The Washington Post had a column Wednesday morning asking "Is it Time to Get Rid of the Agricultural Committees?"

Columnist Ezra Klein makes the case that "We don't have a House Committee on Dollar Stores" or committee for poetry, consumer electronics or the like.

"The only industry that gets a committee --- and, indeed, an executive branch agency --- all to itself is the agricultural industry. There was a time in American history when that made some sense. In 1862, the year Abraham Lincoln founded the Department of Agriculture, farm products made up 82 percent of American exports," Klein writes.

Klein states agriculture now is not a top 10 export, or top 10 employer. "As agriculture has grown less visible in our economy, so too have the committees that control it. And so they have become playgrounds for special interests."

Now some "aggies" on Twitter who read Klein's column suggested he be banned from eating and that may cause him to change his view on food. Kinda harsh punishment for an opinion.

Klein, however, is incorrect. The House and Senate also have special banking committees that look exclusively into the financial services industry. Those committees were largely invisible until all heck broke loose last year. The Senate also has a committee with the partial charge of looking into urban affairs. So where is the rural affairs committee? Oh, it dovetails into agriculture because everything agriculture is rural and everything rural is agriculture.

The House and Senate Ag Committees also deal with far more than "bringing hefty subsidies to local producers." And they are not exclusively watched by agricultural producers, though the aggies are a big constituency. The Ag Committees and USDA are tasked with managing the nation's largest social aid program --- food aid, both domestic and international. Food stamps (now given a new SNAPpy acronym) are under the purview of agriculture. Some of the nation's biggest environmental programs are under USDA as well.

Klein makes no consideration that agriculture, i.e., food, is a unique industry. Everybody eats, which is why those aggies recommended cutting off Klein's food supply. Given that everybody eats, or should eat, agriculture is critical to the nation like few other industries. Are dollar stores, or poetry, consumer electronics on par with the ability to deliver meat from Kansas to Washington, D.C.? Or lettuce from California to New York?

One of agriculture's biggest critics, author Michael Pollan, highlights by his own work that food is different in society. It should be treated differently. Perhaps, though, Klein indirectly highlights an argument of Pollan's that agriculture should embrace: the word food. Once you insert the word food into a name like the Food and Agriculture Committee, or the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture, it becomes more identifiable.

"I learned a long time ago that if you tell an editor in New York that you wanted to write about agriculture, he would look at you funny," Pollan told me in an interview last month. "People are so disconnected from their food and they think about agriculture as, been there, done that --- something kind of old. But if you say food, they get it because we all still have a use for food even if we don't have a use for agriculture."

So Pollan advocates that "food" needs to be part of the moniker for agencies and committees. That was done in the California Senate.

"It just needs to represent eaters," he said. "I'm not saying exclusively, I'm saying eaters in conversation with producers. Right now the eaters are not represented on those committees. But they are coming."

Klein, and others, also make the case that agriculture held the climate bill hostage until aggies got a lot of things thrown their way. Granted, that partially happened. First, what was the rush to pass this complex bill without looking into the role agriculture could play? The United Nations stated last month that farmers could play a critical role in offsetting carbon. Was the U.N. compromised by farm subsidies?

Further, the Post columnists have portrayed ag as getting a lot out of this bill with little sacrifice. One question to be asked is: What will the sacrifice be in Washington, D.C., New York, or L.A. The D.C. metropolitan area is 5.3 million people. What is the carbon footprint of the D.C. metro area compared to the state of Iowa, which has 3 million residents? Where is the smog over Omaha that plagues Los Angeles?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/…

I can be found on Twitter at chrisclaytonDTN.