Splitting a Chocolate Cake w/ Dr. Kathleen Merrigan

back to Citisen Chef. This season, we're gonna really start of digging into not just where you get your food, but how these processes are regulated. There's this big thing out there called the U. S d A. And I think they have a budget of about a hundred fifty sixty billion dollars and I think there's about a hundred and fifty thousand employees. And this is this big, giant governmental entity that regulates pretty much everything that we eat.

But I don't I don't think a whole lot of people understand what the U. S d A does, why they're there. But if you eat it, most likely the U. S d A regulates it. I thought the best person to talk to about this was my friend Kathleen Merrigan. So, Kathleen A. Merigan was the U S Deputy Secretary Agriculture from two thousand nine two thirteen, and she is now the executive director at the Sweat Center for Sustainable Food

Systems at the Arizona State University. She also started to Know Your Farmer campaign and was also instrumental in working with Michelle Obama on the Let's Move campaign. She's someone who I lean on to get the sort of real deep policy answers that I'm looking for. So I think we're gonna ask some questions that include chocolate cake. But more on that later. So please welcome Kathleen Merrigan. Kathleen,

how you doing things? Are great? Trying to tort your young minds, that's my They are really interested in filth policy, and we we're got to change the faces around the table if we want to change policy. Tom, that's my mission. I hear you. My son is graduating very soon with a degree in food policy. Yeah. So the USDA, all right, I've got all kinds of fun facts for you about us Well good. I mean, it's this massive governmental body, the hundred and ten thousand employees, The budget is over

a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year. I think for ten thou short right now, jobs that are available. Anybody listening, they want to job the U s d A apply, they need you. And we describe U s t A as a field based agency, meaning most of the employees are scattered about the States and in fact in countries around the world because most of our foreign embassies have egg specialists. They're feeding back intelligence to USDA about what's going on around food and agriculture and country X,

Y and z. So it's a massive operation. But it's this massive, this massive government organization, and yet I don't think the average person has a clue as to what the U s d A does and why they should care about what the U s d A does. We thought it'd be great to kick off our second season with a permit on the U s d A and what it does. And with that, why should the average person care about the USDA? What do they need to know about the USDA? Well, the USDA is the fifth

largest government agency. The Secretary of Agriculture is ninth in line to succession of the President, and that's because USA was the ninth federal government department established first of all, if you're a taxpayer. I hope I got your attention with some of those numbers. That's one reason to be paying attention. The second reason is if you're a person in rural America, the U. S d A is your home in the federal government because so many of their

programs are oriented to rural Americans. A lot of the programs have eligibility requirements that make it so that the smallest of commune today's our first in line for the largest that USDA has to offer. So if I'm sitting there in rural Kansas, I'm listening to this podcast just because I stumbled upon it, and now someone's telling me I should care about certain policies. What are they? Well, like most people think about U. S c A, and they connected right away to farmers and ranchers. Yes, US

does a lot with farmers and ranchers. But if you're in a small town, you might be getting money from U. S c A to help buy an ambulance or a police car. You might be getting money wait, wait, money from the US to buy a police car or an ambulance. Yes. Yes, Um,

they help with telemedicine, hospital construction, a lot of rural housing. Um. Money A loans come from U. S d A. I know in the Biden announcement about the infrastructure legislation, there's promise of a lot of money for rural I'm just generally water um infrastructure because of leaded pipe, and I think in the current proposal most of that money goes to E p A. But U s C as in that business too. They do a lot to help small

communities construct water and wastewater systems. They've been involved over decades in the electrification of America. You might say that's work that's been done, but I live here in Arizona, just close by to the Navajo Nation, which crosses many states. There's still still fifty thousand homes a Navajo Nation without running water electricity, which is one of the reasons why the COVID pandemic was so severe. There was an agency that large. If you break it up in the smaller parts,

and would that make sense our our uh? I mean, I'm sure if you're the secretary secretary culture wouldnt want to do that. But um, would that make sense at all? No? I don't think so, because there are individual agencies within U. S d A with individual mandates. If you're trying to reorganize,

you're already setting up battles. You have to get a lot of new legislation passed, and I say, work with what you have and use the time efficiently, because by the time all those reorgs happened, I've been I'm old Tom, I've been through many I think by the time you redo all the stationary reorganize everybody's job titles, move the furniture. I don't know if it makes a big difference. And what are some of the agencies that are within the USDA that soup This is real, This is a real

temptation for me to go on for multiple hours. The biggest agency at U s c A is the Forest Service. A lot of people think that's in the Department of Interior where the park services, but actually usc A has a for services about thirty five employees, and of course the last few years have been very involved in wildfire control forest management. Many people who go skiing on private resort mountains don't realize that that may be Forest Service land.

And the Forest Service actually has an office in New York City for those of you in the big city where they're looking at trees and urban settings. So it's not just out in the countryside. The U s A has a food Safety inspection service. We have four agencies at U s c A that do research. We have research labs across the country and every five years, one of my favorite things, because I'm a nerd U s c A, has a Census of Agriculture. We do account of all farmers and ranchers in the country and learn

a lot about their operations, all publicly available information. If my memory serves me, you, you were the one who started to know your farmer program. When I was asked to do that by Secretary will Sack. Most people immediately wanted there to be a staff in an office and have a house somewhere. And my view was every agency at U s d A should find a home for

local and regional agriculture. And I didn't want to just put it in one place, but I wanted to challenge every single part of us DA to stand tall and do something important. And in fact, all of the seventeen agencies of us DA came forward with really significant programs. For example, the Natural Resources Conservation Service that helps and send farmers to do environmental practices on their land. They came forward with a hoop house initiative seasonal high tunnel

way for farmers to extend their growing season. That was wildly popular and the biggest uptake state was Wisconsin. Also followed close on the hills by Alaska. We're having that ability to extend the growing season actually significantly changed lives. We'll be right back, welcome back to citizenship. We will have a lot of questions about our food and how we ast consumers can better understand systems in place that

get that food to us. Kathleen Merrigan, I think is the perfect person to demystify what the U. S d A does and why we should care. So far, you talked about forestry, you talked about ranchers, you talked about farmers. We haven't heard about what's in it for the people. How does the average person how do they engage with the U s d A. Where do they see it? Obviously in their taxes they see it, But where do they see it in the supermarket? Where do they see

it in the grocery store? How does it affect them? Now? I know I think that the overwhelming largest part of the budget goes to SNAP is that is that correct? At least more than half, and I was Deputy secretary in ten it was at the high point and we were feeding about forty nine million people through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP. Now it's much more because of

the widespread unemployment and chaos in our economy. What's really nice is when the federal government provides SNAP benefits in times of economic distress, people immediately spend that money and it stimulates the economy more effectively than anything else. We know. It's a it's like a shovel ready stimulus program, but yes, SNAP is the biggest part of the u s d a's budget. Overall nutrition assistance is about eight percent these days of us das budgets. Too often family will use

those dollars to buy the cheapest foods possible. And so that leads me to ask, how can the U s d A make nutritious foods more fordable, more accessible outside of the double Bucks program where you can use your food stamps and the farmers market and get a token

for double the money that you spent there. As much as I'm a big USDA and federal government champion, change happens outside of Metro d C, and it eventually makes it to the halls of power there, and it's really great that we have a situation where we have a farm bill every five years or so, and some of the innovations that we see out in the field can become national policy. And you give a good example with

a double ups program. Um, you know, the SNAP program is probably the money that people get is too little, and that makes um, they're getting more now, They're getting a little more, a little bit more now. But I think people are ready to reassess the Thrifty Food Plan, which is his analysis in the background that helps determine what the snap amount of money should be to allow people to eat a diet consistent with the dietary guidelines for Americans, which is also something that US AND has

involved in. Right. It's also used for things like to calculate alimony and also to calculate the amount of calories that members of the services I should receive as well. So it's not just for snaps, that's right. There are a lot of issues around food access. People get very focused on the cost of food it. I just want to say, you know, we need to put more money into it. But food access is something that we know

is really difficult. So if I don't have a car and taking public transport and maybe doing two jobs, I might be a single mom. You know, I'm going to get all processed food because I can't afford to buy fresh food because I can't take that time out of my month multiple times. So there are a lot of different factors that play in. It's a complex problem to solve, but we definitely need to get more nutritious food to people.

And when people start talking about the budget problem, I just look at what we spend as a nation on healthcare costs, and I say, can't we think more in a preventative health way and understand food as medicine? And if we do, wouldn't we um put on our green eye shades and see things totally differently? I think so right. I think the numbers, well, it was a couple of years back about two billion dollars a year on healthcare

costs associated poor diet and pornutrition. So yeah, you think um our our friend Jim McGovern, he's been asking for this for a long time. I think the voices are starting to be raised. I think also Senator Booker is starting to ask for as well. And that is a White House summit on hunger, which we haven't seen since the Nixon administration. Um, what what policies do you think come out of a summit on hunger? It's against a three day summit where you will take people from across

the spectrum through different agencies making recommendations. What what kind of policies can come out of a three three day

session on hunger that can really help Americans? Well, I think in the year that we've had, the last year and a half, where we've had this national reckoning with our really sword history on racial justice and social equity, I think I would put those issues front and center and and we really know that this pandemic is just another exclamation point at the end of the sentence that things are not fair and people are not equally able to survive hardship, And so I would I would probably

put that lens on everything I do. Want to say. Jim McGovern is just about my favorite person in the world. What a champion for everything good in the world. He's

the foremost champion of snap in Congress. Of course, he's got a lot of help with Rosa de Laura and others, and Corey Booker putting out the Justice for Black Farmers Act really impressive um reintroduced this year with a lot of co sponsors, a lot of them on the Semi Agriculture Committee, really saying we have not treated black farmers well. We certainly know from the different lawsuits at U, s d A. We haven't treated Native Americans well, we haven't

treated women well. So we've got a lot to reckon with a lot of it goes back to equity and justice. The calls are pretty strong right now and there's hopefully you know, the administration is receptive to it, but it's it's about time. I think the last time we had was I think with likeness to nine are somewhere in there, and some some good programs come out. The SNAP program was modernized that you know, prior to that you actually had to pay into the SNAP program, and so that

was changed. The RECAS program I think was created after that. So good policies came out of it, and it worked for some time until the eighties and then kind of we we took a step backwards. And you know, I'm loving now that the last a week or so, starting to hear stories about how there are a fewer people who are hungry now, because we're actually spending some more money.

That's that's the point, right, That's that's the that's the goal of spending the money so a fewer people are hungry, there may be a greater sense of empathy for people who are struggling. So I think we have a good opportunity here. Unfortunately, COVID had to do that. We had to wreck our you know, our economy for so many people and go through a pandemic to get there. But

that could be the only one silver lining anyway. And this this whole year that we've we've been through, well, I hope you're I hope you're right about that, Tom. I know that members of Congress, who are very involved in hunger issues oftentimes but pretty much annually, issue the snap challenge to their colleagues, and they challenge members of Congress to live for a week on what would be

a snap budget. And I've actually gone to the grocery store with groups of Congress people as they try to shop with their carts with their budget and try to figure it out. So, yeah, people don't really understand what it means to live with food insecurity in this country.

And I just remember back at the beginning of the Obama administration, there was an outbreak of H one N one, which was a swine flu, and people um all over the administration really concerned because schools were closing and they thought, what about all those kids, and they're not going to have access to school meals? A very valid concern, But I said, you know where do you think these kids get their meals on the weekends and on school vacations

and in the summers. So we have a lot of work to do to make sure children, in particular have access to the nutrition they need to become successful adults and contributors to society. We'll be back with more Citizen Chef. I'm Tom Clokio and I'm talking with my friend Kathleen Merrigan, the former Deputy Secretary and Agriculture from two thousand. How How did you? How did you end up in the usb A? How does one end up as the the

number two in this huge agency? Overall in the federal government there about four thousand political appointees and of that number, probably about two fifty or at U s d A, so not a lot of people, and probably of that number is somewhat less than fifteen. I have to go through Senate confirmation as I did. So how did I get that job? I ran a little campaign for myself. I suppose you don't get those jobs because you're sitting in your office waiting for the phone to ring. Kathleen

is an advocate for organic farming. She in fact wrote the organic bill. So when I was nominated to BC Secretary of Agriculture, for example, people said, Merrigan, she's from Massachusetts and that's not a big act state. She wrote the organic law. That's not mainstream egg, and she's female. Um, it was mostly a male dominated sport. In other words,

that wasn't the trifecta tom ha ha. Though I'd say I was at a school at toss Up Graduate School of Nutrition, Science and Policy, and I said, but I got the nutrition part, and that that's a bulk of what usd A resources spent on. I hate the words ours, But do you think we need foods? Are this idea that we need someone who's focused more on food? Well,

first of all, we probably need a zarina. So I think that the calls for having a foods are are positive because to me, it reflects the American public's growing interests in food. Where As my food come from who produced it? Why should I care? I think that this call, which I know in part our friend Jose Andrea's has led, this call for a senior person in the White House to lead a national conversation, is all indication that we're

going in the right direction. At what point of your like to did you say, well, this is where, this is where my interests are. What sort of got you there? Why would I want to go to U. S d A. I used to think of it as the evil Empire, honestly, and I was always an advocate on the outside fighting for truth justice in the American way. As suppose if if you asked me at the time, and when I was maternity leave with my first child, my nonprofit decided to go under in a way, and I did the

thing I never expected to do. I went to U. S c A And asked for a job. And the Deputy secretary at the time, Rich Rominger, was a friend, someone I knew for a million years with working with American family and try, and he put me in the job as the Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator the last two years of Clinton to oversee the rulemaking on organic food standards, among other things I do believe as complex and large as U. S. D A is that many other federal

departments have a role to play in food. The Centers for Disease Control and all their work on obesity within Health and Human Services. The Department of Labor has job courts centers where they helped train people in culinary arts and forest service. The v A. Can you imagine if we got all the hospitals of the Veterans Administration to serve organic or local and regional or better yet organic local food. What kind of massive change would that mean?

It would be huge. It's not just a snap program. It's the women isn't children program with It's the school meals program, which is not just lunch anymore, but it's breakfast. It's backpack programs on the weekends. In some cases, it's summer programs. All of those kind of programs that need to be extended because we know there are families who are in hunger. I can go through the whole alphabet suit beyond U. S c A of these other federal departments and say, hey, what can you do to help

transform our food system? So to me, that argues for someone in the White House to be trying to pull the various strings together to help out. So one thing, one thing I have to ask you about talk. Yeah, So, Tom, I have all my graduate students play this game, so to speak. It comes from Deborah Stone in a book that she wrote, Policy Paradox. It's really an exercise in trying to understand what is fair. People think fair means equal, No, not necessarily, or that fair is easy to define. Not really.

So I would come to class with a very small chocolate cake, and I'd say, how should we divide this cake? What's the most fair proposal? And we'll vote on it, and I'd break people up in the small groups, and people will come back with ideas like, well, well, divided up by body mass index, and so we won't overload the obese among us, or we'll figure out who didn't have lunch, so they're they're probably the most hungry. We'll figure it out in various ways, all kinds of fair ways.

But this is the kicker, Tom. In all the years that I have been using this exercise, only once or twice has a group of students come up with a proposal that said, let's share the cake with people outside of the room and I'd say, what about the security guard. He makes us safe at the front of the building. What about the homeless people outside our building in Chinatown? What about the kids down the block in the elementary

school who may not have sufficient school meals? To me, it was a really important policy lesson and it said to me, unless we change the faces around the decision making table to better reflected demographics of this country, why do we think that things are going to change because they're forgotten people who are not being considered when policy is being constructed. They're not getting their spice of the chocolate cake. I really thought that people would think outside

of the room. Um, but no, And when policies are being constructed in Capital Hill, in the state legislatures, in the city council, if people are not pushing themselves in the door and confronting policy makers and making the stand about what they need, they're not going to be thought about and better. Yeah, they need to be represented at the table with full representation rights. Ideally that's where we

get to but little exercise, but it's meaningful. What do you see as the biggest threat to our food supply right now? And there's droughts in your neck of the woods you're living now massive droughts, and what's the biggest threat to our our food supply? Hands down? Climate change, hands down, And we all know that time is running out, and I think this pandemic, as devastating as it has been, is like a little blip on the screen compared to what climate change will be. What we didn't touch on

is working on food investment. What are you seeing out there in the investment world that really guess you're excited right now? Huh Yeah. It's a great thing for me as a professor because I'm exposed to all the new ideas coming in all the time. There's been this huge investment of capital in ag tech in particular, and I think that's great. I'm really interested in what's going on

in robotics. I don't think that I've seen a robot that can do as well as a human being, but if there's a way to allow human beings to do other jobs oftentimes, that's great. All kinds of things going on in the alternative protein world, even alternative alternatives to leather and cotton um. A lot of interesting things going on in technology to combat food waste, indoor agriculture, vertical farming things that allow agriculture to come closer and closer

proximity to cities. It's also heads against climate change as well. If you're farming indoors, you're not using pesticides, you're not using its pesticides. Bowery, they recycled about the water and you don't have to worry about the weather. You're you're indoors. But they're getting there, They're getting they're getting there. I've actually tasted some root vegetivals that they've done that quite

quite good. Actually, well, we have to, um, we have to count on you, chef, because I personally believe you're only going to get people to so many people to change their dietary practices because it's good for their personal health, so many people to change because it's good for planetary How we need the power of deliciousness to really motivate the masses. That's your job. I can work on all the wonky usd A stuff, but that's your job. And that's what it was so frustrating about. Um. You know.

And I was in the middle of labeling and GMOs and I'm not nearly as opposed to GMOs as some people may think. I am. Um I just want to see them label number one. But can we start breeding stuff for deliciousness? Um? You know, the first the first GMO vegetable was that tomato with that flavor saver and it just it you don't see anymore why it was just it was horrible. It was terrible. And so yeah, we need to get breeders. I mean, and there are

lists are breeders breeding some delicious foods. Uh. In fact, that chef Dan Barber who's his seventh World company is doing just that, but is doing that. But you're you're right, deliciousness will win the day, um, hopefully except for you know, my little guy at home, who's who's ten, who finds nothing to be delicious. Um, and it's really frustrating. Good

luck with that. Let me know if I can help. Ever, before we part, anything else that you think that my listeners should know about the U s d A. When you're driving around town, look for the U. S d A office. Um, they're all over the place, whether it's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service in fact, inspecting product coming across the border and make sure we don't bring in past. Whether it's the park that you're hiking, and it could be part of the Forest Service. Look for the U.

S d A sign. And now that you've heard this podcast, maybe your awareness movie raised. Just like sometimes people tell you about something it's not your consciousness at all, and once it has and you see it all over the place, maybe now people will be seeing U. S d A all over and and become USDA nerds just like me.

That that's what we're hoping for. I don't know if I ever get to your level, but just how they understand there's an agency that is there for food safety, um is there to make sure that Americans aren't hungry, is there to protect our forest, but that there's this agency that really is there to to serve the American public, and you should understand how it works and find ways

to interact with it. Uh So, hopefully, hopefully this the system beginning of that well, Abraham Lincoln, when he established the U. S c A called it the People's Department. So you know, one of my goals and steputy and now even as Professor is trying to get USDA to open the stores a little bit wider for all of us to part take of what it has to offer,

it was the People's Department. Then it needs to be the People's Department now, Kathleen, Thank you, Pleasure Tom So, thank you so much again to Kathleen American for sitting down with us and for her incredible insight into such an important branch of our government. Plenty of what Kathleen and I talked about will be coming up again in the weeks ahead, most importantly how we can be the best advocates for a smart food system in ways that

go beyond voting with our fork. I for one, cannot wait to learn more from the all star lineup of guests we have, and I hope you will join us. As always a shout out to a place at the table. Citizen Chef was executive produced by Christopher Hasseiotis Gabrielle Collins. Our research and writers are Lillian Holman and Jescelyn Shields. Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are anywhere you listen to your

favorite shows. M