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Ongoing News and Information
“Don’t Cap Our Future” Goes to the Hill
The American Farm Bureau Federation’s six-month campaign to oppose cap-and-trade climate change legislation, “Don’t CAP Our Future,” culminated Wednesday when farmer and rancher members from across the country presented key lawmakers with some of the 100,000 grassroots calls to action gathered in opposition to the issue.
“Cap-and-trade provisions would create an energy shortage and ultimately reduce food production. That was the driving force behind the ‘Don’t CAP Our Future’ campaign,” AFBF President Bob Stallman said at the Capitol Hill event.
Stallman, members of the AFBF board and additional state Farm Bureau presidents and members, warmly thanked members of Congress attending the event who have shown outstanding leadership in the battle against cap-and-trade legislation.
“On behalf of the American Farm Bureau Federation board of directors, please accept my sincere appreciation,” Stallman said. “Thank you for your support of America’s farmers and ranchers and for your recognition of both the challenges that they face and their important contributions to our nation.”
Senate-Passed Jobs Bill Includes Biodiesel Tax Incentive
On Wednesday, the Senate approved the jobs bill which includes tax relief measures and extensions of programs that lapsed, including the biodiesel tax incentive which would be extended one year, retroactive to January 2010.
The bill also contains a $1.5 billion agriculture disaster package co-sponsored by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and ranking member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). It is designed to provide $1.1 billion in aid to producers who suffered from weather and disastrous crop harvests in 2009 and whose counties were declared “primary” disaster areas by USDA.
Also included is $300 million to assist specialty crop producers, $75 million in emergency loans to poultry producers, $50 million in assistance for livestock producers, $25 million in aquaculture assistance and $42 million to aid first handlers of cottonseed. The House version of the extenders package does not contain similar ag disaster aid language.
The bill now goes to the House, which previously passed a similar but not identical measure.
New iPhone Application Helps Shoppers Pick Apples
How do you like them apples? Check your iPhone.
Shoppers now have images and information on more than 20 different apple varieties available right on iPhones and iPod touch. Them Apples, a new application downloadable through iTunes, features a comprehensive index of the most popular apple varieties and best uses. The app is a free download.
“This app is like having an apple variety guide right at your fingertips,” said Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association.
The application was created by Aquariform Designs (aquariform.com) in conjunction with the New York Apple Association, which represents all of New York’s apple growers. Each apple variety on the app is assigned a details page that highlights the flavor and texture characteristics of the variety as well as how they rate for basic uses such as eating, baking, sauce and pie. The program is best suited for consumers while shopping at the supermarket.
Stallman Urges Farmers to Tell Story, Take on Critics
American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman told Louisiana farmers that American agriculture has a great story to tell, and farmers and ranchers in Louisiana and across the country must tell their stories, or be drowned out by critics “who are more than happy to tell the story of agriculture for us.”
Speaking Friday at the Louisiana Farmer of the Year Banquet, Stallman said farmers and ranchers continue to face many new threats. The challenges include federal regulations that go beyond the scope of law, taxes that threaten the future of family-based farming and extremists who oppose modern farms and ranches on every front.
Stallman said one-such challenge is federal cap-and-trade, climate-change legislation. A bill approved by the House would sharply cut the number of U.S. acres devoted to food production, replacing them with forest acres, at a time when experts say the world should be focused on feeding a growing world population.
While the climate change policy battle rages on in Congress, the Obama administration is using a heavy-handed regulatory scheme that could deal a harsh economic penalty to agriculture. In the case of the Environmental Protection Agency determining that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide endanger public health and welfare, Stallman said the agency overreached its legal authority.
“In its quest to ensure environmental quality, we believe the regulatory reach of the Environmental Protection Agency has simply gone too far,” Stallman said. “EPA issued a finding in December that determined greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. EPA’s action constitutes the first step toward economy-wide regulation of greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. The agency is trying to achieve through regulation what has failed to pass Congress and failed as well at the recent international talks in Copenhagen.”
Graham: ‘Cap-and-Trade is Dead’
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is working on climate change legislation with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) that will not include cap-and-trade provisions.
“Cap-and-trade is dead,” declared Graham at a meeting with environmental leaders last week.
The three senators have worked for months to develop an alternative to cap-and-trade, which the House approved eight months ago. The legislation seeks to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry. The senators plan to introduce legislation next month that would apply different carbon controls to individual sectors of the economy instead of setting a national target.
Reach of Clean Water Act Not Unlimited
Don Parrish, AFBF’S senior director of regulatory relations, was quoted in today’s New York Times on the regulatory reach of the Clean Water Act.
The Times article alleges that thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law.
“There is no doubt in my mind that when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 they intended it to have broad regulatory reach, but they did not intend it to be unlimited,” Parrish said in the article.
The article focused on language in the Clean Water Act - “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. The issue before Congress is legislation that expands federal control well beyond streams and into common ditches or grass waterways.
Increased Chesapeake Regulations Will Put Squeeze on Farmers
A front page article in today’s Washington Post discussed a bill by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) that would allows farmers in the Chesapeake Watershed to sell credits for animal manure, which is now facing stiffer regulations from the EPA.
AFBF is fighting the regulations because of the burdensome cost to farmers. “It's clearly going to put a squeeze on people that they’ve always said they didn't want to squeeze, including family-run farms,” said Don Parrish, AFBF senior director of regulatory affairs, who was quoted in the Post article.
AFBF also opposes the Cardin bill, S. 1816, the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009. “While we support efforts to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, we oppose S. 1816 because we believe that it will force widespread retirement of agricultural lands and shrink agricultural production in the watershed significantly,” wrote AFBF President Bob Stallman in a letter to Cardin on Nov. 9.
According to the Post, manure has not been as strictly regulated as more familiar pollution problems, like human sewage, acid rain or industrial waste.