Veneman public servant or tomater hater?

Author: Mike Ives '06.5

I tell you, Ron, I'm a bit confused. When you announced that Ann Veneman would be our commencement speaker ["Veneman to Address Grads," March 16], you characterized her as someone capable of providing "an important and relevant message to students who would be leaving the relatively protected confines of Middlebury to pursue various jobs, volunteer work and studies." But when I think about it, I wonder what her message will be.

Perhaps that we should consider helping the world's children? Veneman, I understand, was recently appointed head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), whose logo we all recognize from trick-or-treating. Or else that we should consider careers in agro-politics? In that realm, she set a shining example for us as President Bush's Secretary of Agriculture from 2001 to 2005.

These sound like nice things to do. I imagine she is a very nice person, besides.

But there are so many messages to impress upon impressionable college students these days, Ron! Veneman, you know, also served on the board of biotech giant Calgene (later bought out by Monsanto) in 1994 when its infamous "Flavr Savr" tomato became the first mass-marketed genetically modified food product. Before her appointment as Secretary of California's Department of Food and Agriculture in 1995, she lobbied for Dole Foods, a corporation with a curious penchant for supporting brutal dictatorships, labor violations and environmental abuse in the "developing" world. And her policies on meat safety and forestry under our nation's fearless leader strike me as, shall we say, less than hopeful?

Plus, her record seems to mock the values of our local landscape. A year ago, the Vermont Senate voted 26-1 in favor of the Farmer Protection Act - a bill protecting small farmers from lawsuits brought by companies like Monsanto in the event that genetically modified seeds infiltrate their non-GMO crops. As a state, Vermont has presented the strongest resistance in the country to genetically modified foods, and Middlebury itself is one of 83 Vermont towns to have passed an anti-GMO town resolution. Oh, and our world-renowned environmental writer-in-residence Bill McKibben's 2003 book Enough: "Staying Human in an Engineered Age" outlines the grave potential dangers of genetic engineering to human and environmental well-being.

Considering these facts, one wonders if perhaps you misspoke when you announced Veneman as our commencement speaker. Did you mean to say Alec Webb, the founder of Shelburne Farms, to whom you're awarding an honorary degree? After all, his organization is a nationally recognized paradigm of environmental and social responsibility!

Understandably, my fellow seniors are baffled by the selection:

Susannah Patty '06, a loyal member of the Organic Garden, contemplates the disjuncture between Veneman's politics and the pulse of the Middlebury campus community: "As a class, we already embody the 'green ribbon' social and environmental responsibility pledge that so many of us will take upon graduation, the Fair Trade Coffee Campaign, Sunday Night Group and the Organic Garden's seed saving initiative all engage these values," she says. "It seems only just to sponsor a commencement speaker who can both testify to what we have accomplished in these four years and provide an example of the kind of integrity and responsibility we plan to uphold in our new capacities after graduation."

Tara Vanacore '06, granddaughter of honorary degree recipient Lihua Yu, points out that Veneman "supports the very industries that are forcing family farms out of existence." "Having grown up in Vermont," she reflects, "I've witnessed too many small farms suffering at the hands of the larger dairy and cattle industries. Veneman's connections to biotech corporations reveal that she is no more a purveyor of social justice than a speaker from Monsanto would be."

Senior RA of the Environmental Studies House Alyssa Jumars questions both "the process and rationale" behind the selection of Veneman as our speaker: "To a graduating class with so many seniors striving to understand and act upon the ethics of sustainable agriculture, the choice comes as a slap in the face," she asserts.

Pray tell, what exactly is the ethical message you hope Veneman will fill us with? And Ron, how can you reconcile that message with the kind of sustainable, environmentally and socially conscientious vision for Addison County and the world that Middlebury purports to represent? The whole affair remains as mysterious to me as, say, a genetically modified tomato!