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Purdue

Today is my official first day as Professor and Head of the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University.  The department was recently ranked 4th in the world and I'm excited to see what we can do to make headway on the three slots in front of us!  While I will no doubt continue to post some cowboy-related items, don't be surprised if you start seeing some boilermaker content.   

Freedom of Information Request

About a year ago, I had a freedom of information request (FOIA) from Gary Ruskin with U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) asking for all my correspondence with a long list or organizations and people from Monsanto to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The request wasn't surprising given that I've written a lot about biotechnology, and it had been widely publicized that Ruskin's organization had issued FOIA requests to a large number of academics who'd written positive things about GMOs.

At the time, I chose not to post anything about the FOIA request largely because it wasn't much of a nuisance to me (but it was a cost to the Oklahoma tax payers who funded the lawyers and IT folks who pulled together the documents), and I didn't feel I had anything to hide.  Moreover, I generally support the ability of a free press to use FOIA, recognizing that it can become (and probably has become) abusive in some instances.  

However, last week, I ran across this post by the Berkeley economist David Zilberman who received a FOIA request from a journalist regarding his communications surrounding GMOs.  David's reaction to his request was similar to mine.   In particular, I wondered why Mr. Ruskin didn't just pick up the phone and call me?  I would have been happy to talk.  I was struck by the impersonal, legalistic approach.  Maybe Mr. Ruskin would have still wanted to issue a FOIA request after a chat, but at least we would have had a chance to share our perspectives, motivations, etc.    

Here is David's reaction:

“Compliance with the FOIA of Mr. Carollo will take time and effort. It takes him a few minutes to write the request and it will take me much time and digging to respond. The right to request a FOIA is a privilege, and as a professional he needs to use carefully. In my view, he needed to put some time to learn about the subject of his inquiry before he presents his legal but costly demand.

Googling my name he could have easily discovered Were you paid by Monsanto? • The Berkeley Blog, where I state that I received $10,000 for reviewing some papers for Monsanto (out of millions of dollars of support grants for my research over the years from many sources). He would have known that I have made many contributions to support environmental causes. He could even have called or emailed me — my phone number (510-290-9515) and email (zilber11@Berkeley.edu) are available on my website – and he would have better knowledge about his “suspect.” If after this initial and more personal investigation he would have asked me to provide him with information, I would have been happy to oblige according to the FOIA.”

The last part is the best:

“I am left with a feeling of disappointment in our culture of confrontation and lack of collegiality. I hope that journalists and in fact, all citizens, will realize that we in academia are dedicated to the truth as much as they are — and while there may be rotten apples in each profession, they should know us better before they burden us. In a way FOIA is like GMOs, a very valuable tool, which has to be applied with care.”

   

Assorted Links

Letter from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Given current discussions in Washington about the federal budget for agricultural research and with discussions about reorganization of the USDA in the air, the leadership of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) was compelled to compose a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture and other Congressional leaders.  

Here's an excerpt.

“The AAEA highly values the support for economic research, education, extension, and analysis that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides to the food and agricultural sector. We understand that this is a critical time for the development of this sector, as the sector embarks on important visionary activities and the USDA develops a new action plan for the Research, Education, and Economics (REE) Mission Area. As these activities unfold, we want to emphasize the value of social science research; point out the strength of the current USDA economic research, education, and extension programs; and highlight principles for continued success in economic research to serve the U.S. agricultural, food, and resource sectors and the public good. It is our perspective that economic programs within the USDA should be guided by the following five principles:

• Provide accurate, timely, and precise information on the state of the food and agricultural economy to improve the decision making of farmers, consumers, agribusinesses, and policy makers.
• Uphold and respect statistical directives and privacy laws; maintain the independence of principal statistical agencies from policy-advising units within government.
• Conduct applied and fundamental research to better understand the drivers of the health of the U.S. population, the robust nature of the U.S. food and fiber system, and the competitiveness of U.S. agriculture.
• Ensure that policy makers have timely and through analysis to ensure evidence-based policy that results in high quality, up-to-date evaluation of policies and programs.
• Increase the quality and quantity of economic and social science research conducted by the USDA.”

The full letter is here.

On Mother Earth and Earth Mothers

I just returned from the Breakthrough Dialogue, where I gave a talk in a session on "Eating Ecologically" in a panel with Tamar Haspel of the Washington Post, Danielle Nierenberg of Food Tank, and Pedro Sanchez at University of Florida.  I thoroughly enjoyed our session and the rest of the Dialogue.  

At the dialogue, the participants were given the latest copy of the Breakthrough Journal, and I was struck by an article by Jennifer Bernstein titled the same as this post (I haven't been able to find a link to an online copy of the paper yet but I presume it will eventually appear at the link above).

Here is an excerpt from the introduction: 

“Chastising the typical household for spending a mere 27 minutes a day preparing food, Pollan champions increasingly time-consuming methods of food production in defense of the allegedly life-enriching experience of cooking he fears is rapidly being lost.

The juxtaposition is jarring, if not much remarked upon. At a moment in history when increasing numbers of women have liberated themselves from many of the demands of unpaid domestic labor, prominent environmental thinkers are advocating a return to the very domestic labor that stubbornly remains the domain of women. ”

You may never have heard that agricultural productivity growth is (or should be) a feminist cause, but here Bernstein makes a strong case:

“At bottom, feminist thought and action are incompatible with poverty, agrarianism, and neoprimitivism. Modern notions of rights, identity, and agency cannot be reconciled with premodern social, economic, and political arrangements. Female empowerment, in the long run, requires modern agriculture, energy, and infrastructure. Environmental ethics that reject those prerequisites in the name of the natural and pastoral are, simply put, irreconcilable with feminism.”