Devastating Crop Reductions Coming

After years of pushing their noses up against the candy store window, the hard-core environmental activists on Capitol Hill have picked the lock and are storming the building. There’s no telling what havoc they will wreak before the current administration sobers up and faces the reality check we all know is coming. Meanwhile, the danger of nonsensical, burdensome regulation to U.S.agriculture is real.
Earlier this year EPA embraced “indirect land use”changes in its proposed next-generation Renewable Fuels Standard. The theory is that when an acre of grain in the U.S. goes to an ethanol or biodiesel plant and not the traditional food chain, grain prices will rise and farmers in other countries will be provoked to chop down trees to plant grain to make up for that lost acre in the food chain. Thus, the blame (and carbon footprint) for that lost tree is put back on the American farmer.
If passed, this new RFS could derail a growing biofuel industry, forcing the nation to become re-addicted to foreign oil — something President Barack Obama campaigned against before the election. EPA’s adoption of this unproven theory — one that the best scientists all agree is not based on predictable behavior — makes no sense. Referring to indirect landuse theory, Iowa State ag economist Bruce Babcock says, “We’re trying to measure the immeasurable.”
It gets worse. Thanks to a circuit court decision earlier this year, EPA is considering a rule to require farmers to obtain permits through the Clean Water Act every time they spray, even if applied according to label regulations. That’s 5.6 million pesticide applications annually. “This just adds another layer of regulation and burden with absolutely no increase in environmental protection,” responded Keith Menchey of the NationalCotton Council.
EPA apparently believes it knows better than the best ag minds at USDA and the Senate and House ag committees. In April, the agency rebuffed calls for a rehearing from Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, who urged EPA to consider the “signifi cant adverse effect” of the court’s decision on farmers.
Agriculture and the public have always had a place at the table when it comes to making sensible policy; for some reason this administration has empowered EPA to make policy decisions, and that’s not EPA’s role. Today, national security has placed renewable energy at the heart of the national agenda, and that has exposed a dangerous level of ag illiteracy on Capitol Hill. Witness the recent testimony of Margo Oge, EPA director of the Offi ce of Transportation and Air Quality. She stated before Congress, “It takes about 64 acres of corn to makea gallon of ethanol.”Madam Director, 64 acres will make 25,000 gallons of ethanol. To her credit, Oge and her assistant Gina McCarthy later agreed to accept Sen. Chuck Grassley’s invitation to visit an Iowa farm.
As the Illinois Corn Marketing Board rightly notes, these two women hold the future of biofuels in their hands, and they had never visited a farm before.
Added to this uncertainty is the latest rage over local food and organic agriculture. It’s all well and good if a yuppie couple wants to buy food based on their values at three times the going price. Viva La Difference. But heirlooms and free-range chickens won’t feed the world. Activists arrogantly forget to tell people how many more acres we would need to plow up to make up for the lower yields from those systems.
Reversing this nonsense and educating Washington will require a new educational campaign. Ag groups need to put special interests on hold and agree to a broader message that has a better impact on consumers.The message is simple: U.S. ag is the envy of the world and ladling nonsensical regulations on producers would only add to world hunger and break the pocketbooks of consumers. Stop trying to fi x something that is not broken. Organic and local food? Nice niches but they won’t feed the world.
Agriculture is an industry going through monumental change, and most of it for the good. But farmers will need to devote parts of their lives to political activism if they want to continue enjoying the freedoms they now have in their chosen profession. If you’re sitting on the bench, you’re part of the problem.