That assessment of Francis Thicke’s incredible grassroots campaign for Iowa Agriculture Secretary came from food writer Michael Pollan via Twitter. Another assessment, via a pollster, is that it’s winnable, but more about that below.  

For people who care about what they eat and how much they pay for it, Pollan’s tweet is not hyperbole.  It is a tribute to an organic dairy farmer with no prior political experience who has put together a professional statewide campaign, and is now within three percentage points of a well-financed Republican.  Francis Thicke (pronounced Tickee) does have experience in government.  He worked for the USDA after getting his PhD in Agronomy, and he has been advocating policies like reducing the concentration of market power in agriculture for years.  But with this campaign, he is trying to get his hands on the government machinery and change what it does.
(con't)

Who is the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture?  The answer to that question is, and has always been:  whichever faithful servant of Big Agriculture was keeping the chair warm and keeping Monsanto,  Koch and Cargill happy, Democrat or Republican.  (Currently, it's a guy who loves chicken factories.)  An urban dweller, I didn't think that the Ag Secretary had anything to do with me. 

A few months ago, I met Francis Thicke, an organic dairy farmer who is running for Secretary of Agriculture, and he changed my mind about that.   I have begun to grasp how this official affects the food I eat, the quality of the air and rivers where I live, and waters far downstream from Iowa.  I have even begun to hope for change in the way we produce food and use energy in Iowa, where we often set the example for farming practices across the country.

  Francis Thicke (pronounced “tickee”) has an organic dairy farm near Fairfield, Iowa, a small community best known as the home of Maharishi University.   Francis and his wife, Susan, make milk, yogurt and cheese with the milk from his 80 cows, and sell all of it locally.  Although he grew up on a farm, Francis wanted to be a musician.  He studied music and philosophy in college, and plays a mean trumpet.  But eventually he got a doctorate in agronomy instead, worked at the USDA, then came back to Iowa to start a dairy farm. 

 Radiance Dairy is no ordinary farm.  Livestock and landscape nourish each other.  Everything the cows eat is grown on land they fertilize, and as Francis says, they enjoy their work.  He uses solar panels to power pumps for water , to electrify fences, and to heat water for his dairy processing plant.  A wind turbine is in the works.  His operation is so innovative that he attracts visitors who come to learn, from local schoolchildren to the World Bank, and he travels frequently to teach and give lectures.   He has received awards from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, which recognized him as a “Steward of the Land,” among other awards.  People who know him regard him as a national treasure.

more below the fold… 

Some farmers are afraid of me.

I know this because a farmer named Jerry wrote a letter to the Des Moines Register recently saying that they are scared.  It would be a “scary scenario for mainstream agriculture” if I got elected as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, he said.   Francis Thicke is a “true believer in everything organic,” he shuddered.

Running for office is an adventure.  But I never expected to learn that Iowa farmers, who are among the most resilient, shrewd and creative people on the planet, are afraid of a mild-mannered organic dairy farmer with a PhD in Agronomy and some ideas for helping them meet challenges such as peak oil.   So I thought I would write him a letter to reassure him that I’m not scary, because if we don’t get our act together to deal with the real challenges of peak oil, the disruptions caused by climate change, and the growing monopoly power of corporate agribusiness, then we really will have cause for concern.

____________________

Dear Jerry,

Don’t be afraid.  This is America, and no one is going to make you “go organic.”  It’s the Big Ag interests that want to limit your choices, not me.   You might save money and protect water quality and the health of your family if you understood how to apply sustainable farming methods that do not require farm chemicals, but you don’t have to.

No one is going to force you to make your own biofuels on the farm from perennial crops that make your farm resilient and energy efficient.  Nor will you be forced to drive a hydrogen or ammonia-powered tractor with fuel derived from wind power.   If diesel prices soar in the next few years, as the Defense Department[pdf] is warning us, it’s your right to pay $6 a gallon or more and keep right on using it.  There may be shortages in our future by 2015, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find fuel at some price, somewhere.

You have the right to keep doing things the way you always have, and not take advantage of science-based ways to bring your costs down and prepare for a future without abundant petrochemicals.  All I am offering is a vision for a thriving agriculture in the absence of cheap oil, and leadership to meet the challenges that we know are coming.   Energy will be a huge game-changer over the coming decade–for agriculture, and for everything else.

Francis Thicke has hired staff for his Democratic campaign for Iowa secretary of agriculture, Will Merydith reported for the Fairfield Voice blog on Friday.

Rob Hubler, a 40-year veteran of managing political campaigns, started with the campaign about two weeks ago. Rob Hubler was the 2008 candidate for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s fifth district. This week the campaign team is growing with the addition of Keith Dinsmore, a veteran campaign media specialist. Keith has connections with press across Iowa and will be organizing Francis Thicke’s state-wide media work.

“In the next few weeks I will be traveling to a number of Democratic Party county conventions to speak to audiences about my campaign platform. I also have upcoming appearances at Grinnell College and Iowa State University. I do have one out-of-state event planned for next month, to speak at a national organic farming policy conference in Washington, D.C.”

“We have a local event planned for Fairfield on Saturday, March 27: Blues musician Bill Lupkin will be performing at Morning Star Studio as a fundraiser for our campaign.”

Thicke also recently opened a campaign office on the main square in Fairfield (Jefferson County, southeast Iowa).

I hope Thicke’s campaign will attract a large volunteer contingent. Iowa has plenty of Democratic activists who aren’t wild about Governor Chet Culver and don’t live in a battleground state legislative district. Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey will be heavily favored in this race and will raise more money than Thicke. However, Thicke has outstanding qualifications, and his vision for agriculture deserves our wholehearted support. We don’t often hear Iowa candidates speak out against excessive concentration of agricultural markets or advocate stronger regulations for confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). I recommend reading the four-part interview Blog for Iowa did with Thicke last year (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4). Francis and Susan Thicke operate a successful organic dairy farm and won the 2009 Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture.

We’ll need all Democratic hands on deck in the Fairfield area this year, since Iowa House district 90 and Iowa Senate district 45 are likely to be competitive races. State Representative Curt Hanson narrowly won last summer’s special election in House district 90, while State Senator Becky Schmitz is in her first term representing Senate district 45.

UPDATE: Forgot to add this ActBlue link for those who want to donate to Thicke’s campaign.

After a few months of exploring the possibility, Francis Thicke is ready to announce his candidacy for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2010. He’s scheduled press conferences in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Ottumwa on September 9.

Thicke’s campaign website outlines his “new vision for Iowa agriculture,” which involves more local food production, on-farm energy production, and “animal production systems that are profitable, environmentally sound, and socially responsible.”

You can see from his bio how qualified he is for the position as an organic dairy farmer, educator and public servant.

There’s also a blog on the campaign website; recent posts include this endorsement from Denise O’Brien, founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and Democratic nominee for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2006.

Thicke will be an underdog against incumbent Bill Northey, who after considering a bid for governor announced this summer that he’ll run for re-election instead. Industrial agriculture interests generously funded Northey’s 2006 campaign and will fight hard against Thicke. If you can afford to contribute to Thicke’s campaign, his ActBlue page is here.

This is one of those rare cases when a down-ticket candidate might help Democrats higher up the ballot. Thicke’s candidacy is likely to become a focal point for Democratic activists who are (to put it mildly) not satisfied with Governor Chet Culver or Democratic legislative leaders on environmental issues. Some of these people would not volunteer for Culver’s campaign or their local statehouse incumbent, but they will be happy to help GOTV for Thicke.

In case anyone’s wondering, the name is pronounced “Tic-kee.”

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has been saying for months that he was leaning toward running for re-election rather than for governor in 2010. On Saturday he made it official.

I announced to the crowd at Bill’s BBQ Bash that I will run for re-election as Iowa Secy of Ag in 2010.

I’ve long felt that Northey would be a long-shot for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, having gone on record supporting a gas tax increase. Even if Northey won the GOP nomination, I think that with no base of support in eastern Iowa population centers, he would have been quite an underdog against Governor Chet Culver.

I’m curious to see whether Northey continues to employ the high-profile campaign staffers he hired in May, or whether they will jump to a different Republican gubernatorial contender.

Northey will be heavily favored against Francis Thicke, the most likely Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture. Thicke is highly qualified and articulate, however, and has the potential to energize parts of the Democratic base who are dissatisfied with Culver and our statehouse leaders.

Now that Northey has ruled out running for governor, he will be able to focus more on his current job. I wonder whether anything will come of his working group on farmland protection. Northey announced plans to create it last August during his keynote address to the annual meeting of 1000 Friends of Iowa. However, the working group has only met once, in December 2008.

Iowa has been losing prime farmland at an alarming rate in the last few decades. Northey could do a real service for our country’s food security if he would identify and advocate for some farmland protection strategies that have been successful in other states.

UPDATE: Northey is searching for ways to save money at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which was allocated about 15 percent less in the 2010 budget than in the fiscal year that just ended.