USDA Boss: Little Money, Big Problems
By: Becky Bracken
Published: April 26, 2011

If you care about food public policy in America, you should get to know Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan. In the coming months, she'll be making decisions that will dictate what's on everyone's dinner plate.
Merrigan gave a speech this morning at The Atlantic's Food Summit that outlined some of the gargantuan problems her department faces with gutted resources, and at a time when a bloody, budget-focused political season is getting all fired up.
"Why couldn't I have been a deputy secretary during the good years?" Merrigan quipped in her speech. A sentiment many public policy makers in Washington, DC are likely to share at the moment.
Merrigan's speech touched on  nutrition, poverty, genetically-modified crops, food stamps, many of which, based on her remarks, will be handled with small, inexpensive initiatives like working to make sure more fruits and veggies are available at farmer's markets, rather than smart policy that makes systemic changes in the way American's get their food. Those kinds of reforms are too expensive, both economically and politically, for anyone to touch right now. Michelle Obama has certainly taken plenty of heat for her health and nutrition advocacy.
Also depressing is the signal Merrigan sent in her speech that big Agri-business maintains an ally in the USDA. There was no mention of any re-structuring of agriculture subsidies, even though Congress is ready to cut Food Stamps. But Merrigan did mention that a USDA study found fewer people went hungry in 2009 than in 2008. So that's a bit of good news.
The Atlantic's Daniel Fromson has a full analysis of the speech.