Kathleen Merrigan, the first Agriculture deputy secretary in the Obama administration, has spent her entire career focused on Washington, but on Oct. 10 she declared that the action on food and agricultural policy is now in the private sector amidst entrepreneurs, corporations and community activists.

The current farm bill debate is a dull repetition of old ideas such as whether there should be payment limitations on farm programs, but “outside Washington the world is swirling, exploding with ideas,” Merrigan said as she launched a “Future of Food” series at the downtown Washington campus of Arizona State University, her new employer.

Merrigan, who earlier taught at Tufts University in Massachusetts and was executive director of sustainability at George Washington University after she was at USDA, is the executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems and the Kelly and Brian Swette professor of sustainable food systems at ASU, which is located in Tempe, outside Phoenix.