Disconcerting: Tom Vilsack at USDA

As President-Elect Barack Obama has been very busy selecting key cabinet people and meeting with House and Senate leadership to ensure everyone’s ready on January 20th to begin implementing the Changes he promised, some of us out here on the active lifestyle progressive fringe are not happy with a few of the important choices.

By appointing Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to head the USDA (Department of Agriculture), committed homesteaders, small landholders and organic farmers like me now have to be concerned that efforts by our own government to make us extinct may NOT change when the leadership in DC changes hands.

In the diary Tom “I Heart Monsanto” Vilsack, This One’s For You, kossack OrangeClouds115 lists everything that’s wrong with GMOs and Monsanto Corporation’s tireless efforts to own and control every aspect of agricultural production in the world. Note I said “world,” because it’s not just Big Corn Country like Iowa and Nebraska and Indiana that Monsanto seeks to own with its grotesque genetically-altered cultivars. It’s everyone’s ability to obtain seed and farm the land, from the US to Canada and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia as well as Australia. They want it all, they don’t need it all, and right here in Homesteading-USA we are the front and foremost line against this obscenity.

I know (or hope) that all my readers feel as strongly about organic standards, scientific assessment of all GMOs – including for potential long-term health effects as well as cross-contamination of organic crops – and protections for small farmers and their markets as I do. So I’ll ask all of you to please sign the Food Democracy NOW petition to President-Elect Obama outlining our important policy goals and making alternative suggestions for appointment choices in this department.

No matter what an individual appointee’s past positions may have been, he or she will be working for the President and carrying out the policies of his administration as dictated by him. Which would serve to put some hefty shackles on Vilsack’s probable desire to walk his favorite corporation’s self-serving desires past any and all proper overview and alignment.

US agricultural policies in coming years can make or break our entire back-to-the-land, organic, sustainable living efforts entirely moot if we don’t stand up immediately for what WE want and need in the way of support from our government and its agencies. So get on it, dear readers, and don’t forget to add your own comments to Obama so that he knows exactly where we stand and how important we’re going to be if those GMO monoculture, chemical-intensive crops ever fail.

And Happy Holidays to every single one of you and those you love. Throw an extra log on that Solstice bonfire for me, we’ll be celebrating our Solstice Baby’s birthday with a big one right here on the homestead.

Links:

Food Democracy NOW petition
Flashback: Blue Jersey interviews Tom Vilsack
AgSuck: Looks like Tom Vilsack to head USDA
Tom “I Heart Monsanto” Vilsack, This One’s For You

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Filed under Activities, Farm Policy, Food Production, Food Safety, Homestead, Independence | Comment (1)