Just days before farmers will be going to vote, Democratic candidate Barack Obama made a major slip when he criticized American agriculture. In an interview with Time Magazine he said, “I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the meantime, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.”
US farm leaders were quick to respond. Ron Litterer, a farmer who is chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, said Obama’s comments in the Time interview were “in conflict with what he’s been saying about agriculture, no question about it.” Click here
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