Well, for one, a widely-publicized bill banning meatpackers from owning their own livestock, which Tom Philpott writes about here.  "It is easy," the SAC points out, "for packers to unlawfully prefer large-volume livestock producers over smaller-volume producers in very subtle ways," for instance in formulas used for premiums or discounts, delivery location requirements, grower compensations and capital investment requirements.  The SAC emphasizes that the bill make clear that packers not prefer large producers over smaller producers "in any manner not substantiated by actual, verifiable quality or transportation and transactional expenses."

The SAC reminds Obama, who claimed to have "worked for tougher environmental regulations on CAFOs," that he promised to support the EPA's strictly monitoring and regulating pollution from large CAFOs.  "Obama strongly supports efforts to ensure meaningful local control," his campaign proclaimed.  Well, good, because George W. Bush's wild midnight regulations are completely unscrewing pollution laws on factory farms.  Obama and Biden claimed to support the restitution of a cap on the size of livestock operations that can receive financial support to farms seeking to improve the environmental quality of their operations, effectively forcing the largest polluters to pay for their own environmental cleanup.  That said, Obama did just name a Secretary of Agriculture that has a lousy record with CAFOs--under his tenure, the number of CAFOs in Iowa exploded--so this'll be a particularly interesting story to watch.  

With regards to the vow that Obama and Biden would identify and encourage young farmers and ranchers, the SAC recommends that the new Office of Advocacy and Outreach formed by the 2008 Farm Bill be empowered to report directly to the Secretary of Agriculture rather than an undersecretary or assistant secretary and be staffed by people who have experience working with beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and small farms.  Fair enough, right?

The SAC also has suggestions on how Obama-Biden could follow up their promises on organic research, conservation stewardship, rural development, antibiotic resistance research and monitoring, and farm-to-school, and to me they seem measured and not at all extreme (okay, so I'm biased!  But seriously, they're reasonable).  I recommend reading them--but more than that, I recommend keeping a close eye on how closely Obama and Biden adhere to the promises they made.