We'd asked the Land Stewardship Project for its reaction to President-elect Obama's nomination of former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack to head the Department of Agriculture. we just received this statement focused on several policy shifts:
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn---The Land Stewardship Project congratulates former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack on his selection by President-elect Barack Obama as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. We look forward to working with the Secretary once he is approved by the Senate and begins to implement the farm and rural platform of President-elect Obama.
Food and agriculture policy is in need of real reform and new direction. The 2,900 member households of the Land Stewardship Project call on nominee Vilsack to work with LSP and other farm and rural organizations to:
- Fully fund and effectively implement the nationwide Conservation Stewardship Program passed in the 2008 Farm Bill.
- Prevent anticompetitive behavior facing family farmers by banning packer ownership of livestock and ensuring family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their productions decisions, and transparency is prices;
- Encourage sustainable agriculture and local and regional food systems as engines of community economic development and elements of improved public health; and
- Fundamentally reform the nation’s commodity policies, which are excessively expensive and counterproductive to the goals of the care of the land and vital family farms.
- Better target federal resources to support family farmers and small businesses instead of big agribusiness, absentee landlords, and factory farm livestock operations who have disproportionably reaped the benefits of many farm programs.
As President-elect Obama stated at yesterday’s press conference:
“It’s time for a new kind of leadership in Washington ….And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence-peddlers, but family farmers and the American people.”
For a link to Obama Biden “Real Leadership for Rural America” click on, http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/RuralPlanFactSheet.pdf
For more on the Land Stewardship Project go to www.landstewardshipproject.org
Land Stewardship maintains its Southeastern MN office in Lewiston, Minnesota. Local projects focus on LSP's Farm Beginnings program for young and new farmers, and the Community Based Food Systems Program.
The organization worked with Congressman Walz to get some of its policy goals inserted into the last Farm Bill. Perhaps the highest profile success was language from a separate bill that Representative Walz and Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD) introduced, then wrote into the more comprehensive bill. The Chatfield News, the Winona Daily News, and the Fillmore County Journal all covered LSP's early work with Walz on the Farm Bill.
Photo: Walz meets in Lewiston with LSP members in Lewiston, 2007 (Chatfield News)
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