Merrigan while working on Organic Inc., looking into the origins of the Organic Food and Production Act of 1990 and sustainable agriculture policy. She was mentioned repeatedly by people I talked to, because as a senate staffer for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Merrigan had drafted the organic law. She then went on to work at the USDA's agricultural marketing service (AMS), which runs the organic program. Even before then, she was involved in sustainable agriculture policy and has been ever since -- in organics,  conservation, food access, and small farm issues. While Pollan helped put these issues onto the national agenda, people like Merrigan have long been doing the wonky policy work.

Outside government, she has worked for the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, served on a the Pew commission on biotechnology and has been active in the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. She now heads the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts School of Nutrition and Policy. As marketing and regulatory undersecretary, she would oversee AMS, GIPSA (Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration), and APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) - touching virtually every aspect of agriculture.

In short, this is a real shot for a major position at the USDA by someone who has pursued the change mantra in agriculture for nearly two decades. The political awareness Pollan has driven about agriculture could well sweep Merrigan into a position at the USDA -- and push a sustainable agenda ahead.

While we're on this topic, the Blog for Rural Affairs has an in-depth look at Tom Vilsack, who WaPo is calling a "near shoo-in" for Ag Secretary. It's well worth a read and not just for his view on organics and biotech.

- Samuel Fromartz

Image: Tufts University

Comments

[Fred Kirschenmann]

Finally someone has recognized the fact that Kathleen would bring incredible skills to the USDA field. Thanks. And there are no skeletons in her closet so she could be easily vetted.

[Sam Fromartz]

Fred, let's hope more than you and I see it! Thanks for your comments (and I actually recommended you as an adviser for the new Ag Secretary, whoever that may be).

[Mark Keating]

I always feel comfortable agreeing with Fred Kirschenmann and I heartily agree with the endorsement of Kathleen Merrigan for Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs. Full disclosure: Dr. Merrigan hired me twice. Fuller disclosure: she is the kind of boss you love to work for. Smart, honest, fair, respectful of all points of view - could we use more of this inside the federal government? For democracy to work, we need people like Kathleen in positions of responsibility. Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick was asked what made Bill Graham, the concert promoter, so special. She replied, "He's one of us, and he's one of them." Kathleen has earned the respect and confidence of the sustainable food movement and the permanent government in Washington. She can be a very effective broker; she can't guarantee results, but we won't find a more capable, dilligent advocate. Having her as Undersecretary would enormously benenfit the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives at the highest level inside USDA. I'm attaching a feature on Kathleen that appeared in the Washington Post in 2000:

Kathleen Ann Merrigan has been known to wear Birkenstocks. She eats granola, too. Her husband, a law professor who writes about gender equity, is now a stay-at-home dad. She describes her new job managing more than 10,000 public employees as "groovy." And she scrapped her agency's annual Christmas party because she thought it might offend non-Christians.

Yes, Merrigan is a right-wing nightmare come true, an unreconstructed liberal activist in charge of a billion-dollar bureaucracy. In her last job, at the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, she helped organize a massive grass-roots campaign to scuttle the U.S. Department of Agriculture's modest proposed standards for organic food. In her new job, running the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), she's rewriting that very proposal.

It is unusual enough--and to some farm constituencies, scary enough--that an outspoken advocate of sustainable agriculture (which places strong emphasis on social and environmental do-goodism) has seized control of the high-stakes organic food debate. But her bailiwick now extends far beyond the nation's 12,000 or so organic farmers. The AMS also runs the school lunch program, decides what constitutes USDA Prime beef and Grade A eggs and oversees the department's 50-plus advisory committees.

"I'm probably not a typical administrator," said Merrigan, 40, who asks all her employees to call her Kathleen. "But I really feel like I can be myself in this job."

Not everyone is happy about that. After Merrigan was appointed in June, she immediately launched a controversial crusade to diversify those white-male-dominated advisory committees, forcing them to establish outreach plans to recruit women, minorities and disabled people. In many cases, she refused to forward their nomination slates to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman until she was satisfied with their commitment to diversity.

After she blocked nominations to the Florida Tomato Committee, complaining that it hadn't made a "significant effort" to attract women and minorities, the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, lampooned her in an article titled "Attack of the Tomato Killers." The Packer, an agricultural publication, described her crusade as "Beltway Blindness." In a nasty letter to Glickman, committee manager Wayne Hawkins said he was resigning and going into business: "I plan to find a female Afro-American who is confined to a wheelchair to be my partner. This way I will meet all of the government diversification requirements."

But Merrigan seems quite popular at the USDA--she did, it must be noted, replace the canceled Christmas party with a "Millennium Bash"- -and the Clinton administration is backing her up.

"I know it's been unsettling for these committees; they keep saying they just don't have women and minority candidates," she said. "But I'm digging in my heels. And when push comes to shove, lo and behold, they find there are some women and minorities, after all."

Merrigan grew up in rural Greenfield, Mass.; her grandfather was a farmer, and her father, a teacher, sold farm products every summer. During her first job after college--working for state Sen. John W. Olver (D-Mass.), who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives--she got interested in sustainable agriculture after pesticides caused major groundwater contamination in his district. She later worked on pesticide issues for Jim Hightower--then a Texas agriculture official, now a prominent liberal talk-show host.

Then, John D. Podesta--now President Clinton's chief of staff-- hired her to work for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) on the Senate Agriculture Committee, where she drafted the organic food section of the 1990 farm bill.

That bill required the USDA to develop national standards for organic food, but when the department finally offered a plan in 1997, Merrigan helped drum up an unheard-of 275,603 public comments, including her own 100-page, single-spaced denunciation. The organic food industry was outraged that the USDA plan would allow genetic engineering, irradiation and the use of sewage sludge in growing supposedly natural food.

So the department went back to the drawing board--and now Merrigan is holding the crayons.

"Obviously, people who support sustainable agriculture are very excited about this," said Chuck Hassebrook, policy director for the Center for Rural Affairs. "She's one of us."

Players

Kathleen Ann Merrigan

Title: Administrator, Agricultural Marketing Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Age: 40.

Education: Bachelor's degree, Williams College; master's in public administration, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas; currently finishing a doctorate in environmental planning and policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Family: Married; 1-year-old daughter.

Previous jobs: Agriculture Committee staffer for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), 1987-92; environmental and agricultural consultant, 1992-94; senior analyst, Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, 1994-99.

Hobbies: She likes biking, but these days, with a new job, a new baby and a dissertation to finish, she isn't doing much of it.

[Organic George]

Kathleen Merrigan would be an excellent addition to the USDA. As would Fred Kirschenmann and many other organic and sustainable leaders. Given Obama's' focus on energy independence it would make sense that he fill Ag appointments with people who appriciate entropy.