May 20, 2021 • 29 mins
Kathleen Merrigan was the United States Deputy Secretary of Agriculture from 2009 to 2013 and is now the Executive Director at Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. She is an advocate for organic farming, worked with former First Lady Michelle Obama on the Let’s Move campaign, and while working at the USDA she shaped the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative. Not only is Dr. Merrigan the person with answers on how food is regulated, she also is the person who knows the right questions to ask - including some involving chocolate cake.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Radio and
then once I got in Tom, I got hooked. U
s c A is such a huge place, as we
were describing, So you've got every person, every kind of
walk of life there, and to me, it's a really
interesting puzzle. How do you motivate and move forward to
bureaucracy that complex, that large, that geographically disperse and get
(00:25):
important things done. I like teasing out that problem. Welcome
back to Citisen Chef. This season, we're gonna really start
of digging into not just where you get your food,
but how these processes are regulated. There's this big thing
out there called the U. S d A. And I
think they have a budget of about a hundred fifty
(00:49):
sixty billion dollars and I think there's about a hundred
and fifty thousand employees. And this is this big, giant
governmental entity that regulates pretty much everything that we eat.
But I don't I don't think a whole lot of
people understand what the U. S d A does, why
they're there. But if you eat it, most likely the U.
S d A regulates it. I thought the best person
(01:11):
to talk to about this was my friend Kathleen Merrigan. So,
Kathleen A. Merigan was the U S Deputy Secretary Agriculture
from two thousand nine two thirteen, and she is now
the executive director at the Sweat Center for Sustainable Food
Systems at the Arizona State University. She also started to
Know Your Farmer campaign and was also instrumental in working
(01:32):
with Michelle Obama on the Let's Move campaign. She's someone
who I lean on to get the sort of real
deep policy answers that I'm looking for. So I think
we're gonna ask some questions that include chocolate cake. But
more on that later. So please welcome Kathleen Merrigan. Kathleen,
how you doing things? Are great? Trying to tort your
(01:52):
young minds, that's my They are really interested in filth policy,
and we we're got to change the faces around the
table if we want to change policy. Tom, that's my mission.
I hear you. My son is graduating very soon with
a degree in food policy. Yeah. So the USDA, all right,
I've got all kinds of fun facts for you about
(02:14):
us Well good. I mean, it's this massive governmental body,
the hundred and ten thousand employees, The budget is over
a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year. I think
for ten thou short right now, jobs that are available.
Anybody listening, they want to job the U s d
A apply, they need you. And we describe U s
(02:34):
t A as a field based agency, meaning most of
the employees are scattered about the States and in fact
in countries around the world because most of our foreign
embassies have egg specialists. They're feeding back intelligence to USDA
about what's going on around food and agriculture and country X,
(02:56):
Y and z. So it's a massive operation. But it's
this massive, this massive government organization, and yet I don't
think the average person has a clue as to what
the U s d A does and why they should
care about what the U s d A does. We
thought it'd be great to kick off our second season
with a permit on the U s d A and
what it does. And with that, why should the average
(03:17):
person care about the USDA? What do they need to
know about the USDA? Well, the USDA is the fifth
largest government agency. The Secretary of Agriculture is ninth in
line to succession of the President, and that's because USA
was the ninth federal government department established first of all,
if you're a taxpayer. I hope I got your attention
with some of those numbers. That's one reason to be
(03:40):
paying attention. The second reason is if you're a person
in rural America, the U. S d A is your
home in the federal government because so many of their
programs are oriented to rural Americans. A lot of the
programs have eligibility requirements that make it so that the
smallest of commune today's our first in line for the
(04:02):
largest that USDA has to offer. So if I'm sitting
there in rural Kansas, I'm listening to this podcast just
because I stumbled upon it, and now someone's telling me
I should care about certain policies. What are they? Well,
like most people think about U. S c A, and
they connected right away to farmers and ranchers. Yes, US
does a lot with farmers and ranchers. But if you're
(04:23):
in a small town, you might be getting money from U.
S c A to help buy an ambulance or a
police car. You might be getting money wait, wait, money
from the US to buy a police car or an ambulance. Yes. Yes, Um,
they help with telemedicine, hospital construction, a lot of rural housing. Um.
(04:43):
Money A loans come from U. S d A. I
know in the Biden announcement about the infrastructure legislation, there's
promise of a lot of money for rural I'm just
generally water um infrastructure because of leaded pipe, and I
think in the current proposal most of that money goes
(05:03):
to E p A. But U s C as in
that business too. They do a lot to help small
communities construct water and wastewater systems. They've been involved over
decades in the electrification of America. You might say that's
work that's been done, but I live here in Arizona,
just close by to the Navajo Nation, which crosses many states.
(05:26):
There's still still fifty thousand homes a Navajo Nation without
running water electricity, which is one of the reasons why
the COVID pandemic was so severe. There was an agency
that large. If you break it up in the smaller parts,
and would that make sense our our uh? I mean,
I'm sure if you're the secretary secretary culture wouldnt want
(05:47):
to do that. But um, would that make sense at all? No?
I don't think so, because there are individual agencies within U.
S d A with individual mandates. If you're trying to reorganize,
you're already setting up battles. You have to get a
lot of new legislation passed, and I say, work with
what you have and use the time efficiently, because by
(06:10):
the time all those reorgs happened, I've been I'm old Tom,
I've been through many I think by the time you
redo all the stationary reorganize everybody's job titles, move the furniture.
I don't know if it makes a big difference. And
what are some of the agencies that are within the
USDA that soup This is real, This is a real
(06:33):
temptation for me to go on for multiple hours. The
biggest agency at U s c A is the Forest Service.
A lot of people think that's in the Department of
Interior where the park services, but actually usc A has
a for services about thirty five employees, and of course
the last few years have been very involved in wildfire
control forest management. Many people who go skiing on private
(06:57):
resort mountains don't realize that that may be Forest Service land.
And the Forest Service actually has an office in New
York City for those of you in the big city
where they're looking at trees and urban settings. So it's
not just out in the countryside. The U s A
has a food Safety inspection service. We have four agencies
at U s c A that do research. We have
(07:19):
research labs across the country and every five years, one
of my favorite things, because I'm a nerd U s
c A, has a Census of Agriculture. We do account
of all farmers and ranchers in the country and learn
a lot about their operations, all publicly available information. If
my memory serves me, you, you were the one who
(07:39):
started to know your farmer program. When I was asked
to do that by Secretary will Sack. Most people immediately
wanted there to be a staff in an office and
have a house somewhere. And my view was every agency
at U s d A should find a home for
local and regional agriculture. And I didn't want to just
put it in one place, but I wanted to challenge
(08:02):
every single part of us DA to stand tall and
do something important. And in fact, all of the seventeen
agencies of us DA came forward with really significant programs.
For example, the Natural Resources Conservation Service that helps and
send farmers to do environmental practices on their land. They
(08:24):
came forward with a hoop house initiative seasonal high tunnel
way for farmers to extend their growing season. That was
wildly popular and the biggest uptake state was Wisconsin. Also
followed close on the hills by Alaska. We're having that
ability to extend the growing season actually significantly changed lives.
(08:44):
We'll be right back, welcome back to citizenship. We will
have a lot of questions about our food and how
we ast consumers can better understand systems in place that
(09:06):
get that food to us. Kathleen Merrigan, I think is
the perfect person to demystify what the U. S d
A does and why we should care. So far, you
talked about forestry, you talked about ranchers, you talked about farmers.
We haven't heard about what's in it for the people.
How does the average person how do they engage with
(09:29):
the U s d A. Where do they see it?
Obviously in their taxes they see it, But where do
they see it in the supermarket? Where do they see
it in the grocery store? How does it affect them? Now?
I know I think that the overwhelming largest part of
the budget goes to SNAP is that is that correct?
At least more than half, and I was Deputy secretary
in ten it was at the high point and we
(09:53):
were feeding about forty nine million people through the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP. Now it's much more because of
the widespread unemployment and chaos in our economy. What's really
nice is when the federal government provides SNAP benefits in
times of economic distress, people immediately spend that money and
(10:15):
it stimulates the economy more effectively than anything else. We know.
It's a it's like a shovel ready stimulus program, but yes,
SNAP is the biggest part of the u s d
a's budget. Overall nutrition assistance is about eight percent these
days of us das budgets. Too often family will use
those dollars to buy the cheapest foods possible. And so
(10:35):
that leads me to ask, how can the U s
d A make nutritious foods more fordable, more accessible outside
of the double Bucks program where you can use your
food stamps and the farmers market and get a token
for double the money that you spent there. As much
as I'm a big USDA and federal government champion, change
happens outside of Metro d C, and it eventually makes
(10:57):
it to the halls of power there, and it's really
great that we have a situation where we have a
farm bill every five years or so, and some of
the innovations that we see out in the field can
become national policy. And you give a good example with
a double ups program. Um, you know, the SNAP program
is probably the money that people get is too little,
(11:20):
and that makes um, they're getting more now, They're getting
a little more, a little bit more now. But I
think people are ready to reassess the Thrifty Food Plan,
which is his analysis in the background that helps determine
what the snap amount of money should be to allow
people to eat a diet consistent with the dietary guidelines
for Americans, which is also something that US AND has
(11:42):
involved in. Right. It's also used for things like to
calculate alimony and also to calculate the amount of calories
that members of the services I should receive as well.
So it's not just for snaps, that's right. There are
a lot of issues around food access. People get very
focused on the cost of food it. I just want
to say, you know, we need to put more money
into it. But food access is something that we know
(12:06):
is really difficult. So if I don't have a car
and taking public transport and maybe doing two jobs, I
might be a single mom. You know, I'm going to
get all processed food because I can't afford to buy
fresh food because I can't take that time out of
my month multiple times. So there are a lot of
different factors that play in. It's a complex problem to solve,
(12:30):
but we definitely need to get more nutritious food to people.
And when people start talking about the budget problem, I
just look at what we spend as a nation on
healthcare costs, and I say, can't we think more in
a preventative health way and understand food as medicine? And
if we do, wouldn't we um put on our green
(12:50):
eye shades and see things totally differently? I think so right.
I think the numbers, well, it was a couple of
years back about two billion dollars a year on healthcare
costs associated poor diet and pornutrition. So yeah, you think
um our our friend Jim McGovern, he's been asking for
this for a long time. I think the voices are
starting to be raised. I think also Senator Booker is
(13:12):
starting to ask for as well. And that is a
White House summit on hunger, which we haven't seen since
the Nixon administration. Um, what what policies do you think
come out of a summit on hunger? It's against a
three day summit where you will take people from across
the spectrum through different agencies making recommendations. What what kind
(13:33):
of policies can come out of a three three day
session on hunger that can really help Americans? Well, I
think in the year that we've had, the last year
and a half, where we've had this national reckoning with
our really sword history on racial justice and social equity,
I think I would put those issues front and center
and and we really know that this pandemic is just
(13:57):
another exclamation point at the end of the sentence that
things are not fair and people are not equally able
to survive hardship, And so I would I would probably
put that lens on everything I do. Want to say.
Jim McGovern is just about my favorite person in the world.
(14:17):
What a champion for everything good in the world. He's
the foremost champion of snap in Congress. Of course, he's
got a lot of help with Rosa de Laura and others,
and Corey Booker putting out the Justice for Black Farmers
Act really impressive um reintroduced this year with a lot
of co sponsors, a lot of them on the Semi
Agriculture Committee, really saying we have not treated black farmers well.
(14:40):
We certainly know from the different lawsuits at U, s
d A. We haven't treated Native Americans well, we haven't
treated women well. So we've got a lot to reckon
with a lot of it goes back to equity and justice.
The calls are pretty strong right now and there's hopefully
you know, the administration is receptive to it, but it's
it's about time. I think the last time we had
was I think with likeness to nine are somewhere in there,
(15:02):
and some some good programs come out. The SNAP program
was modernized that you know, prior to that you actually
had to pay into the SNAP program, and so that
was changed. The RECAS program I think was created after that.
So good policies came out of it, and it worked
for some time until the eighties and then kind of
we we took a step backwards. And you know, I'm
loving now that the last a week or so, starting
to hear stories about how there are a fewer people
(15:23):
who are hungry now, because we're actually spending some more money.
That's that's the point, right, That's that's the that's the
goal of spending the money so a fewer people are hungry,
there may be a greater sense of empathy for people
who are struggling. So I think we have a good
opportunity here. Unfortunately, COVID had to do that. We had
to wreck our you know, our economy for so many
people and go through a pandemic to get there. But
(15:46):
that could be the only one silver lining anyway. And
this this whole year that we've we've been through, well,
I hope you're I hope you're right about that, Tom.
I know that members of Congress, who are very involved
in hunger issues oftentimes but pretty much annually, issue the
snap challenge to their colleagues, and they challenge members of
Congress to live for a week on what would be
(16:08):
a snap budget. And I've actually gone to the grocery
store with groups of Congress people as they try to
shop with their carts with their budget and try to
figure it out. So, yeah, people don't really understand what
it means to live with food insecurity in this country.
And I just remember back at the beginning of the
Obama administration, there was an outbreak of H one N one,
(16:32):
which was a swine flu, and people um all over
the administration really concerned because schools were closing and they thought,
what about all those kids, and they're not going to
have access to school meals? A very valid concern, But
I said, you know where do you think these kids
get their meals on the weekends and on school vacations
and in the summers. So we have a lot of
(16:54):
work to do to make sure children, in particular have
access to the nutrition they need to become successful adults
and contributors to society. We'll be back with more Citizen Chef.
I'm Tom Clokio and I'm talking with my friend Kathleen Merrigan,
(17:16):
the former Deputy Secretary and Agriculture from two thousand. How
How did you? How did you end up in the
usb A? How does one end up as the the
number two in this huge agency? Overall in the federal
government there about four thousand political appointees and of that number,
(17:37):
probably about two fifty or at U s d A,
so not a lot of people, and probably of that
number is somewhat less than fifteen. I have to go
through Senate confirmation as I did. So how did I
get that job? I ran a little campaign for myself.
I suppose you don't get those jobs because you're sitting
in your office waiting for the phone to ring. Kathleen
(17:59):
is an advocate for organic farming. She in fact wrote
the organic bill. So when I was nominated to BC
Secretary of Agriculture, for example, people said, Merrigan, she's from
Massachusetts and that's not a big act state. She wrote
the organic law. That's not mainstream egg, and she's female. Um,
it was mostly a male dominated sport. In other words,
(18:20):
that wasn't the trifecta tom ha ha. Though I'd say
I was at a school at toss Up Graduate School
of Nutrition, Science and Policy, and I said, but I
got the nutrition part, and that that's a bulk of
what usd A resources spent on. I hate the words ours,
But do you think we need foods? Are this idea
that we need someone who's focused more on food? Well,
(18:41):
first of all, we probably need a zarina. So I
think that the calls for having a foods are are
positive because to me, it reflects the American public's growing
interests in food. Where As my food come from who
(19:01):
produced it? Why should I care? I think that this call,
which I know in part our friend Jose Andrea's has led,
this call for a senior person in the White House
to lead a national conversation, is all indication that we're
going in the right direction. At what point of your
like to did you say, well, this is where, this
is where my interests are. What sort of got you there?
(19:25):
Why would I want to go to U. S d A.
I used to think of it as the evil Empire, honestly,
and I was always an advocate on the outside fighting
for truth justice in the American way. As suppose if
if you asked me at the time, and when I
was maternity leave with my first child, my nonprofit decided
(19:45):
to go under in a way, and I did the
thing I never expected to do. I went to U.
S c A And asked for a job. And the
Deputy secretary at the time, Rich Rominger, was a friend,
someone I knew for a million years with working with
American family and try, and he put me in the
job as the Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator the last two
(20:06):
years of Clinton to oversee the rulemaking on organic food standards,
among other things I do believe as complex and large
as U. S. D A is that many other federal
departments have a role to play in food. The Centers
for Disease Control and all their work on obesity within
(20:29):
Health and Human Services. The Department of Labor has job
courts centers where they helped train people in culinary arts
and forest service. The v A. Can you imagine if
we got all the hospitals of the Veterans Administration to
serve organic or local and regional or better yet organic
(20:50):
local food. What kind of massive change would that mean?
It would be huge. It's not just a snap program.
It's the women isn't children program with It's the school
meals program, which is not just lunch anymore, but it's breakfast.
It's backpack programs on the weekends. In some cases, it's
summer programs. All of those kind of programs that need
to be extended because we know there are families who
(21:13):
are in hunger. I can go through the whole alphabet
suit beyond U. S c A of these other federal
departments and say, hey, what can you do to help
transform our food system? So to me, that argues for
someone in the White House to be trying to pull
the various strings together to help out. So one thing,
(21:40):
one thing I have to ask you about talk. Yeah, So, Tom,
I have all my graduate students play this game, so
to speak. It comes from Deborah Stone in a book
that she wrote, Policy Paradox. It's really an exercise in
trying to understand what is fair. People think fair means equal, No,
not necessarily, or that fair is easy to define. Not really.
(22:02):
So I would come to class with a very small
chocolate cake, and I'd say, how should we divide this cake?
What's the most fair proposal? And we'll vote on it,
and I'd break people up in the small groups, and
people will come back with ideas like, well, well, divided
up by body mass index, and so we won't overload
the obese among us, or we'll figure out who didn't
(22:25):
have lunch, so they're they're probably the most hungry. We'll
figure it out in various ways, all kinds of fair ways.
But this is the kicker, Tom. In all the years
that I have been using this exercise, only once or
twice has a group of students come up with a
proposal that said, let's share the cake with people outside
(22:46):
of the room and I'd say, what about the security guard.
He makes us safe at the front of the building.
What about the homeless people outside our building in Chinatown?
What about the kids down the block in the elementary
school who may not have sufficient school meals? To me,
it was a really important policy lesson and it said
(23:07):
to me, unless we change the faces around the decision
making table to better reflected demographics of this country, why
do we think that things are going to change because
they're forgotten people who are not being considered when policy
is being constructed. They're not getting their spice of the
chocolate cake. I really thought that people would think outside
(23:30):
of the room. Um, but no, And when policies are
being constructed in Capital Hill, in the state legislatures, in
the city council, if people are not pushing themselves in
the door and confronting policy makers and making the stand
about what they need, they're not going to be thought
about and better. Yeah, they need to be represented at
(23:53):
the table with full representation rights. Ideally that's where we
get to but little exercise, but it's meaningful. What do
you see as the biggest threat to our food supply
right now? And there's droughts in your neck of the
woods you're living now massive droughts, and what's the biggest
threat to our our food supply? Hands down? Climate change,
hands down, And we all know that time is running out,
(24:16):
and I think this pandemic, as devastating as it has been,
is like a little blip on the screen compared to
what climate change will be. What we didn't touch on
is working on food investment. What are you seeing out
there in the investment world that really guess you're excited
right now? Huh Yeah. It's a great thing for me
as a professor because I'm exposed to all the new
(24:37):
ideas coming in all the time. There's been this huge
investment of capital in ag tech in particular, and I
think that's great. I'm really interested in what's going on
in robotics. I don't think that I've seen a robot
that can do as well as a human being, but
if there's a way to allow human beings to do
(24:57):
other jobs oftentimes, that's great. All kinds of things going
on in the alternative protein world, even alternative alternatives to
leather and cotton um. A lot of interesting things going
on in technology to combat food waste, indoor agriculture, vertical
farming things that allow agriculture to come closer and closer
(25:22):
proximity to cities. It's also heads against climate change as well.
If you're farming indoors, you're not using pesticides, you're not
using its pesticides. Bowery, they recycled about the water and
you don't have to worry about the weather. You're you're indoors.
But they're getting there, They're getting they're getting there. I've
actually tasted some root vegetivals that they've done that quite
(25:42):
quite good. Actually, well, we have to, um, we have
to count on you, chef, because I personally believe you're
only going to get people to so many people to
change their dietary practices because it's good for their personal health,
so many people to change because it's good for planetary
How we need the power of deliciousness to really motivate
(26:03):
the masses. That's your job. I can work on all
the wonky usd A stuff, but that's your job. And
that's what it was so frustrating about. Um. You know.
And I was in the middle of labeling and GMOs
and I'm not nearly as opposed to GMOs as some
people may think. I am. Um I just want to
see them label number one. But can we start breeding
stuff for deliciousness? Um? You know, the first the first
(26:26):
GMO vegetable was that tomato with that flavor saver and
it just it you don't see anymore why it was
just it was horrible. It was terrible. And so yeah,
we need to get breeders. I mean, and there are
lists are breeders breeding some delicious foods. Uh. In fact,
that chef Dan Barber who's his seventh World company is
doing just that, but is doing that. But you're you're right,
(26:46):
deliciousness will win the day, um, hopefully except for you know,
my little guy at home, who's who's ten, who finds
nothing to be delicious. Um, and it's really frustrating. Good
luck with that. Let me know if I can help. Ever,
before we part, anything else that you think that my
listeners should know about the U s d A. When
(27:07):
you're driving around town, look for the U. S d
A office. Um, they're all over the place, whether it's
Animal Plant Health Inspection Service in fact, inspecting product coming
across the border and make sure we don't bring in past.
Whether it's the park that you're hiking, and it could
be part of the Forest Service. Look for the U.
(27:27):
S d A sign. And now that you've heard this podcast,
maybe your awareness movie raised. Just like sometimes people tell
you about something it's not your consciousness at all, and
once it has and you see it all over the place,
maybe now people will be seeing U. S d A
all over and and become USDA nerds just like me.
That that's what we're hoping for. I don't know if
(27:49):
I ever get to your level, but just how they
understand there's an agency that is there for food safety,
um is there to make sure that Americans aren't hungry,
is there to protect our forest, but that there's this
agency that really is there to to serve the American public,
and you should understand how it works and find ways
to interact with it. Uh So, hopefully, hopefully this the
system beginning of that well, Abraham Lincoln, when he established
(28:12):
the U. S c A called it the People's Department.
So you know, one of my goals and steputy and
now even as Professor is trying to get USDA to
open the stores a little bit wider for all of
us to part take of what it has to offer,
it was the People's Department. Then it needs to be
the People's Department now, Kathleen, Thank you, Pleasure Tom So,
(28:36):
thank you so much again to Kathleen American for sitting
down with us and for her incredible insight into such
an important branch of our government. Plenty of what Kathleen
and I talked about will be coming up again in
the weeks ahead, most importantly how we can be the
best advocates for a smart food system in ways that
go beyond voting with our fork. I for one, cannot
wait to learn more from the all star lineup of
(28:56):
guests we have, and I hope you will join us.
As always a shout out to a place at the table.
Citizen Chef was executive produced by Christopher Hasseiotis Gabrielle Collins.
Our research and writers are Lillian Holman and Jescelyn Shields.
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app. Apple podcasts are anywhere you listen to your
(29:18):
favorite shows. M
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Radio and
then once I got in Tom, I got hooked. U
s c A is such a huge place, as we
were describing, So you've got every person, every kind of
walk of life there, and to me, it's a really
interesting puzzle. How do you motivate and move forward to
bureaucracy that complex, that large, that geographically disperse and get
(00:25):
important things done. I like teasing out that problem. Welcome
back to Citisen Chef. This season, we're gonna really start
of digging into not just where you get your food,
but how these processes are regulated. There's this big thing
out there called the U. S d A. And I
think they have a budget of about a hundred fifty
(00:49):
sixty billion dollars and I think there's about a hundred
and fifty thousand employees. And this is this big, giant
governmental entity that regulates pretty much everything that we eat.
But I don't I don't think a whole lot of
people understand what the U. S d A does, why
they're there. But if you eat it, most likely the U.
S d A regulates it. I thought the best person
(01:11):
to talk to about this was my friend Kathleen Merrigan. So,
Kathleen A. Merigan was the U S Deputy Secretary Agriculture
from two thousand nine two thirteen, and she is now
the executive director at the Sweat Center for Sustainable Food
Systems at the Arizona State University. She also started to
Know Your Farmer campaign and was also instrumental in working
(01:32):
with Michelle Obama on the Let's Move campaign. She's someone
who I lean on to get the sort of real
deep policy answers that I'm looking for. So I think
we're gonna ask some questions that include chocolate cake. But
more on that later. So please welcome Kathleen Merrigan. Kathleen,
how you doing things? Are great? Trying to tort your
(01:52):
young minds, that's my They are really interested in filth policy,
and we we're got to change the faces around the
table if we want to change policy. Tom, that's my mission.
I hear you. My son is graduating very soon with
a degree in food policy. Yeah. So the USDA, all right,
I've got all kinds of fun facts for you about
(02:14):
us Well good. I mean, it's this massive governmental body,
the hundred and ten thousand employees, The budget is over
a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year. I think
for ten thou short right now, jobs that are available.
Anybody listening, they want to job the U s d
A apply, they need you. And we describe U s
(02:34):
t A as a field based agency, meaning most of
the employees are scattered about the States and in fact
in countries around the world because most of our foreign
embassies have egg specialists. They're feeding back intelligence to USDA
about what's going on around food and agriculture and country X,
(02:56):
Y and z. So it's a massive operation. But it's
this massive, this massive government organization, and yet I don't
think the average person has a clue as to what
the U s d A does and why they should
care about what the U s d A does. We
thought it'd be great to kick off our second season
with a permit on the U s d A and
what it does. And with that, why should the average
(03:17):
person care about the USDA? What do they need to
know about the USDA? Well, the USDA is the fifth
largest government agency. The Secretary of Agriculture is ninth in
line to succession of the President, and that's because USA
was the ninth federal government department established first of all,
if you're a taxpayer. I hope I got your attention
with some of those numbers. That's one reason to be
(03:40):
paying attention. The second reason is if you're a person
in rural America, the U. S d A is your
home in the federal government because so many of their
programs are oriented to rural Americans. A lot of the
programs have eligibility requirements that make it so that the
smallest of commune today's our first in line for the
(04:02):
largest that USDA has to offer. So if I'm sitting
there in rural Kansas, I'm listening to this podcast just
because I stumbled upon it, and now someone's telling me
I should care about certain policies. What are they? Well,
like most people think about U. S c A, and
they connected right away to farmers and ranchers. Yes, US
does a lot with farmers and ranchers. But if you're
(04:23):
in a small town, you might be getting money from U.
S c A to help buy an ambulance or a
police car. You might be getting money wait, wait, money
from the US to buy a police car or an ambulance. Yes. Yes, Um,
they help with telemedicine, hospital construction, a lot of rural housing. Um.
(04:43):
Money A loans come from U. S d A. I
know in the Biden announcement about the infrastructure legislation, there's
promise of a lot of money for rural I'm just
generally water um infrastructure because of leaded pipe, and I
think in the current proposal most of that money goes
(05:03):
to E p A. But U s C as in
that business too. They do a lot to help small
communities construct water and wastewater systems. They've been involved over
decades in the electrification of America. You might say that's
work that's been done, but I live here in Arizona,
just close by to the Navajo Nation, which crosses many states.
(05:26):
There's still still fifty thousand homes a Navajo Nation without
running water electricity, which is one of the reasons why
the COVID pandemic was so severe. There was an agency
that large. If you break it up in the smaller parts,
and would that make sense our our uh? I mean,
I'm sure if you're the secretary secretary culture wouldnt want
(05:47):
to do that. But um, would that make sense at all? No?
I don't think so, because there are individual agencies within U.
S d A with individual mandates. If you're trying to reorganize,
you're already setting up battles. You have to get a
lot of new legislation passed, and I say, work with
what you have and use the time efficiently, because by
(06:10):
the time all those reorgs happened, I've been I'm old Tom,
I've been through many I think by the time you
redo all the stationary reorganize everybody's job titles, move the furniture.
I don't know if it makes a big difference. And
what are some of the agencies that are within the
USDA that soup This is real, This is a real
(06:33):
temptation for me to go on for multiple hours. The
biggest agency at U s c A is the Forest Service.
A lot of people think that's in the Department of
Interior where the park services, but actually usc A has
a for services about thirty five employees, and of course
the last few years have been very involved in wildfire
control forest management. Many people who go skiing on private
(06:57):
resort mountains don't realize that that may be Forest Service land.
And the Forest Service actually has an office in New
York City for those of you in the big city
where they're looking at trees and urban settings. So it's
not just out in the countryside. The U s A
has a food Safety inspection service. We have four agencies
at U s c A that do research. We have
(07:19):
research labs across the country and every five years, one
of my favorite things, because I'm a nerd U s
c A, has a Census of Agriculture. We do account
of all farmers and ranchers in the country and learn
a lot about their operations, all publicly available information. If
my memory serves me, you, you were the one who
(07:39):
started to know your farmer program. When I was asked
to do that by Secretary will Sack. Most people immediately
wanted there to be a staff in an office and
have a house somewhere. And my view was every agency
at U s d A should find a home for
local and regional agriculture. And I didn't want to just
put it in one place, but I wanted to challenge
(08:02):
every single part of us DA to stand tall and
do something important. And in fact, all of the seventeen
agencies of us DA came forward with really significant programs.
For example, the Natural Resources Conservation Service that helps and
send farmers to do environmental practices on their land. They
(08:24):
came forward with a hoop house initiative seasonal high tunnel
way for farmers to extend their growing season. That was
wildly popular and the biggest uptake state was Wisconsin. Also
followed close on the hills by Alaska. We're having that
ability to extend the growing season actually significantly changed lives.
(08:44):
We'll be right back, welcome back to citizenship. We will
have a lot of questions about our food and how
we ast consumers can better understand systems in place that
(09:06):
get that food to us. Kathleen Merrigan, I think is
the perfect person to demystify what the U. S d
A does and why we should care. So far, you
talked about forestry, you talked about ranchers, you talked about farmers.
We haven't heard about what's in it for the people.
How does the average person how do they engage with
(09:29):
the U s d A. Where do they see it?
Obviously in their taxes they see it, But where do
they see it in the supermarket? Where do they see
it in the grocery store? How does it affect them? Now?
I know I think that the overwhelming largest part of
the budget goes to SNAP is that is that correct?
At least more than half, and I was Deputy secretary
in ten it was at the high point and we
(09:53):
were feeding about forty nine million people through the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP. Now it's much more because of
the widespread unemployment and chaos in our economy. What's really
nice is when the federal government provides SNAP benefits in
times of economic distress, people immediately spend that money and
(10:15):
it stimulates the economy more effectively than anything else. We know.
It's a it's like a shovel ready stimulus program, but yes,
SNAP is the biggest part of the u s d
a's budget. Overall nutrition assistance is about eight percent these
days of us das budgets. Too often family will use
those dollars to buy the cheapest foods possible. And so
(10:35):
that leads me to ask, how can the U s
d A make nutritious foods more fordable, more accessible outside
of the double Bucks program where you can use your
food stamps and the farmers market and get a token
for double the money that you spent there. As much
as I'm a big USDA and federal government champion, change
happens outside of Metro d C, and it eventually makes
(10:57):
it to the halls of power there, and it's really
great that we have a situation where we have a
farm bill every five years or so, and some of
the innovations that we see out in the field can
become national policy. And you give a good example with
a double ups program. Um, you know, the SNAP program
is probably the money that people get is too little,
(11:20):
and that makes um, they're getting more now, They're getting
a little more, a little bit more now. But I
think people are ready to reassess the Thrifty Food Plan,
which is his analysis in the background that helps determine
what the snap amount of money should be to allow
people to eat a diet consistent with the dietary guidelines
for Americans, which is also something that US AND has
(11:42):
involved in. Right. It's also used for things like to
calculate alimony and also to calculate the amount of calories
that members of the services I should receive as well.
So it's not just for snaps, that's right. There are
a lot of issues around food access. People get very
focused on the cost of food it. I just want
to say, you know, we need to put more money
into it. But food access is something that we know
(12:06):
is really difficult. So if I don't have a car
and taking public transport and maybe doing two jobs, I
might be a single mom. You know, I'm going to
get all processed food because I can't afford to buy
fresh food because I can't take that time out of
my month multiple times. So there are a lot of
different factors that play in. It's a complex problem to solve,
(12:30):
but we definitely need to get more nutritious food to people.
And when people start talking about the budget problem, I
just look at what we spend as a nation on
healthcare costs, and I say, can't we think more in
a preventative health way and understand food as medicine? And
if we do, wouldn't we um put on our green
(12:50):
eye shades and see things totally differently? I think so right.
I think the numbers, well, it was a couple of
years back about two billion dollars a year on healthcare
costs associated poor diet and pornutrition. So yeah, you think
um our our friend Jim McGovern, he's been asking for
this for a long time. I think the voices are
starting to be raised. I think also Senator Booker is
(13:12):
starting to ask for as well. And that is a
White House summit on hunger, which we haven't seen since
the Nixon administration. Um, what what policies do you think
come out of a summit on hunger? It's against a
three day summit where you will take people from across
the spectrum through different agencies making recommendations. What what kind
(13:33):
of policies can come out of a three three day
session on hunger that can really help Americans? Well, I
think in the year that we've had, the last year
and a half, where we've had this national reckoning with
our really sword history on racial justice and social equity,
I think I would put those issues front and center
and and we really know that this pandemic is just
(13:57):
another exclamation point at the end of the sentence that
things are not fair and people are not equally able
to survive hardship, And so I would I would probably
put that lens on everything I do. Want to say.
Jim McGovern is just about my favorite person in the world.
(14:17):
What a champion for everything good in the world. He's
the foremost champion of snap in Congress. Of course, he's
got a lot of help with Rosa de Laura and others,
and Corey Booker putting out the Justice for Black Farmers
Act really impressive um reintroduced this year with a lot
of co sponsors, a lot of them on the Semi
Agriculture Committee, really saying we have not treated black farmers well.
(14:40):
We certainly know from the different lawsuits at U, s
d A. We haven't treated Native Americans well, we haven't
treated women well. So we've got a lot to reckon
with a lot of it goes back to equity and justice.
The calls are pretty strong right now and there's hopefully
you know, the administration is receptive to it, but it's
it's about time. I think the last time we had
was I think with likeness to nine are somewhere in there,
(15:02):
and some some good programs come out. The SNAP program
was modernized that you know, prior to that you actually
had to pay into the SNAP program, and so that
was changed. The RECAS program I think was created after that.
So good policies came out of it, and it worked
for some time until the eighties and then kind of
we we took a step backwards. And you know, I'm
loving now that the last a week or so, starting
to hear stories about how there are a fewer people
(15:23):
who are hungry now, because we're actually spending some more money.
That's that's the point, right, That's that's the that's the
goal of spending the money so a fewer people are hungry,
there may be a greater sense of empathy for people
who are struggling. So I think we have a good
opportunity here. Unfortunately, COVID had to do that. We had
to wreck our you know, our economy for so many
people and go through a pandemic to get there. But
(15:46):
that could be the only one silver lining anyway. And
this this whole year that we've we've been through, well,
I hope you're I hope you're right about that, Tom.
I know that members of Congress, who are very involved
in hunger issues oftentimes but pretty much annually, issue the
snap challenge to their colleagues, and they challenge members of
Congress to live for a week on what would be
(16:08):
a snap budget. And I've actually gone to the grocery
store with groups of Congress people as they try to
shop with their carts with their budget and try to
figure it out. So, yeah, people don't really understand what
it means to live with food insecurity in this country.
And I just remember back at the beginning of the
Obama administration, there was an outbreak of H one N one,
(16:32):
which was a swine flu, and people um all over
the administration really concerned because schools were closing and they thought,
what about all those kids, and they're not going to
have access to school meals? A very valid concern, But
I said, you know where do you think these kids
get their meals on the weekends and on school vacations
and in the summers. So we have a lot of
(16:54):
work to do to make sure children, in particular have
access to the nutrition they need to become successful adults
and contributors to society. We'll be back with more Citizen Chef.
I'm Tom Clokio and I'm talking with my friend Kathleen Merrigan,
(17:16):
the former Deputy Secretary and Agriculture from two thousand. How
How did you? How did you end up in the
usb A? How does one end up as the the
number two in this huge agency? Overall in the federal
government there about four thousand political appointees and of that number,
(17:37):
probably about two fifty or at U s d A,
so not a lot of people, and probably of that
number is somewhat less than fifteen. I have to go
through Senate confirmation as I did. So how did I
get that job? I ran a little campaign for myself.
I suppose you don't get those jobs because you're sitting
in your office waiting for the phone to ring. Kathleen
(17:59):
is an advocate for organic farming. She in fact wrote
the organic bill. So when I was nominated to BC
Secretary of Agriculture, for example, people said, Merrigan, she's from
Massachusetts and that's not a big act state. She wrote
the organic law. That's not mainstream egg, and she's female. Um,
it was mostly a male dominated sport. In other words,
(18:20):
that wasn't the trifecta tom ha ha. Though I'd say
I was at a school at toss Up Graduate School
of Nutrition, Science and Policy, and I said, but I
got the nutrition part, and that that's a bulk of
what usd A resources spent on. I hate the words ours,
But do you think we need foods? Are this idea
that we need someone who's focused more on food? Well,
(18:41):
first of all, we probably need a zarina. So I
think that the calls for having a foods are are
positive because to me, it reflects the American public's growing
interests in food. Where As my food come from who
(19:01):
produced it? Why should I care? I think that this call,
which I know in part our friend Jose Andrea's has led,
this call for a senior person in the White House
to lead a national conversation, is all indication that we're
going in the right direction. At what point of your
like to did you say, well, this is where, this
is where my interests are. What sort of got you there?
(19:25):
Why would I want to go to U. S d A.
I used to think of it as the evil Empire, honestly,
and I was always an advocate on the outside fighting
for truth justice in the American way. As suppose if
if you asked me at the time, and when I
was maternity leave with my first child, my nonprofit decided
(19:45):
to go under in a way, and I did the
thing I never expected to do. I went to U.
S c A And asked for a job. And the
Deputy secretary at the time, Rich Rominger, was a friend,
someone I knew for a million years with working with
American family and try, and he put me in the
job as the Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator the last two
(20:06):
years of Clinton to oversee the rulemaking on organic food standards,
among other things I do believe as complex and large
as U. S. D A is that many other federal
departments have a role to play in food. The Centers
for Disease Control and all their work on obesity within
(20:29):
Health and Human Services. The Department of Labor has job
courts centers where they helped train people in culinary arts
and forest service. The v A. Can you imagine if
we got all the hospitals of the Veterans Administration to
serve organic or local and regional or better yet organic
(20:50):
local food. What kind of massive change would that mean?
It would be huge. It's not just a snap program.
It's the women isn't children program with It's the school
meals program, which is not just lunch anymore, but it's breakfast.
It's backpack programs on the weekends. In some cases, it's
summer programs. All of those kind of programs that need
to be extended because we know there are families who
(21:13):
are in hunger. I can go through the whole alphabet
suit beyond U. S c A of these other federal
departments and say, hey, what can you do to help
transform our food system? So to me, that argues for
someone in the White House to be trying to pull
the various strings together to help out. So one thing,
(21:40):
one thing I have to ask you about talk. Yeah, So, Tom,
I have all my graduate students play this game, so
to speak. It comes from Deborah Stone in a book
that she wrote, Policy Paradox. It's really an exercise in
trying to understand what is fair. People think fair means equal, No,
not necessarily, or that fair is easy to define. Not really.
(22:02):
So I would come to class with a very small
chocolate cake, and I'd say, how should we divide this cake?
What's the most fair proposal? And we'll vote on it,
and I'd break people up in the small groups, and
people will come back with ideas like, well, well, divided
up by body mass index, and so we won't overload
the obese among us, or we'll figure out who didn't
(22:25):
have lunch, so they're they're probably the most hungry. We'll
figure it out in various ways, all kinds of fair ways.
But this is the kicker, Tom. In all the years
that I have been using this exercise, only once or
twice has a group of students come up with a
proposal that said, let's share the cake with people outside
(22:46):
of the room and I'd say, what about the security guard.
He makes us safe at the front of the building.
What about the homeless people outside our building in Chinatown?
What about the kids down the block in the elementary
school who may not have sufficient school meals? To me,
it was a really important policy lesson and it said
(23:07):
to me, unless we change the faces around the decision
making table to better reflected demographics of this country, why
do we think that things are going to change because
they're forgotten people who are not being considered when policy
is being constructed. They're not getting their spice of the
chocolate cake. I really thought that people would think outside
(23:30):
of the room. Um, but no, And when policies are
being constructed in Capital Hill, in the state legislatures, in
the city council, if people are not pushing themselves in
the door and confronting policy makers and making the stand
about what they need, they're not going to be thought
about and better. Yeah, they need to be represented at
(23:53):
the table with full representation rights. Ideally that's where we
get to but little exercise, but it's meaningful. What do
you see as the biggest threat to our food supply
right now? And there's droughts in your neck of the
woods you're living now massive droughts, and what's the biggest
threat to our our food supply? Hands down? Climate change,
hands down, And we all know that time is running out,
(24:16):
and I think this pandemic, as devastating as it has been,
is like a little blip on the screen compared to
what climate change will be. What we didn't touch on
is working on food investment. What are you seeing out
there in the investment world that really guess you're excited
right now? Huh Yeah. It's a great thing for me
as a professor because I'm exposed to all the new
(24:37):
ideas coming in all the time. There's been this huge
investment of capital in ag tech in particular, and I
think that's great. I'm really interested in what's going on
in robotics. I don't think that I've seen a robot
that can do as well as a human being, but
if there's a way to allow human beings to do
(24:57):
other jobs oftentimes, that's great. All kinds of things going
on in the alternative protein world, even alternative alternatives to
leather and cotton um. A lot of interesting things going
on in technology to combat food waste, indoor agriculture, vertical
farming things that allow agriculture to come closer and closer
(25:22):
proximity to cities. It's also heads against climate change as well.
If you're farming indoors, you're not using pesticides, you're not
using its pesticides. Bowery, they recycled about the water and
you don't have to worry about the weather. You're you're indoors.
But they're getting there, They're getting they're getting there. I've
actually tasted some root vegetivals that they've done that quite
(25:42):
quite good. Actually, well, we have to, um, we have
to count on you, chef, because I personally believe you're
only going to get people to so many people to
change their dietary practices because it's good for their personal health,
so many people to change because it's good for planetary
How we need the power of deliciousness to really motivate
(26:03):
the masses. That's your job. I can work on all
the wonky usd A stuff, but that's your job. And
that's what it was so frustrating about. Um. You know.
And I was in the middle of labeling and GMOs
and I'm not nearly as opposed to GMOs as some
people may think. I am. Um I just want to
see them label number one. But can we start breeding
stuff for deliciousness? Um? You know, the first the first
(26:26):
GMO vegetable was that tomato with that flavor saver and
it just it you don't see anymore why it was
just it was horrible. It was terrible. And so yeah,
we need to get breeders. I mean, and there are
lists are breeders breeding some delicious foods. Uh. In fact,
that chef Dan Barber who's his seventh World company is
doing just that, but is doing that. But you're you're right,
(26:46):
deliciousness will win the day, um, hopefully except for you know,
my little guy at home, who's who's ten, who finds
nothing to be delicious. Um, and it's really frustrating. Good
luck with that. Let me know if I can help. Ever,
before we part, anything else that you think that my
listeners should know about the U s d A. When
(27:07):
you're driving around town, look for the U. S d
A office. Um, they're all over the place, whether it's
Animal Plant Health Inspection Service in fact, inspecting product coming
across the border and make sure we don't bring in past.
Whether it's the park that you're hiking, and it could
be part of the Forest Service. Look for the U.
(27:27):
S d A sign. And now that you've heard this podcast,
maybe your awareness movie raised. Just like sometimes people tell
you about something it's not your consciousness at all, and
once it has and you see it all over the place,
maybe now people will be seeing U. S d A
all over and and become USDA nerds just like me.
That that's what we're hoping for. I don't know if
(27:49):
I ever get to your level, but just how they
understand there's an agency that is there for food safety,
um is there to make sure that Americans aren't hungry,
is there to protect our forest, but that there's this
agency that really is there to to serve the American public,
and you should understand how it works and find ways
to interact with it. Uh So, hopefully, hopefully this the
system beginning of that well, Abraham Lincoln, when he established
(28:12):
the U. S c A called it the People's Department.
So you know, one of my goals and steputy and
now even as Professor is trying to get USDA to
open the stores a little bit wider for all of
us to part take of what it has to offer,
it was the People's Department. Then it needs to be
the People's Department now, Kathleen, Thank you, Pleasure Tom So,
(28:36):
thank you so much again to Kathleen American for sitting
down with us and for her incredible insight into such
an important branch of our government. Plenty of what Kathleen
and I talked about will be coming up again in
the weeks ahead, most importantly how we can be the
best advocates for a smart food system in ways that
go beyond voting with our fork. I for one, cannot
wait to learn more from the all star lineup of
(28:56):
guests we have, and I hope you will join us.
As always a shout out to a place at the table.
Citizen Chef was executive produced by Christopher Hasseiotis Gabrielle Collins.
Our research and writers are Lillian Holman and Jescelyn Shields.
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app. Apple podcasts are anywhere you listen to your
(29:18):
favorite shows. M
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