Washington Insider -- Thursday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

Senate Panel Taking Up Short-Term Financing for Highway Fund

The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to take up legislation later today that would allow the government to raise $9 billion for the Highway Trust Fund, thus preventing the fund from going broke this summer. The measure, supported by committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., contains a provision that would raise the current cap on a heavy truck use tax to apply to vehicles already on the road in some states above a certain weight level.

Another modification, the largest revenue raiser, would alter estate planning law as it applies to IRAs and 401(k) accounts. The measure would require distribution of those retirement savings accounts within five years of the death of the account holder in most cases.

The HTF reimburses states for road and bridge construction, transit infrastructure and operations, and safety programs. The fund faces insolvency this fiscal year due to a revenue shortfall that is causing grave uncertainty as state governments plan infrastructure projects. There is general agreement between congressional Democrats and Republicans that a short-term financing fix is needed, but little agreement on how to do that. Expect significant push-back on the proposal regarding retirement accounts.

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U.S. Buying More Pork from Europe

U.S. pork imports from the European Union are up significantly over the past five years, reaching some 24,100 metric tons in just the first four months of this year, according to U.S. customs data. The reason, of course, is that porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) has greatly reduced the supply of piglets in the United States and Canada, while demand for pork has pushed hog prices to historically high levels.

But even while pork imports from Europe are rising, customs data still indicate that approximately 80% of pork imports still come from Canada.

Europe already has in place country of origin labeling requirements for a number of food products, including meat. The EU requires labeling that specifies the place of birth, the place of rearing; and the place of slaughter for meat animals, similar to the current country of origin labeling requirement in the United States. It will be interesting to see whether U.S. consumers will soon see meat labeled as "from animals born in Germany and raised and slaughtered in Denmark," for example.

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Washington Insider: Mark Bittman's Language Problem

Mark Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times who often expresses his "gut feeling" about things, sort of, as if it were gospel. He hates genetically modified organisms in spite of his admission that they are not threats to health or the environment. More specifically, he hates the companies that make biotech seeds and, one suspects, the farms that use them.

Recently, he took aim at words and the need for stronger, more positive terms for his views. The word "foodie," he says, is not good enough. He wants a more powerful, "less demeaning-sounding word" for someone who cares about good food but thinks there is little available. He criticizes the "near-meaningless-ness of "natural" and "vegetarian" and the inadequacy of "organic" and "vegan."

After that, it gets even more crazy out there. Bittman asserts that "More conscious foodies understand that producing food has an effect beyond creating an opportunity for pleasure" and involves thoughts about sustainability, part of the organic foods complex and sustainability — which might mean, he thinks, "We have to grow our food better." He is vague about details, but goes ahead anyway.

Then he focuses on the qualities that characterize good food. These vary within a narrow range, he asserts. "Good food is real, it's healthy, it's produced sustainably, it's fair and it's affordable." Not much help there, but there's more.

"Real" means traditional, he says. "If it existed 100 years ago, it's probably real." So, "healthy" most likely will always be "whole" or even "real." This doesn't mean we should eat more watercress because it's a superfood, high in some supposedly critical nutrient, but it does mean we want to eat more fruits and vegetables, he thinks.

"Fair" and "affordable" are important, but very tough ideas, he thinks and adds, "We cannot achieve ethical consistency in producing food without paying attention to labor. For food to be affordable, people — all people — must earn living wages; alternatively, good food must be subsidized. Both conditions would be even better."

His central argument is that these are "not just food questions; they are questions of justice and equality and rights, of enhancing rather than restricting democracy, of making a more rational, legitimate economy. In other words, working to make food fair and affordable is an opportunity for this country to live up to its founding principles." This gives him the leverage he needs to tell us what to do.

Well, as a NYT opinion-writer now, Bittman has a prominent platform for his ideas, surprising — even shocking — as they may often be. However, it also may amaze some observers that such prominence would be given to a writer doesn't pay much attention to evidence, but only relies on his gut to know what's moral and what's not and what the government should do. This is especially strange since he suffers so badly from the "foodie weakness" — the elevation of selected human pleasures to the exclusion of the basic nutritive function of our foods.

As a result, the narrowness of the Bittman arguments is breathtaking. Look to the past, he says, modern things are just not "real." And, someone should just create a more "legitimate" economy.

So, his problem is not just finding ways to strengthen the "foodie" concept, it is how to define and use a large number of concepts. The centrality of his thought that real food is best and excludes products that didn't exist 100 years ago — seems weird to observers who also see a world in which millions of people simply do not have enough to eat.

Until Bittman can tell us even a little bit about how he plans to expand his "foodie" values beyond exhortations to eat "better" and make the system "better," and pays careful attention to critical human needs, he is not likely to be taken seriously by observers who actually must deal with food problems, Washington Insider believes.

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