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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Food issues need Cabinet status

David Sarasohn The Oregonian

It’s just possible – with no disrespect to the good voters of Montana and South Dakota, who deserve their voice even though they think a presidential primary is a summer pastime – that we can now imagine the end of our years-long process of choosing a president.

So now maybe we can start to think about filling another job vital to the future of this country:

Secretary of Food.

Nobody should be objecting that we’ve never had one before. We’ve never had a black or woman president before, either.

And it may be that we’ve never faced the kind of food crisis, from food bank shelves to international food riots, heading in our direction. Along with our fixation on fuel, we need to start focusing on food.

A Cabinet-level Department of Food could provide some of the clarity and direction that we’ve gotten from the departments of Energy and Homeland Security.

OK, bad examples.

Last week, Congress finally passed – and then repassed, over a presidential veto – a new farm bill, with badly needed bolstering of food stamps and other nutrition programs. The bill, and the help it provided for hungry Americans, was about two years in the devising, largely because the farm bill was also about agricultural subsidies. Food stamps waited while Congress pondered the maximum payments to cotton-growing corporations.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you think about having a high official with a focus on food.

Meanwhile, around the world, food prices have almost doubled in three years, Asian rice prices have nearly tripled in a year, and food riots have exploded across much of the globe. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report that the worst price increases might be over, but overall food prices would stay high.

“We are facing the risk,” said Hafez Ghanemb, of the FAO, “that the number of hungry will increase by many more millions of people.”

Aside from how we feel about international hunger, this is a clear opportunity for the United States. After years of inept diplomacy, misplanned military action and empty energy policy, America is still unquestionably an international food superpower.

Especially if it had somebody to direct domestic and worldwide food policy.

Our food disorganization was displayed last week, in the final process of passing the farm bill, with its vital nutrition elements including food stamp eligibility and benefit changes. “It comes at a time,” said Maura Daley of the national food bank group America’s Second Harvest, “when hungry Americans and food banks are living on the brink of catastrophe.”

Almost three-quarters of the bill’s spending is directed to nutrition programs. But it was delayed for nearly two years by subsidy arguments.

Then it was vetoed by the president. Congress overrode his veto, and when it was finally passed, it turned out that the version sent out by the House of Representatives had somehow lost 34 pages about international food policy. Washington is trying to figure out whether that section is still law anyway.

Aside from the nutrition policy, subsidy parts of the bill are so bloated that opposing it is the first thing that George Bush and the New York Times editorial board have agreed on since Arbor Day 2001.

“There’s no reason for the nutrition (sections) to be involved in that. It just confuses people,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., voting to uphold a Bush veto for the first and maybe only time in his career.

Regarding the strong support for the bill from the hunger community, Blumenauer said, “They don’t need the bill. The bill needs them. The farm bill would be toast if it weren’t for the nutrition element.”

Maybe it’s time to carve food policy out of the Department of Agriculture, which is understandably focused on farming and rural issues. Just as education and transportation got their own departments when they became major federal concerns, food is grabbing more and more federal focus, and we need to manage it better.

“The growing global hunger crisis demands a more efficient and equitable global agricultural system and a different and better safety net here at home,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, after the bill passed.

Food is, among other things, a national security issue.

Think of it as a department of homeland cooking.