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As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

The Agriculture Department — and the agriculture committees in Congress — have traditionally been handed over to industrial farming interests by Democrats and Republicans alike. The farm lobby uses that perch to inflict unhealthy food on American children in school-lunch programs, exacerbating our national crisis with diabetes and obesity.

But let’s be clear. The problem isn’t farmers. It’s the farm lobby — hijacked by industrial operators — and a bipartisan tradition of kowtowing to it.

I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where my family grew cherries and timber and raised sheep and, at times, small numbers of cattle, hogs and geese. One of my regrets is that my kids don’t have the chance to grow up on a farm as well.

Yet the Agriculture Department doesn’t support rural towns like Yamhill; it bolsters industrial operations that have lobbying clout. The result is that family farms have to sell out to larger operators, undermining small towns.

One measure of the absurdity of the system: Every year you, the American taxpayer, send me a check for $588 in exchange for me not growing crops on timberland I own in Oregon (I forward the money to a charity). That’s right. The Agriculture Department pays a New York journalist not to grow crops in a forest in Oregon.

Modern confinement operations are less like farms than like meat assembly lines. They are dazzlingly efficient in some ways, but they use vast amounts of grain, as well as low-level antibiotics to reduce infections — and the result is a public health threat from antibiotic-resistant infections.

An industrial farm with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a town with 20,000 people. But while the town is required to have a sewage system, the industrial farm isn’t.

“They look profitable because we’re paying for their wastes,” notes Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “And then there’s the cost of antibiotic resistance to the economy as a whole.”

One study suggests that these large operations receive, in effect, a $24 subsidy for each hog raised. We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?

The need for change is increasingly obvious, for health, climate and even humanitarian reasons. California voters last month passed a landmark referendum (over the farm lobby’s furious protests) that will require factory farms to give minimum amounts of space to poultry and livestock. Society is becoming concerned not only with little boys who abuse cats but also with tycoons whose business model is abusing farm animals.

An online petition that can be found at www.fooddemocracynow.org calls for a reformist pick for agriculture secretary — and names six terrific candidates, such as Chuck Hassebrook, a reformer in Nebraska. On several occasions in the campaign, Mr. Obama made comments showing a deep understanding of food issues, but the names that people in the food industry say are under consideration for agriculture secretary represent the problem more than the solution.

Change we can believe in?

The most powerful signal Mr. Obama could send would be to name a reformer to a renamed position. A former secretary of agriculture, John Block, said publicly the other day that the agency should be renamed “the Department of Food, Agriculture and Forestry.” And another, Ann Veneman, told me that she believes it should be renamed, “Department of Food and Agriculture.” I’d prefer to see simply “Department of Food,” giving primacy to America’s 300 million eaters.

As Mr. Pollan told me: “Even if you don’t think agriculture is a high priority, given all the other problems we face, we’re not going to make progress on the issues Obama campaigned on — health care, climate change and energy independence — unless we reform agriculture.”

Your move, Mr. President-elect.

The project was a tasting room for a new local winery in Frederick County, Maryland, Black Ankle Vineyards. Owners Ed Boyce and Sarah O’Herron are strongly influenced by biodynamic philosophy and in keeping with that, they produced as much of the building materials on site as possible. Most of the wood was milled from their own land, the rye straw was all grown and harvested on site, and they’ve even worked closely with a papercrete company to produce countertops made from grape vines, seeds, and skins from last year’s harvest. It’s very cool. They’ll also be using some wormy maple from the grounds for tabletops. It should be absolutely beautiful when finished, and a delightful place for Jim and I to go. Since the owners have 5 children, their plans are to make the gardens kid-friendly.

This was a post and beam project with straw infill, meaning that the straw itself primarily functions as an insulator, and what an amazing insulator it is with R-42 value! The roof will be insulated with an expanding soy foam, and the concrete floors will be finished with a soy colorant. The building will also include a cob-covered masonry stove, some living roof area, as well as cob walls and benches in the outdoor rooms. (Note: these links aren’t necessarily the actual products being used.)

My team and I worked on an outside corner wall with a window (below) that flows into an internal wall and window, which means we had loads of specialty cuts to make in our bales. Here we are standing on our strawbale scaffold against our internal wall just before we laid the last course under the beam. Eventually, strawbales will be laid on the cut side on top of this final course, all the way up the cathedral wall where it will meet the ceiling insulation.

The weekend was amazing, and fun, and filled with all kinds of challenging weather, including a rain and hail storm which soaked me to the skin in the frantic run to tarp the outside walls, demonstrating the clear value to post and beam construction in our area of the country. If this had been a load-bearing or “Nebraska style” strawbale, there would have been no roof in place!

After work was done, we were all treated to a tour of the winery and an informal tasting back in the tasting room to toast all our effort. What an amazing experience! Now, I’ll have all kinds of experiential knowledge when I finally convince Jim to build our own strawbale on 100 acres somewhere.

We meet every other Thursday evening, so if anyone’s interested in joining the circle, feel free to email, and I’ll send you details.

What I’d like to do here is talk a bit about each chapter we’ve covered, share some of the tips we’ve come up with and hope that folks here will share some of their tips in the comments section, which I’ll then be able to bring back to the discussion circle. So, please take the time to share what you’ve learned for the different categories, offer resources, and make suggestions.

Dumping on Garbage: Reducing Solid Waste

Remembering the 3 R’s “reduce, reuse, recycle” and tackling them in order is the best way to eliminate garbage and waste. The book measures garbage as gallon containers, but I find that less useful than measuring the actual weight of the garbage produced. As an exercise, try weighing the amount of trash your family accumulates each week. Take each kitchen garbage bag produced and weigh it to get a sense of how much solid waste your family sends to the landfill each week.

The average American generates about 4.4 lbs of garbage per day! For a household of 5, that adds up to 154 lbs of garbage per week! My family of 5, by contrast, produces just 3-4 lbs of garbage per week through reducing, reusing, and recycling. See how low you can go!

• Reduce or better yet eliminate all food waste from the garbage by eating more left overs and composting raw vegetable scraps. 43,000 tons of food is thrown away each day in the U.S., but you can be a part of the solution. Consider setting up a vermiposting system that can handle both raw and cooked food scraps, which can be done even in urban apartment settings. Consider getting a backyard flock of chickens who will gladly take your kitchen scraps and provide delicious eggs in return. Scraping food into the garbage adds a tremendous amount of weight, not to mention odor; waste pounds can be dropped quickly by this one simple change.

• Reduce junk mail by going to directmail.com and catalogchoice.org; contact other companies directly to request mailing list removal. Recycle the rest in mixed paper bins or by sorting into office paper, newspaper, and glossy magazines if your recycling center requires it.

• Reduce packaging by buying in bulk when possible: many of us still purchase individually packaged items like cereals and snacks where the best solution is to eliminate as many of these items as possible or to buy the largest size possible. Use your purchasing power to buy recycled products or packaging that uses at least some recycled ingredients. Better yet, buy local or grow your own!

• Reduce plastic bags by using cloth bags when shopping anywhere, not just for grocery stores. A great source is reusablebags.com Wash plastic zipper bags for reuse: I handwash mine and hang them over the kitchen faucet to dry. Reuse those plastic food containers instead of zipper bags and eliminate them altogether, or store items in glass refrigerator jars instead, and eliminate the plastics from your food chain. Canning jars are great for this.

• Reduce holiday waste. Americans generate an extra 5 million tons of waste during the holidays, much of which is wrapping paper and shopping bags, and of course parents these days know how crazy toy packaging has become! Eliminate wrapping paper altogether in favor of reusable cloth gift bags, or make your own for a personalized touch. Buy based on minimal packaging when possible; better yet, give handmade items, gifts of service, or charitable donations.

• Reduce trash by donating gently used items to thrift stores and by joining your local freecycle list. Freecycle can be a great way to get rid of all kinds of things from old appliances to leftover building materials to toys to scrap metal.

• Reduce waste by switching to cloth and other options for napkins, paper towels, diapers, and feminine products. Americans throw away 570 diapers per second, or 49 million diapers a day! There are many sources online for patterns to make your own diapers and pads, and products like the diva cup, keeper or moon cup can eliminate waste even further, which not only saves garbage but on the production end of such disposables as well. Switch to reusable coffee filters or loose tea. Compost unbleached paper towels and napkins like those from 7th Generation.

• Reuse before recycling or trashing. Many areas, for instance, don’t recycle plastics other than #1 and #2. While working to change that in our community, we can reuse as many of these plastics as possible. Some ideas include: seedling containers; feed scoops; craft projects; food storage; other kinds of storage for craft or sewing items, small kids’ toys, workbench organization, etc. Reuse those shopping bags. When I forget my cloth bags, I ask for paper and use those to hold mixed paper recyclables so I can toss the whole bag in the county recycling bin when full. Toilet paper rolls can be great fire starters: some folks stuff them with dryer lint, but better to turn off the dryer altogether and forgo the lint. Glass bottles and jars can be reused multiple times for storing leftovers, among many other uses.

• Reuse office paper by printing on both sides or by giving it to kids for art paper.

• Repurpose old and worn items by creating something new, limited only by your own imagination and innovation. I like to reuse broken pots and similar items as garden art, making cool and attractive homes for toads and other beneficial critters.

• Reuse those corrugated cardboard boxes to create a garden. They’re great for killing turf, weed suppression, and for creating “lasagna” gardens. They can also be composted in a large active pile or by shredding. Small boxes, cardboard or paperboard, make great storage containers for the home as well. Kids can come up with hundreds of ways to reuse boxes, from forts to doll houses to treasure containers. Kids can be your best reusers, so don’t overlook them!

• Recycle: set up household recycling center. Find out what your county/ province recycles and designate different areas or collection bins for each. Ikea is a great source for reasonably priced bins, though of them aren’t for outside use. I splurged for mine from Plow & Hearth, and they’ve held up beautifully. Newspapers can be bundled, and office paper contained neatly in bags or bins, but no one had a great system for the larger boxes, which just seem to spill everywhere. Though one person pointed out the usefulness of this in terms of reminding them to go to the recycling center!

• Recycle or dispose of those hazardous household waste products properly: computers, cell phones, batteries, oil, paints, etc. E-waste disposal: what to do with those computers and cell phones. Compact Fluorescents: what to do when those cfl’s go out; those who live near Ikea can drop them off there and get some recycling bins all at the same time—kudos to Ikea for their environmental efforts. Eliminate as many of these household hazards as possible if you haven’t already: check out this source for non-hazardous alternatives to many household products.

What are your trash-busting techniques? Let us know. The more ideas we all have, the better!