Obama links health issues to farming, then backs off

By PHILIP BRASHER

Des Moines Register - Iowa

October 31, 2008

Washington, D.C. — Barack Obama appeared to link farming with some of the nation's leading health problems, including obesity and heart disease, in a recent interview.

Obama - citing an article by Michael Pollan, an author and outspoken critic of U.S. farm policy - told Time magazine that agriculture is "partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."

The Obama campaign issued a statement on Thursday saying that Obama "was simply paraphrasing an article he read. He believes there are a lot of factors that contribute to obesity, heart disease and other health problems, but he certainly doesn't blame farmers."

But Ron Litterer, a Greene farmer who is chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, said Obama's comments in the Time interview were "in conflict with what he's been saying about agriculture, no question about it."

The Illinois senator supports farm programs and incentives for corn ethanol. He has aggressively courted the corn growers and other farm groups during his presidential campaign. Several past presidents of the corn group have endorsed Obama.

Obama also said in the Time interview that farming, enabled by cheap energy, "actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector." Globally, agriculture is considered a bigger contributor of heat-trapping gases than transportation, but the opposite is true in the United States. Much of the agricultural emissions come from manure and the fertilizer used on crops.

Obama's comments came in response to a question about his energy plan. A transcript of the interview was posted on the Time Web site last week.

Pollan, who teaches journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, has long criticized the wide-scale cultivation of corn for use as livestock feed. He contends that it would be better for the environment and human health to fatten livestock on grass.

In an Oct. 9 New York Times article, styled as a letter to the next president, Pollan called for changing the way livestock are fed and proposed overhauling farm programs.

Pollan acknowledged that his ideas would raise meat prices: "You will need to make the case that paying the real cost of meat, and therefore eating less of it, is a good thing for our health, for the environment, for our dwindling reserves of fresh water and for the welfare of the animals," he wrote.

Subsidies for corn have reduced its cost as a food ingredient and as livestock feed. But a study to be published soon in the journal Food Policy found no evidence that corn subsidies have affected the consumption of corn sweeteners.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who supports John McCain, Obama's rival, said Pollan's ideas would be detrimental to Iowa's economy and increase hunger by reducing food production. Obama has been "very understanding of how farmers contribute to fuel as well as food and fiber," Grassley said.

Obama's campaign said his "strong record of standing up for farmers and America's rural communities speaks for itself."

The statement also said Obama would "bring the change rural America needs by increasing investments in renewable energy and giving family farmers the support they need by allowing them to diversify their crops and increase revenue."

McCain has opposed biofuel requirements and subsidies.

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