Why Tom Vilsack Is Wrong About Farm To Fork And What We Can Do About It

USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has recently downplayed the European Union’s ambitious Farm To Fork strategy. Farm To Fork is the cornerstone of the European Green Deal, and puts sustainability at the heart of the world’s largest food import and export market. But Vilsack’s dismissal of the EU are out of step with consumer sentiments, food justice advocacy and the latest cutting edge research on agroecology.

The Farm To Fork framework articulates a roadmap for sustainability, access and nutrition in EU member nations. Farm To Fork is based on several focus areas: science-based diet recommendations, better labeling and reduced intake of meat and highly processed foods; protection of pollinators and biodiversity; reduced greenhouse emissions; strengthening and harmonization of animal welfare policies; protection of food workers; increasing organic acreage by 25%, decreasing pesticide use by 50% and fertilizer use by 20%; as well as broad support through marketing, investment and public procurement. The EU will also require food businesses to incorporate sustainability into business strategies.

While the strategy has attracted some criticism from inside the EU, including justifiable critiques about land ownership from food justice advocates and hand-wringing from agribusiness about reduced pesticide use and meat consumption, the overwhelming response has been positive. Anja Hazekamp, ​​an EU parliamentarian from The Netherlands, summarized the vision, “We propose concrete measures to bring our food system back within planetary boundaries by stimulating local food production and by moving away from intensive livestock farming and crop monocultures with high pesticide use.”

VVilsack, a former dairy export executive who led the USDA during the Obama Administration, counters this worldview, saying “the EU has chosen one way.” The USDA secretary is promoting an alternative strategy called the Coalition for Productivity Growth, based on market-oriented, incentive-based systems, as reported extensively by Tom Philpott recently. The Vilsack approach is music to the ears of Big Food conglomerates like Bayer, Syngenta

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Corteva (Dow/Dupont), Cargill and JBS, as well as trade groups such as Vilsack’s former employers at the Dairy Export Council.

Vilsack has already recruited countries into the coalition. This includes UAE, which imports 80% of its food and is a major exporter of the natural gas used as feedstock for synthetic fertilizer, as well as Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of conventional soybeans, beef and chicken and the world’s third largest user of pesticides, including some agrochemicals banned in the EU One Austrian EU parliamentarian summarized the Vilsack approach succinctly, calling it the “complete opposite of long-term food security” as well as a “blunt lobby appearance for the GMO sector.”

While some pundits are concerned the Trans-Atlantic food policy spat may evolve into a trade war, Vilsack’s position on Farm To Fork contradicts his own recent actions on domestic food issues, such as working on racial equity for Black farmers and USDA’s recent call for supply. chain innovation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We have an opportunity to take the lessons we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and apply those to transforming our nation’s food system from the inside out, including our supply chains,” Vilsack said in an April press release. “USDA plans to tackle this supply chain assessment… From elevating the importance of local and regional food systems, to addressing the needs of socially disadvantaged and small to mid-size producers, to supporting sustainable practices to advance resilience and competitiveness, this top to bottom assessment will position USDA to make long-term, transformative changes…”

The USDA press release continues, “USDA is helping to accelerate a transformation of our food system. Goals of this transformation include a fairer, more competitive, and transparent system where a greater share of the food dollar goes to those growing, harvesting, and preparing our food and one that promotes and strengthens the overall health and well-being of people, our land and water, and our economy. Growing consolidation in food and agriculture, the general health of our population, a growing climate crisis, and the need to ensure racial justice and equity are important factors to take into consideration as USDA looks at strengthening food and agricultural supply chains.”

Vilsack’s April letter ironically ends up sounding more like an EU parliamentarian than a stump speech for the meat and dairy lobby. And an open invitation for US based food justice movements to seize the moment.

A coalition of 67 organizations, including high-road businesses, NGOs, school districts, unions and community organizations took the opportunity to call for the USDA to enact values-driven food procurement among federal agencies. The coalition stated:

“The federal government funds tens of billions of dollars of food procurement each year for children in schools, military service members, veterans, people incarcerated in federal prison, and seniors who rely on federal feeding programs. However, the vast majority of spending on public food procurement contradicts the administration’s stated interests of addressing climate change, advancing racial equity, protecting public health, achieving nutrition security, and strengthening local economies… This is due in large part to the state of US food systems and supply chains, which compromise public health and well-being with disproportionate impacts for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) through the exploitation of the food and farm workers, concentration of corporate wealth, degradation of national resources , and production of highly processed foods with low nutritional value.”

Values-driven procurement for public institutions has taken off at the grassroots level over the last decade, with the Center for Good Food Purchasing (GFPP) supporting 64 institutions across 20 cities and over a Billion dollars in annual purchases. Like EU Farm To Fork, GFPP hinges on a true cost accounting of food. Participating institutions commit to continuous improvement across several focus areas: strengthening local economies, prioritizing environmental justice; ensuring affordability and access of fresh, healthy, and plant-based foods; progress on racial equity and worker justice; human treatment of farm animals; and transparency in supply chain data. Values-driven procurement for institutions de-commodifies food at the point of consumption, while ensuring economic value is shared equitably throughout the supply chain. It has been embraced at scale by New York City in its kaleidoscopic Food Forward Plan and has also been deeply informed by private sector actors that helped validate many sustainability trends, such as Natural Grocers, Whole Foods and food co-ops such as PCC. And such a decentralized approach built on a uniform set of standards is in line with strategies articulated by the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration of mobilizing cities to commit to sustainable food policies and pressing national governments “to put food and farming at the heart of the global response to the climate emergency.”

The grassroots sustainability momentum in the US is consistent with recent scientific studies that expose the yield/productivity myth of chemical intensive agribusiness. This research shows that broad-scale adoption of GMOs and associated herbicides have not increased relative yields, nor account for the vast externalities of industrial monocultures and their contributions to climate change. And even more compelling are two recent studies comparing chemical intensive and agroecological approaches, including a study of 946 commercial farms in France showing that pesticides could be reduced by 42% with no negative effects on yield or profitability, and a second order meta-analysis looking at over 42,000 farm comparisons worldwide, with the researchers concluding: “in 63% of the comparisons, practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, application of organic matter amendments, microbial inoculation, reduced tillage… maintained or increased crop yields while also increasing biodiversity, enhancing pollination and pest control, improving soil fertility and nutrient cycling, and promoting water regulation and carbon sequestration… Thus, a wide range of approaches not limited to biotechnology and synthetic chemicals should be considered as part of the toolkit for building sustainable agriculture systems.”

With 90-plus percent of soy, corn, canola grown as GMO in the US, these findings strike at the heart of agribusiness dogma. And considering that US farmers receive over $18 Billion in annual public subsidies, contributing on average 21 percent of net farm income, it’s reasonable that the public should have better oversight of what practices and inputs farmers use.

This agroecology research also echoes the seismic changes in consumer trends that have been snowballing for the past decade. In 2020, US organic product sales were up 12.4% to $62 billion, or over 4% of US food sales. Organic produce led the way at $18 billion, with more than 15% of all fruit and vegetables sold as organic. Plant-based foods surged 27% to $7 billion in 2020, up 43% since 2019, with 57%of households now buying plant-based foods. And Covid-19 has heralded a new food awakening, with 79% of consumers planning on eating healthier, 62% wanting clearer nutritional labeling, 80% saying sustainability is an important factor in food decisions and 65% wanting products that can help them live a more sustainable and socially responsible life.

And Vilsack’s alignment with agribusiness downplays the vast inequities at the heart of the US food system, particularly the catastrophe of over 91,000 mostly immigrant and BIPOC meat and food processing workers contracting Covid-19, 465 of whom died. And all that yield from herbicide tolerant GMOs did not prevent 1 in 4 Americans from experiencing food insecurity during the pandemic, disproportionately impacting Black and Latin families. And while just 11% of US jobs are in the food sector, 7 of 10 of the lowest paid jobs are also food jobs, many barely paying above the $7.25 minimum wage floor. Despite his admirable efforts to right past wrongs, by prioritizing the agribusiness interests who profit off of cheap, chemical-laden foods produced through exploited labor, Vilsack’s approach to food system governance will just harden this racialized status quo.

The European Union Farm To Fork plan is not perfect, but shows that public food system governance is possible and that a sustainable food system is already busy being born. And grassroots efforts in the US are already building such a foundation domestically. A US Farm To Fork strategy based on good food purchasing principles could ensure that healthy, fresh, affordable food grown and processed with justice, transparency and equity are available to all. Now that would be the way to go.