There's more to Vilsack than the pundits think

Capital Press Editorial

January 8, 2009

There's nothing quite like the buzz of pundits and talking heads who don't have much background information in hand. That's what we were treated to after the mid-December announcement of Tom Vilsack as nominee for secretary of Agriculture.

National Public Radio quickly interviewed author Michael Pollan, who a couple of months ago suggested in a New York Times essay that the correct title for U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief ought to be "secretary of food." Predictably, Pollan was disappointed the word "food" didn't come up in Vilsack's brief remarks after he was introduced by President-elect Barack Obama.

As a Minneapolis Post columnist noted, progressive farm groups dismissed the one-time governor of Iowa as "a conventional big ag guy." His support of genetically modified crops and corn ethanol were cited by the disappointed. Iowa, a major farm state, plants lots of corn seed engineered to resist the corn borer that saves farmers the cost of repeated insecticide applications. Government loans, tax credits and a protective tariff on ethanol imports all helped launch the biofuels boom that's important to Iowa farmers.

Neither position is unexpected from a trial lawyer who got into politics in 1986, served in the state Senate and then put in eight years as governor. That's understanding the agribusiness engine driving Iowa's economy.

It's also interesting to note that Vilsack nay-sayers didn't look deep enough to find the ex-governor championed a return to local control of emissions and pollutant discharge from the super-sized hog farms popular in his state. That despite a state law passed in answer to a celebrated lawsuit that forbids local government from tighter hog-farm rules than set by state standards. That's hardly a pro-big-farm position.

It's useful, then, to look to Iowa's regional newspaper, the Des Moines Register, and learn what it says of the secretary-designate. A political reporter for the paper noted that during Vilsack's tenure at the statehouse, reforming educational policy was the big thing, not the state's role in ag policy. That said, the Register in a Dec. 17 editorial calls the ex-governor a thinking man well equipped to lead USDA. It likes the way he handled Iowa's governmental bureaucracy. That's an important consideration for the head of USDA, with over 100,000 employees in almost every county in the United States and a budget of $90 billion a year.

Philip Brasher, who covered USDA for the Associated Press before becoming the Register's lead ag writer, said Vilsack won't bring radical change to USDA. Brasher believes Vilsack's proactive positions on climate change and energy independence will take ag policy in new directions, however.

Vilsack favors a cap on the government payments a farming operation can receive, something production ag - at least program crop producers - may not like. He's on record for getting rid of market-distorting ethanol subsidies and that tariff blocking import of ethanol.

We've said before it would be nice for a westerner to be the next secretary of agriculture. That's not in the cards, but we have hope that Vilsack brings a mixture of reform and attention to detail to the office. In an October essay he noted the connection between rural economies and energy independence.

That's good. Let's put aside the buzz, ignore those who want to make a national issue of "secretary of food," and watch this experienced administrator tackle the big issues for ag and the U.S.

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