Andrew Kimbrell of the Huffington Post on Vilsack for Sec of USDA

By Andrew Kimbrell of the Huffington Post
Posted December 23, 2008 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/obamas-choice-of-vilsack_b_153213.html
 
Subdued approval greeted President-elect Obama’s choice of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture last week. This came from mainstream environmental groups, such as Sierra Club, and even organizations that have been critical in the past of the Iowa governor’s policies. Vilsack comes across in nearly all [...]

Organic Consumers Unite: Stand Up Against Vilsack for USDA

Despite a massive public outcry, including over 20,000 emails from the Organic Consumers Association, President-Elect Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.
Sign OCA’s Petition to the US Senate Now!
While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding [...]

Vilsack to be named Secretary of Agriculture

It looks as if the original rumors were true. Former Iowa governor and one time presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack was reported to be named Obama’s Secretary of the USDA. It was reported earlier that Vilsack was eliminated from the short list; apparently he survived.
This, much like the newly designated Secretary of Education, may not rest [...]

Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture: Support a New Way of Thinking about Food

Sign the Food Democracy Now! petition at http://www.fooddemocracynow.org and support one of these candidates for Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture: 

Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.
Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, [...]

Obama’s “Secretary of Food”?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”
A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. [...]

Obama Transition and Agriculture/USDA Policy: Selling Out?

Posted by Tom Philpott at Grist
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/11/19/6373/9820
The transition named its “team members” looking at energy and natural resources agencies, which includes USDA. The list includes Michael R. Taylor, a man who spent his career bouncing between the employ of GMO-seed giant Monsanto and Bill Clinton’s FDA and USDA. Taylor is widely credited with ushering Monsanto’s recombinant bovine growth hormone [...]

Pro-Agribusiness Vilsack on Obama’s Short List for Sec of Agriculture

By Keith Good
FarmPolicy.comà http://www.farmpolicy.com/?p=927#more-927
 
As the executive branch transition unfolds, attention has focused on who might by the next Secretary of Agriculture.
 
Al Kamen noted in today’s Washington Post that, “The Obama transition team considers former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack a near shoo-in for secretary of agriculture, according to a source close to the transition. Vilsack, who [...]