Winona LaDuke

Eighty-eight big name environmental and food activists — including Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan, famed restaurant owner Alice Waters and Minnesotan Winona LaDuke — have written to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to appoint America’s first “sustainability Secretary of Agriculture.” And among their list of six candidates they include Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former employee of Minnesota’s ag department and co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.