MOLLY JAHN How “Multiple Breadbasket Failure” Became a Policy Issue In which an agricultural scientist goes from making new squash varieties to trying to improve global food security. n December 12, 2017, the US Congress reauthorized Once this question was inserted as Section 1075 in the the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) NDAA, though, it became the DOD’s job to answer it. for 2018. Every year, this massive bill authorizes e path to Section 1075 had actually started a decade Ospending for the Department of Defense. But this time, it earlier, when I had begun to wonder about the stability and contained a Section 1075, on page 929, really no more than security of our vision for twenty-rst century US agriculture. a paragraph, requiring the secretary of defense to submit at quest led me to a job as deputy and acting under secretary to Congress a “Report on the Global Food System and of agriculture in 2010, which kicked o a journey that included Vulnerabilities Relevant to Department of Defense Missions.” becoming a ninja bureaucrat, learning about insurance Whenever you eat lunch, or anything else, you partake and marketing, doing an apprenticeship among defense not only in the US food system—dened as all infrastructure, analysts, and nally going back to the lab to reconsider the material, transactions, and decisions that aect the production, foundations of agriculture itself. Along the way, I was helped delivery, and consumption of food by every person in the at key moments by friends both new and old—including a nation every day—but also in something much larger called US senator on a layover in the Detroit airport. Here, I will the “global food system.” We don’t have a precise meaning for tell the story of my education in turning science into “policy,” this term, or even a working representation of how today’s how Section 1075 came to be, and what has happened since. global food system works. But we do know it is a complex, intertwined, and constantly changing system, operating at a From Delicata squash to acting under secretary scale and complexity way outside every historical precedent. My great-great-grandfather and some of my great-great uncles e government already has plenty of data on food were famous Canadian plant breeders, so I grew up thinking and agriculture, which it classies as one of the “critical that plant breeders were akin to maestros or baseball players. I infrastructure sectors” whose “assets, systems and networks, went o to do a biology PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to Technology and soon realized that hand sequencing one gene the United States that their incapacitation or destruction for my entire thesis wasn’t for me. So on my rst Christmas would have a debilitating eect on security, national vacation during graduate school, I went home, read a book economic security, national public health or safety or any about the legendary plant breeders in my family, and decided combination thereof.” But in contrast with some other to get a PhD in plant breeding instead. One of my favorite essential sectors, agriculture and food manufacturing, professors said, “What? What a shame. You showed such distribution and retail is almost entirely in private hands, promise.” Nevertheless, I went to Cornell University to try my accounting for roughly one-h of the US economy. at luck. I dove into vegetable breeding and busted out many new said, the government has considerable inuence on this types of squash, melon, and pepper that are now supermarket sector through various policies that regulate food safety standards. I loved it, everything about it. Within four years, and incentivize the production of certain commodities. Yet Cornell oered both me and my husband faculty jobs. the question of how risks in this big, complex global food en, in 2006 the University of Wisconsin-Madison tapped system could threaten the security of the United States—and me to be the dean of its College of Agricultural and Life ways the nation might protect itself—remains wide open. Sciences. As dean, I became a custodian of the commitments 80 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY food security that America’s land-grant colleges made to citizens, and by condition of agriculture took place largely in terms of yield. inference, of how farming and food relate to the nation’s At the global level, this was epitomized by a report from future. Land-grant colleges originated with the Morrill Act the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization of 1862, the same year President Lincoln established the US called How to Feed the World in 2050. It estimated a 2050 Department of Agriculture—and the two institutions, one to human population of 9.1 billion, and then, assuming the educate farmers, the other to develop seeds and technology— agriculture of 2009, simply extrapolated how much food became the foundation of the country’s agricultural policy. they’d need, determining that “food production (net of America’s farmers rose to the challenge, producing ever more food used for biofuels) must increase by 70%.” Taking the food for industrialized cities. By any measure the American agriculture of 2009—or 2021 for that matter—and forcing a agricultural project has been an extraordinary success. gain of productivity of that dimension is not only far beyond But in my position as dean, I began to wonder if all any plausible future expansion of the system’s capacity; its this success raised the question of what success was. We implications for the environment were patently catastrophic. were still aiming to produce more food and better food, From my new government perch, I could clearly see but was more, more, more always better, better, better? one reason the US food system appeared healthy when it In the past century, technologies have created dramatic was not: subsidies. A few years prior, during the George improvements in crop yield and overall farm productivity— W. Bush administration, pressure from farm state lobbyists while also triggering huge increases in energy and water to improve the price of agricultural commodities—which consumption. ese changes drive larger, less diverse, more are perennially too low to cover even highly subsidized specialized farming operations throughout the developed costs of production—routed piles of taxpayer money to world—with monumental demographic, economic, social, and subsidize biofuels, which caused excess soybeans and environmental eects. e abundance of commodity crops, in corn to be literally burned up as fuel additives. e idea turn, has spurred exponential increases in human population made no sense whatsoever—except as a way for taxpayers and auence, rising global consumption of meat and dairy, loss to underwrite the commodity treadmill that maintains of biodiversity, mass species extinction, extensive habitat loss, prots for inuential companies. Over the past 15 years, desertication, and increases in diet-related human health issues the ostensible beneciaries of these policies, American such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease—not to mention farmers, have watched their plight deteriorate further. collateral consequences including global climate change. is “commodity treadmill” describes the system of us, the extraordinary trajectories of American agriculture taxpayer-funded price supports that generates corporate have driven planetary-scale changes, for good and for ill. prots regardless of the consequences of overproduction. It So, from the dean’s oce, I began to wonder if what we describes the vicious cycle where farmers, struggling with were teaching young ag students about the future was way o low prices and high debts, respond by producing more of the mark. Furthermore, without real transformation in the the commodity to try to recoup their losses. It’s a system that systems the world uses to feed people and care for resources, “works” economically only if the costs to the environment are my aspirations to contribute science in the service of happy not gured into the equation, which is like pretending that humans on a healthy planet were more like inchoate delusions. erosion, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and antibiotic In 2009, the rst Obama administration asked me to serve resistance—among other scary things—aren’t occurring. as deputy and acting under secretary of agriculture until a As acting under secretary, I felt that facing these permanent appointee could be identied and conrmed. One scary things was my business. But I quickly realized that task I assigned myself was to call colleagues across the federal the research apparatus the government had created and government to gure out where responsibility for ensuring maintained focused primarily on enhancing crop and the short-, medium-, and long-term stability of the nation’s livestock productivity, more recently with an eye on agricultural enterprise resided. Most Americans assume that this minimizing resource use. It wasn’t equipped to investigate my is the purview of the Department of Agriculture, but as a newly questions about what changes in the complex food systems edged bureaucrat, I knew well that virtually all of the USDA’s would better promote dietary human health and well-being budget is spent in the agencies, each with its own specialized or about the limits of ecosystem resilience and potential for mission such as research, inspection, quarantine guidelines risk mitigation. In fact, trying to answer these questions with and enforcement, conservation, food assistance,