Former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman didn’t start out life as a farmer, but his service as a Congressman from Kansas and in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet set him on a career-long course of influencing agricultural policy. He now co-chairs a group called AGree. The group seeks to identify challenges confronting the world’s food and agricultural systems and form a consensus on how best to meet those challenges.
He recently spoke to Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays in Washington, D.C. (You can hear their conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.) He said he came to the work that defined his service on Capitol Hill in a roundabout way.
“Actually the heart of my Congressional career was agriculture. I didn’t start out planning it that way because I was from Wichita and my dad wasn’t in farming or agriculture, but it became the most important subject I dealt with. I was able to continue it through the secretary’s job and I’m still involved in a global food security initiative with the Gates Foundation with AGree which is a multi-foundational initiative to promote food and agriculture and I speak out on a lot of food and agriculture issues.”
He says AGree is a place to bring all types of agriculture interests together from the largest corporations to the smallest farmers to try and find some common ground and purpose to agriculture. Some of the issues they are currently tackling include how to get more funds allocated for research, how to get more young people interested in farming and how to build more sustainable communities. He says AGree tries to stay away from more controversial issues and did not get involved in the farm bill debate.
“Most of our stuff is how to build discussion and dialog on food and agriculture nationally.”
One of the more controversial issues that AGree has been forced to address, however, is the issue of GMO crops. They are ever-more prevalent with each passing season, yet there is still a tremendous amount of debate about their safety and necessity to modern agriculture, Glickman says.
“Both sides on the GMO issue tend to think Providence and the Good Lord is on their side. So, the pro-GMO crowd thinks like ‘Without this we are going to fall apart and won’t be able to produce anything for the future.’ And the anti-GMO crowd thinks this is a conspiracy for big agriculture and is going to hurt our health.
“Well, the truth of the matter is we need genetic engineering as a part of science. Science is going to help solve a lot of our problems including how to deal with drought and disease in agriculture and nutrition of crops and those things. At the same time, it’s not the only answer to agriculture.”
Getting more young people into farming is also a topic that generates a lot of healthy discussion, according to Glickman. He says that just as plastics looked like the wave of the future in the 1930s, the enormous economic potential of producing enough food and fiber to feed nine billion people will inexorably bring young people into agriculture.
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