Farmers Fight Climate Bill, But Warming Spells Trouble for Them

[depakid]

Farm state senators and others soon will get a taste of what their colleagues from Missouri already have piled high on their desks: thousands of letters from farmers urging them to vote against the climate and energy bill. The Missouri Farm Bureau started the letter campaign early, weeks before the bill was fully written and made public. It was followed this month with a pitch from the American Farm Bureau, the nation's largest agriculture lobby, to get farmers to take farm caps, sign their bills and send them to senators with notes that say, "Don't cap our future."

Agriculture is likely to have a central place in the debate on the bill later this year about the short-term costs of acting to curb climate change -- and the costs of failing to address the long-term risks.

Farm lobby groups and senators who agree with them argue that imposing limits on the nation's emissions of heat-trapping gases from coal, oil and natural gas would raise the cost of farming necessities such as fuel, electricity and natural gas-based fertilizer. A government report, however, warns of a dire outlook for farms if rising emissions drive more rapid climate shifts in the decades ahead.

The Senate bill includes provisions that would hold down energy costs for consumers, and some senators are working to add sections that would help farmers.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in written testimony while traveling in China this week that the bill would create opportunities for farmers to sell renewable energy and to earn money by selling credits for reducing emissions. He also said the bill contained provisions that would prevent fertilizer price increases before 2025, even though fuel prices would rise.

The benefits of the bill probably will outweigh the costs in the short run, and "easily trump" increased costs in the long run, he said.

Others are worried, however.

"I can understand in the political world why they're trying to get this under control," said Bill Wiebold, a University of Missouri agronomist, a scientist who specializes in crop production and soil. "What are the ripple effects? That's what farmers are concerned about. They understand that what's being passed in Washington, D.C., could have a direct effect on their bottom line."

Another side of the cost question, however, will be the burden on the daughters and sons who succeed today's farmers, and the generations after them. A comprehensive review of scientific literature and government data undertaken by a team of 19 U.S. scientists at the end of the Bush administration and released in June forecast a disturbing future for American agriculture as warming accelerates in the decades ahead.

The report, "Global Change Impacts in the United States," is the most comprehensive U.S. effort so far to move from a global view of rising temperatures due to accumulating greenhouse gases to a more regionally focused look at current and future changes.

The key messages on agriculture:

* Early on, some warming and elevated carbon-dioxide levels may be good for some crops, but higher levels of warming impair plant growth and yields. More frequent heat waves, for example, would be hard on crops such as corn and soybeans.

* Other more frequent extremes, such as heavy downpours and droughts, also would be likely to reduce crop yields.

* The quality of grazing land will decline, and heat and disease will be harder on livestock.

* Finally, warming will be good for something: pests and weeds.

"This is going to have profound effects on agriculture and forests around the world," said William Hohenstein, the director of the Global Change Program at the Department of Agriculture.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/30-3

[juno jones]

1. K&R! n/t

[kestrel91316]

2. Old school farmers tend to be pretty conservative and probably are of the

belief that God's 100% in control and wouldn't let anything bad happen to Christians, and besides, the baby Jesus is a'comin' anyhow.

[NNadir]

3. Speaking of baby Jesus as we insult the people who grow our food as ignoramuses

when exactly is the sun god supposed to descend from heaven an run all of our lights?

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

I am familiar with vicious ignorance couched in unjustifiable ersatz senses of ethical and intellectual superiority. I find them laughable, particularly on the grounds that the people who, for instance, oppose nuclear science, are precisely the people who know zero about the subject.

I think these people are hicks.

I could easily argue that the AARP's positions on a particular issue make all people over 55 stupid but it not clear that the AARP speaks for all seniors.

Clearly opposition to a climate bill by farmers is involved with short term thinking. I believe we should all pay more for energy that is based on dangerous fossil fuels, commensurate with the external costs. In fact, we should put a surcharge on all energy industries commensurate with their external cost. For instance, the solar energy industry, a huge money sucking rabbit hole, should be required to meet nuclear standards for waste disposal, the standard that no one in the next 10,000 years should have an increased risk of 1 in 100,000 of an additional disease state because of solar cell manufacture or the disposal of the spent electronic waste that every solar cell on earth will become in the next few decades.

Imagine what solar cells might cost then...

Last year in Philadelphia, I attended several symposia on biofuels held by the ACS by agro scientists, and this year I attended the Bio conferences in Atlanta on sustainable fuels and land use. I can tell you that in spite of the cartoon image of dumb farmer Joe with the missing teeth, the pitchfork and the Sarah Palin button, the level of discourse by these farm state scientists was remarkable. I did not agree with some of the positions taken in various talks, but I would argue that the presentations were at a much more profound level than is found with a bunch of people doing the chicken dance because their Mercedes meets the "renewable portfolio standards" of Germany, which ignorantly insists that it is OK to rototil Sumatra to keep the cars on the Autobahn running at 120 kph.