I’m a fan of out of the box thinking. Too often, when we go off in search of a solution to some challenge, we find ourselves hamstrung by old presumptions and structures. We and the world would be better off if, instead, we were able to look at issues and problems with fresh eyes. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a refresh button for our mind? Easier said than done, of course, which is why we’re always in awe of those individuals who do manage to shatter assumptions and to reconstruct a product or an idea in an original manner.
I’d like to explore some out of the box ideas in this blog, and what better time to begin than when we are on the cusp of a new U.S. presidential administration that embodies new thinking? After all, were it not for the Obama campaign’s innovative use of social networking as a campaign tool there may not be an Obama administration, so there is at least the hope that this same team will utilize out of the box thinking when constructing policy in the years ahead.
So here is my first nominee for an out of the box idea in government: to reconsider the need for an agricultural department and instead focus on the more broad issue of food policy as it relates to any number of issues. Full details are in this blog entry by Ezra Klein. He first quotes Michael Pollan, the originator of this idea.
But as important as USDA is, we also need someone in the White House, a food policy advisor, to help coordinate policy across the Cabinet departments, so that health impacts are considered when write USDA rules, or food safety when writing trade rules, or climate change impacts when drawing the farm bill, etc etc. You need someone who can connect the dots between agriculture and health and energy and climate.
Klein then takes up the issue and argues it in more depth himself:
There’s an argument to be made that the Department of Agriculture is an anachronism. It was first established by Abraham Lincoln, in 1862…the domestic agricultural industry was rather different in the 1800s than it is in 2008. It was, for one thing, larger. In 1862, farm products made up 82 percent of American exports. And we had a lot more farms…
Meanwhile, back then, what people ate came out of the agricultural sector. Food essentially equaled agriculture. Today, what we eat is considerably more complicated than what we grow and what we raise. Which is all to say, the Department of Agriculture was built when agriculture was a major employment sector, our primary export, and synonymous with our diets. As an industry, it was integral to our economy and our lives. Today, it’s an interest group. It begs subsidies and mainly supports massive corporations…
Our country once needed an agricultural policy. Today, it needs a food policy. The agricultural industry no more deserves a cabinet-level agency than the automotive industry or computing industry. But food is a different issue. An array of federal programs deal with nutrition and food security. Given the federal share of health costs, there’s a compelling national interest in aligning public policy with public health. Supply chain safety is a relevant national security concern. Coordination among those competing priorities is important. Agriculture is a part of the equation. But in 2008, it’s not the whole of it.
Not a sexy idea, perhaps, but a compelling one. More importantly, it goes to the heart of what we need to do more of in this country. Connect the dots. We’ve become a nation of specialists, and of special interests. It’s time for policies that address the broad, interconnected realities of our world.