News

[Article Summarized by Meridian Institute]  In this opinion piece, Dan Glickman, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and current Senior Fellow for the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) and co-chair of a bipartisan initiative on global agriculture and hunger for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, asks, “What could a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a fourth-generation farmer, an organic food advocate and an international development expert possibly have in common on food and agriculture policy?”  The answer, he writes, is “we all agree that food and agriculture policy is in a stalemate and will be unable to meet the world’s long-term needs of production, nutrition, environment and rural communities.”  It is why all four – Glickman; Jim Moseley, former deputy secretary at the USDA and an Indiana farmer for more than 40 years; Gary Hirshberg, chairman, president and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm; and Emmy Simmons, former assistant administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade at the USAID– signed up to be co-chairs of AGree, a new initiative to transform food and agriculture policy being funded by nine of the world’s leading foundations. While they may not see eye to eye on every issue, the co-chairs are committed to finding common ground on solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing food and agricultural systems.  And the diversity of the co-chairs embodies AGree’s new approach to finding solutions.  As Glickman says, AGree “will have dialogue across all sectors and opinions; we will produce best-in-class research and comprehensive analysis; and we will find answers based on evidence without letting emotion blind us to the smartest solutions and policies.”  We must, he says, move beyond the “us vs. them” conversations and mentalities, and notes that meaningful dialogue and agreement between different factions will not come quickly or easily – which is why, he writes, “AGree is at its minimum an eight-year initiative. The 2012 farm bill alone is not our goal; while it is important, it is the farm bills after that, as well as other agriculture-related policies including energy, environment and trade bills, where we truly feel we can make a difference.”  AGree will gather insight from a diverse set of stakeholders, including: conventional and organic farmers, ranchers, nutritionists, rural advocates, energy experts, environmentalists, financiers, international aid veterans and public health specialists.  The initiative will conduct the necessary research, and synthesize existing data to provide new insights and information for stakeholders and policymakers.  Food and agriculture, Glickman concludes, “affects many different parts of our lives and a successful sustainable food and agriculture system must be developed with all of these parts in mind. These issues are simply too important, and their impact is too widespread to be left solely to the same group of people used to making all the decisions.”