The Obamas stuck with the existing chef, who it turns out was already an ardent — though quiet — proponent of locally grown food.
In addition, some sustainable-farm advocates who have worked on these issues for decades in Washington are chafing at the idea of celebrity activists swooping into town.
Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said that during the administration of president Jimmy Carter he fought to get US$5 million in federal money to promote farmers’ markets — about the same as allocated last year.
While he acknowledges that it has been an uphill fight, Hoefner said the activists had made major strides in recent years, winning more federal dollars for organic research and to help farmers convert to organic methods and add value to their operations by, for example, converting to grass-fed beef.
As part of the economic stimulus plan, the Agriculture Department also plans to award US$250 million in loan guarantees, spread over the next two years, for local and regional food networks, he said.
Hoefner said he was impressed by the number of people who rallied for a White House garden.
“We just want to make sure that interest in that symbolic action can be channeled into some of the more difficult policy challenges,” he said.
Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, welcomes newcomers to the cause but cautions that farm policy “does not have sharp turns.”
Harkin has spent years trying to increase federal dollars for child nutrition and for conservation programs that reward farmers for protecting the environment, relatively small programs that he says can expand under the Obama administration.
“We bend the track a little bit and get the train going in a little bit different direction,” he said. “We’re hoping we can bend it a little bit more. Consumers are demanding it.”
There are already signs that the sustainable-agriculture track is bending farther than before. The conservative pundit George Will wrote a column endorsing many of Pollan’s ideas, and a prominent food industry lobbyist who requested anonymity said he was amazed at how many members of Congress were carrying copies of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
“I’m not sure how much it’s penetrating the mom shopping at Food Lion,” he said. “I’ve had so many members mention Michael’s name to me, it’s staggering.”
Back in Anaheim, Hirshberg, the head of Stonyfield Farm, said he, too, is optimistic that change is at hand. But he reminded the small crowd that the organic industry remains a “rounding error,” roughly 3 percent, of the overall food and beverage business.
“We’re at the starting line,” he said. “This is our job, our government. We’ve got to take it back.”
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