On Thursday, April 28th, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) confronted Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, on policy issues at a closed-door weekly Democratic Policy and Communications Committee lunch.  Topics raised by Sen. Booker included food deserts and the prevalence of “junk food” available in inner cities and rural America. Sen. Booker, an avowed vegan, pressed Secretary Vilsack on current policy and programs to reform agribusiness, especially to the benefit of lower income demographics. It is presumed that the tenure of the luncheon discussion elicited a degree of heartburn despite the attempts of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to placate her Senatorial colleague.

The less than congenial interchange is significant as Sen. Booker chairs the Agriculture Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics and Research in the Senate.  He maintains that many citizens are “overfed” but “undernourished”.  He relates with some degree of substantiation that diabetes is higher in some populations leading to profound and expensive clinical complications.  Nutrition is not necessarily the only reason for disparities in diabetes among ethnicities, heredity plays a role in addition to education and cultural factors. Sen. Booker should recognize the complexity of the interaction between nutrition and health and recognize the limited options available to the UDSDA beyond the SNAP programs.

Dissension among members of the Senate Committee and the USDA will have repercussions in framing the 2023 Farm Bill.