Business Casual

Obama’s nomination today of ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as his U.S. ag secretary has generally drawn rave reviews from the ag community and Washington folks. But you have to figure those in the renewable fuels industry are particularly pleased with the selection.

After all, Vilsack comes from a state that has 29 ethanol plants, the most of any state. The ethanol industry can use all the friends in Washington it can round up with gas prices still down and oil projected to perhaps dip below $30 in 2009. Only last week a second ethanol plant in Iowa, Pine Lake Corn Processors, filed for bankruptcy.

Vilsack was also an early backer of developing wind energy.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he was looking forward to working with Vilsack.

Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, which represents small communities and small farmers in the Midwest, said, “I think he’s a good choice to implement the vision of rural American that President-elect Obama put forth in the campaign.

Hassebrook had applied for the job himself after growing discouraged with the reported list of possible nominees. “There were people on the list who weren’t very interested in the things we care about,” Hassebrook said. “He is.”

Craig Cox, now the Iowa-based Midwest vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said Vilsack will bring a broad view of agriculture to the Cabinet.

“It’s encouraging that the White House understands that the Department of Agriculture is about much, much more than farm subsidies,” he said.

After dropping out as a presidential candidate very early in the race, Vilsack endorsed Hillary Clinton. When she quit, Vilsack backed Obama. That apparently was enough to satisfy Obama.

Meanwhile, Washington sources indicate that Karen Ross, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, will be named ag’s deputy secretary.

A food safety survey, that’s what. The Food Safety Consortium announced today the results from a recent survey it mailed to 2,000 people — 1,000 in each city. About 30 percent responded with a higher response rate coming from Wichita, according to the federally funded group.

The FSC, which combines the research of ag economists from Kansas State, Arkansas and Iowa State universities, learned from the survey that if a case of avian flu is discovered in a U.S. poultry flock, it’s likely that poultry consumption would decline.

No surprise there. But the Wichitans surveyed indicated they weren’t going to bail on their chicken at the rate of those from those L.A. Seventy percent of the Wichitans said their consumption would NOT change while the Los Angeles response sat on the fence at 50 percent, said Sean Fox, a KSU ag economics professor who supervised the research. Fourteen percent of Los Angeles respondents said they would stop consuming poultry entirely while only 7 percent of the Wichitans said they would.

Fox said the survey was designed to quantify the potential impact on the poultry impact on the poultry industry in case of a domestic avian flu outbreak. No such outbreaks have occurred in this country, but a 2003 outbreak in Southeast Asia spread to 41 other country over the next four years.

“We figured the risk to commercial poultry flocks in the U.S. was very low,” Fox, “but there were indications that bird flu was being carried by migratory birds and chances of it appearing in a wild bird were reasonably high,” Fox said.

Fox said the different reactions between Wichita and L.A. could probably be explained by Kansans’ greater familiarity with ag issues.

On another not-so-surprising front, the survey showed Wichita respondents ate more beef than their L.A. counterparts. Both cities reported the same level of chicken consumption.