An Urban's Rural View

What's grabbed farmers' attention in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s half year as Secretary of Health and Human Services is the Make America Healthy Again report's attack on pesticides. But farmers and other ag professionals should be equally concerned with some of Kennedy's other initiatives.

In a column last December, I asked who will run agriculture policy in the Trump administration, Kennedy or Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. (https://www.dtnpf.com/…) The answer is now clear.

If we're talking about agriculture rather than food, it's Rollins. The attack on pesticides aside, Kennedy has exercised little influence on ag policy.

But on food policy, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has flexed his muscles and wielded his megaphone. When candidate Donald Trump promised to give Kennedy this cabinet post, he said he'd let Kennedy "go wild on the food." In many ways, Kennedy has.

And some of what he has done is commendable. It's good to have an HHS secretary who speaks out strongly against unhealthy eating. The public-health cost of Americans' poor diets is enormous -- $50 billion a year, according to a 2019 government estimate. (https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/…)

Kennedy's probably not wrong about the potential effects of synthetic food dyes. There's scientific research supporting his campaign against them. Several European countries and Canada ban or restrict them. Doing the same here should not trouble farmers.

Then there's sodas. Thanks to a push from Kennedy, USDA is working with several states to disallow the use of food stamps to buy sodas.

In the past, I have advocated for this change; food stamps are supposed to provide nutrition to those who can't afford it. Sodas have zero nutritional value and the 10 teaspoons of added sugar in a 12-ounce soda exceed the recommended daily consumption of added sugars for both men and women. (https://www.dtnpf.com/…)

I realize some farmers might well disagree with me on this. The sugar in many sodas is high fructose corn syrup. HFCS uses something like 3% to 4% of the nation's corn crop. Disallowing sodas could cut into soda sales; if it does, demand for corn would be affected. Lobbyists representing food and agriculture interests in Washington have traditionally opposed the move.

Some of Kennedy's other hobbyhorses are harder to defend. It's good for the HHS secretary to campaign against unhealthy eating. It's not so good when some of the secretary's ideas of what's unhealthy are, how shall we say, fringy.

To the bafflement of many nutrition scientists, for example, he has been blasting "seed oils," like soybean oil and canola oil, insisting that Americans are being "poisoned" by them. (https://apnews.com/…)

Even activists like Marion Nestle who often line up against the food industry think Kennedy is wrong about this. The only problem with seed oils is they're high in calories, she said, but that's also true of the fats Kennedy wants to replace them with -- lard and beef tallow. "Using seed oils is healthier than using more saturated fats," she concluded. (https://www.foodpolitics.com/…)

Farmers who grow corn, soybeans, canola and other seed-oil crops should be concerned that Kennedy considers these oils poisons.

Which brings us to the MAHA report's attack on pesticides. Many farmers say they can't grow crops without pesticides. When the government lists them as a health risk, these farmers are naturally concerned.

It could have been worse. The report conceded that "99% of food samples tested in 2023 were compliant with EPA's safety limit." It noted that "Federal government reviews of epidemiologic data for the most common herbicide did not establish a direct link between use according to label directions and adverse health outcomes." (https://www.whitehouse.gov/…)

And the report went on to say that all of the agencies on the MAHA commission are "committed to ensuring not just the survival, but the prosperity, of American Farmers."

Farmers have to wonder, though. If all those things are true, why were pesticides mentioned at all? That they were mentioned, and that they were mentioned using such lawyerly language as "use according to label directions," suggests Kennedy is not done with pesticides.

Maybe he's thinking the government should lower the permissible level of residual pesticides on food. Maybe he's commissioning new research designed to prove pesticides on food are a problem.

It's easy to suspect earlier drafts of the report were much more critical of pesticides. It's easy to imagine an internal battle that had the Secretary of Health and Human Services on one side and the Secretary of Agriculture on the other.

In the end, farming has to be top of mind for USDA and HHS has to focus on health. When these priorities don't conflict, expect Kennedy to do what Trump suggested and run wild.

When he tries to make ag policy, many farmers will want USDA to do everything it can to keep him tamed and domesticated.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanize@gmail.com

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