Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture

A few thoughts on the Secretary of Agriculture pick...

Vilsack is a huge proponent of corn ethanol, which has serious environmental and economic problems. Some studies show corn ethanol requires more energy to create per calorie that it actually releases. The plus heavy government subsidies plus, corn ethanol is one reason many believe food prices rose so dramatically in recent times...(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/opinion/19wed1.html?hp)

Vilsack is also very close to the BioTech industry and supports GMOs (genetically modified organisms) http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/113477/it's_vilsack:_obama_picks_pro-gmo_and_pro-biofuels_ag_secretary/

Here are a few more reasons from the Organic Consumer's Association:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15573.cfm

While Vilsack is decent on land conservation and some environmental issues, overall I'm pretty disappointed with Obama's choice. As I mentioned on a recent post, there were other very real alternatives. A group from the Sustainable Ag movement created this petition which lists six highly qualified alternatives, and they received over 54,000 signatures in only a few weeks: http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/. I guess we will see how he does, but my initial reaction was something like "change?! what change is that?!" Hopefully he won't be more of the same pro-agribusiness as we've for decades, although his record doesn't seem to give signs he is going to be any real change we can believe in.

Here is an online petition by the Organic Consumer's Association opposing Vilsack's nomination:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1783

Thoughts?