Kathleen Merrigan, who helped craft the organic food law in 1990 as a Senate staffer and implement it a decade later at USDA, “is an agricultural policy workhorse who calls the public policy arena her ‘playground,'” says a profile story at Greenwire. Now head of George Washington University’s sustainability office, Merrigan, a former deputy agriculture secretary, also is a co-chair of the AGree farm policy project, which tries to forge consensus among fractious farm groups.
While mainstream agriculture may look askance at Merrigan for promoting organic and local food production, “she’s been criticized in her own camp for opening the organic door to big companies,” says the Greenwire story by Tiffany Steckler. Merrigan says the organic food industry has grown without compromising its standards. “I’ve always wanted organic to grow,” she told Greenwire, “and become more accessible to people across the country.”