Sen. Barack Obama's comments linking modern agricultural practices to obesity, global warming and high health care costs drew condemnation from Sen. John McCain's campaign on Friday.
In a recent interview with Time magazine, Obama cited an article written by Michael Pollan, a professor and longtime critic of U.S. farm policies. As Obama described it, Pollan's article was about "the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil."
Obama told Time: "As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector ... and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."
In a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called it "ludicrous to blame farmers for obesity and pollution."
Said Grassley: "It shows that Sen. Obama doesn't have a very good foundation in American agriculture. And people in agriculture need to know that if Sen. Obama is going to get his ideas on agriculture from a professor at Cal-Berkeley, they should think twice about what they are voting for."
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The Obama campaign told the Des Moines Register that the candidate "was simply paraphrasing an article he read. He believes there are a lot of factors that contribute to obesity, heart disease and other health problems, but he certainly doesn't blame farmers."
Obama, of Illinois, has a history of supporting federal farm programs and ethanol subsidies. McCain, of Arizona, has previously condemned ethanol subsidies and earlier suggested he would eliminate many farm programs.
The McCain campaign arranged the conference call Friday with reporters from Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, all farm states pivotal in this year's presidential election.
