I just received an interesting email from the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at MSU. It is about a petition to the President Elect Barack Obama, suggesting that the next Secretary of Agriculture should be - you guessed it - Michael Pollan. There is even a facebook group devoted to this cause. While I added myself to the group (only so I could post a comment), I’m not convinced this is a good idea. It’s unsound namely because Pollan is a journalist and not an agriculturalist or agronomist. He has not worked for the government or in public policy before. He is good at researching agricultural issues, and presenting them in an easily-digestible way to the American people. But is he really fit to be the Ag Secretary? I don’t think so. And I don’t think the next president will entertain this idea either.

Here are some more likely candidates, as listed by Plenty Magazine:

–John Ikerd
Raised on a dairy farm in Missouri. Spent his career as an agricultural economist at various top universities. Although his roots are quite mainstream, his philosophies have evolved and he’s written extensively on sustainability. His vision is based on a “common sense” that compels us to care for others and about nature.

–Mark Ritchie
Definitely one of the crunchier candidates — which I consider a positive, though it may harm him politically. Ritchie lived in the Bay Area during the ’70s, later founding a fair trade coffee company as well as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which works to support the family farm. He also did some time as an academic at the University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies. Ritchie has government experience as Minnesota’s Secretary of State, which could help.

–Fred Kirschenmann
A South Dakotan and organic farmer who’s been Director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture — a top nexus for ideas and research on sustainable ag — since 2000. He’s a farmer first and an intellectual second — and he’s very clear about that —though he’s written articulately on sustainable farming. Probably still too left-of-center to have a real shot, but if he got the position he would really push for change.

–Tom Buis
President of the National Farmer’s Union and an Indiana farmer himself. The NFU may be slightly more progressive than the Farm Bureau, but as far as I’m concerned, Buis as ag secretary would pretty much mean a continuation of the status quo. But he has the right friends — Buis served as senior agricultural policy advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who’s got Obama’s ear – and that may help more than a willingness to bring change to ag policy.

–Gus Schumacher
Raised on a farm in Massachusetts; studied agribusiness at Harvard; and worked for a long time at the USDA, in charge of international trade and development programs as well as domestic commodities, insurance, and farm credit operations. He’s served as USDA Under-Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, Massachusetts Commissioner of Food And Agriculture, and worked at the World Bank. Personally, he’s my favorite candidate because he knows how politics work but has his heart in the right place (see his piece on the Farm Bill here).

–Tom Vilsack
Governor of Iowa, a former lawyer who had the briefest of Democrats’ runs for the presidential nomination. As any Iowa guv must, he has strong ties to Big Ag and vehemently supports ethanol. According to the Guardian, Vilsack “understands that sustainable rural development means more than just commodity farming.” I’m not so sure. Unfortunately, his is the name that’s gotten the most airtime.

I’m leaning away from Vilsack, and I have a feeling Obama will lean away from him as well. We’ll see…