11/17/08 Important appointments beyond ag secretary

Farm and Ranch November 17, 2008 The Obama administration will have many positions to fill when it assumes power in January. One of those appointments will be the person who will head the United States Department of Agriculture, the Agriculture Secretary. But Mary Kay Thatcher with the American Farm Bureau Federation says there are some other appointments that will be very important to U.S. agriculture too. Thatcher: "We ought to watch with a lot closer eye what kind of person he puts in as U.S. Trade Representative. That will probably tell us if he is going to engage in any trade negotiations or whether it is all going to be about labor and environment. Certainly who gets on at the Environmental Protection Agency is going to be critical. And maybe the most critical is what does he do about the Office of Management and Budget. You know they have an awful lot to do with legislation everywhere and whether it moves forward, and regulations and what kind of money we are talking about. So in reality those three positions are probably more important to agriculture in the long term than what kind of Secretary of Agriculture. I think we will get a Secretary in there that will be very good for agriculture. " Of course the guessing of who gets what began immediately after the election and one of the names for the EPA administrator that has come up is Robert F. Kennedy. Observers believe he has several marks against him however. For one he is allied with the Natural Resource Defense Council. Among other things Kennedy has been critical of mega dairies. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.