Corby Kummer: Biden's "Big Almond" Pick for U.S. Trade Representative's Office Won't "Sit Well With Any Kind of Environmental Activist"

Award-winning food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio on Friday, explaining the controversy surrounding President Joe Biden’s pick of almond-industry lobbyist Elaine Trevino for chief agricultural negotiator at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Trevino is the president of the Almond Alliance of California.

“Why do we care and why are we angry about this in particular?” Kummer said. “Because there’s no effective limits on how irrigation controls and who shares water and who parcels out how much water various agriculture industries within California are able to use.”

Kummer noted that up to 70% of California almond production is exported to Europe and China, and that the industry depends on these exports to maintain price supports.

“This is kind of a sign that the Biden administration wants to help out industries that rely enormously on foreign purchases to keep up their price supports, how they manage U.S. trade pacts with different countries, so that the enormous amount of exports, in this case to almonds, can go,” Kummer explained. “But until there’s effective and concurrent regulation of methane for the [National] Cattlemen’s Beef Association, allotted resources for the almond industry, it’s not going to sit well with any kind of environmental activist.”

Other topics discussed in this wide-ranging interview include the legal groups looking into the companies fraudulently using “natural” and “sustainable” labels, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research on food insecurity levels during the pandemic.

Kummer is the executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.