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Climate Progress

As Crops Are Killed, House Forbids USDA From Preparing For Climate Disasters

By Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2011 at 9:32 am

Our guest blogger is Noah Matson, Vice President for Climate Change and Natural Resources Adaptation at the Defenders of Wildlife.

Flooded farmland in Tennessee

In a disturbing trend of attacking the government’s ability to prepare for climate risks, the House passed an amendment to the fiscal 2012 agriculture spending bill that would prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from implementing new regulations on climate change adaptation. This amendment puts the nation at increased risk of food disruptions, forest fires and huge economic losses.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who introduced the amendment, bizarrely claimed USDA’s climate adaptation policy was somehow a “backdoor door attempt to put a cap-and-trade program in place in the Department of Agriculture.”

Far from it. The commonsense USDA policy says only that agencies should plan for that future in a way that will prevent food disruptions, massive forest fires and economic hardships:

Through adaptation planning, USDA will develop, prioritize, implement and evaluate actions to minimize climate risks and exploit new opportunities that climate change will bring.

The nation is still immersed in intense weather and climate-related disasters – from the Mississippi flood, to the Texas drought, to the Arizona fire. Some of these extreme events are happening in the same place.

“I can’t get my crop out of one side of the levee because it’s too dry and I’ve lost my crop on the other side of the levee because it’s floating away,” said George Lacour, 48, of Morganza, Louisiana. The state is bearing the brunt of much of the Mississippi flood as well as a state-wide severe drought.

Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The conditions we are seeing this year are breaking records. According to Texan Matt Farmer, “It’s as dry as I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime. I don’t remember a drought this widespread. I’ve got a lot of country that’s blowing, but I can’t do a thing about it.”

This year’s events are also consistent with the conditions researchers project are coming with climate change. Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The Senate should do right by the country’s farmers, forests and the people and wildlife that rely on them, and reject this amendment.

Learn more from the Defenders of Wildlife on Congress’s June 3 vote to put the lives, livelihoods, property and security of Americans at increased risk< and the importance of a broad, comprehensive strategy to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

USDA Ignores Its Own Advice: Rather than Funding Fruits and Veggies, It Supports High-CO2 Meat and Dairy

By Energy Interns on Jun 13, 2011 at 4:30 pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Tyce Herrman

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has updated its dietary guidelines, now called MyPlate, to include more fruits, vegetables and a diverse range of proteins beyond meat.

However, the USDA needs to put its money where its mouth is. According to a report compiled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, less than 1% of agriculture subsidies go to fruits and veggies, and 63% of subsidies go to meat and dairy. Grain subsidies total 20%; however, most of those grains go to feeding livestock, bringing the actual subsidies for meat and dairy much higher than 63%.

How does livestock production contribute to greenhouse gas emissions?  The FAO calculates yearly CO2 contributions from the different steps along the livestock production chain this way:

Read more

Economy

GOP Funding Bill Cuts Assistance To Low-Income Women, While Ensuring Maintenance Of Azalea Collection

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 13, 2011 at 12:39 pm

More important to the GOP than nutrition assistance?

This week, the House plans to vote on the fiscal year 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill, which provides funding to, among other agencies, the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the nation’s commodities market watchdog). House Republicans have been crowing that this bill cuts agriculture funding by nearly $3 billion from last year’s level, and is coming in $5 billion below President Obama’s 2012 budget request.

“This legislation reflects hard decisions to cut lower priority programs, reduce spending in programs that can be scaled back, and target funds where they are needed most so that our nation continues on the path to fiscal recovery,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY). Evidently, the House GOP finds nutrition assistance for low-income women and their children to be a “lower priority program,” as the bill cuts the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to such an extent that 325,000 to 475,000 currently eligible women and children will be denied help.

The bill also cuts funding for the CFTC, despite that agency’s new responsibilities to police derivatives and oil speculation under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. However, among the GOP priorities in the bill are ensuring that the National Arboretum maintains its azalea collection and calling for regulators to not apply the Animal Welfare Act on movie sets. Here are some of the bill’s highlights:

– MAINTAINING NATIONAL AZALEA COLLECTION: “The Committee directs the National Arboretum to maintain its National Boxwood Collection and the Glenn Dale Hillside portion of the Azalea Collection. The Committee encourages the National Arboretum to work collaboratively with supporters of the National Arboretum to raise additional funds to ensure the long-term viability of these and other important collections.” [Pg. 13]

– ENSURING THAT THE ANIMAL WELFARE ACT DOESN’T APPLY TO MOVIE SETS: “While the Animal Welfare Act’s intent is to establish minimally acceptable standards in the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers, the law was not aimed at regulating companion animals used as extras in the background of movies and television productions. The Committee urges the agency to use the Secretary’s discretionary authority to seek alternative means of meeting its statutory mandate, including the option of issuing exemptions or master exhibitor licenses to these pet owners.” [Pg. 19]

– $4 MILLION INCREASE IN WILDLIFE DAMAGE MANAGEMENT: “Wildlife Damage Management – The Committee provides $72,500,000 for Wildlife Damage Control, approximately $4 million above the President’s request…. Special emphasis should be placed on those areas such as livestock protection…predator control, and other threats to agriculture industries.” [Pg. 20]

Ensuring that an azalea collection is maintained and giving more funding to wildlife damage management are fine goals, but the GOP is trumpeting this bill — which cuts off hundreds of thousands of women and children from nutrition assistance and prevents regulators from reining in oil speculation that is out of control — as a reflection of their priorities. If that is true, it’s a pretty stark statement as to what House Republicans find important.

Yglesias

Are Farm Subsidies Progressive?

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 2, 2011 at 10:31 am

In short: No, they’re not, largely because the largest subsidies go to the biggest, richest farmers. But even if they didn’t, Sallie James observes that farmers in general are richer than most people:

Farmers are wealthier (second graph from the bottom) and earn higher incomes (fourth graph from the bottom) than the average U.S. household. Their average debt-to-asset ratio is about 12 percent (third graph from the bottom), very low relative to the average U.S. household. Those should be the relevant data for any progressivity test.

America’s agricultural sector is very productive. And that’s an excellent thing and a real source of strength for the country. But it means that American farmers, though few in number, are pretty well off. They don’t need subsidies. But though few in number, they’re many in congressional representation.

Climate Progress

Anti-EPA House Votes To Let Agribusiness Dump Pesticides In Our Water

By Brad Johnson on Apr 1, 2011 at 1:35 pm

The Tea Party Congress doesn’t just hate EPA rules that protect against industry destroying our country with greenhouse pollution, mercury, coal ash, and mountaintop removal. By a veto-proof margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to prohibit Clean Water Act limits on pesticide pollution of lakes, streams, and rivers.

Lobbyists for industrial agriculture polluters cheered the 292-130 vote for H.R. 872, which “will amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Clean Water Act to clarify Congressional intent and eliminate the requirement for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for applications of pesticides approved for use under FIFRA.” The California agribusiness lobby Western Farmers Association praised the “practical, bipartisan example of eliminating government regulations that needlessly increase farm business costs“:

The measure would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring farmers or companies to comply with the Clean Water Act when using pesticides on or near water sources. The bill’s supporters said pesticides are adequately regulated by other laws. The bill passed 292 to 130 on Thursday. The 130 negative votes came from Democrats. Fifty-seven Democrats joined 235 Republicans in supporting the bill, which has yet to see Senate action.

Clean Water rules against pesticide pollution are hardly “needless.” The waters that are home to fish and that feed our drinking water supply are being poisoned. Agribusiness uses hundreds of millions of pounds of FIFRA-approved pesticides like atrazine, metolachlor, cyanazine, alachlor, acetochlor, metribuzin, bentazon, and trifluralin a year. These pesticides, linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders, are found in nearly every single stream in the United States.

Following a 2006 USGS report on the nearly ubiquitous pesticide contamination of our streams, rivers, and the fish that live in them, the EPA under Bush tried to establish a loophole-ridden rule that was thrown out by the courts. The EPA was given until April 9, 2011 to establish new rules, but was granted a delay until October 31 on Tuesday.

Politics

As Food Prices Skyrocket, House Committee Calls For Cutting Food Stamps Instead Of Agriculture Subsidies

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 21, 2011 at 11:27 am

In 2010, 18 percent of the country — nearly one in five households — reported not having enough money to provide food at some point during the year. Last month, food prices increased by 3.9 percent, in the largest jump since 1974. Vegetable prices increased by nearly 50 percent, driven in part by weather disasters damaging crops in place such as Australia and Russia.

These trends are occurring at the same time that unemployment has remained unacceptably high, leaving many Americans with nothing but the social safety net standing between them and going hungry. But as National Journal’s Tim Fernholz reported, the House Agriculture Committee has called for a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI):

One part of the agriculture budget that has seen increases is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) where spending has tripled over the last ten years. Given the economic downturn and high unemployment which has left many Americans with few options, an increase in nutrition assistance spending is to be expected….But much of the cost increase has come through government action as opposed to the kind of macroeconomic forces that naturally result in increased subscriptions.

The letter’s co-authors — House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-MN) — are correct that, in the face of the Great Recession, food stamp benefits were increased. But those increased benefits have (unfortunately) already been reduced to pay for a jobs bill that Congress passed last year.

And at the same time they’re pointing to food stamps as an area ripe for cuts, Lucas and Peterson say that the tens of billions in annual agriculture subsidies that the U.S. provides should be off-limits for reductions. At the moment, 61 percent of the subsidies that the U.S. provides for agriculture go to just ten percent of recipients. Though some restrictions on rich farmers receiving subsidies were placed into the 2008 farm bill, they were mostly ineffective. And entrenched lawmakers on the agriculture committee help to keep it that way:

The 15 congressional districts receiving the most in payments accounted for about a quarter of all farm aid…Representatives from nine of those districts serve on the House Agriculture Committee, including the panel’s top Democrat and Republican.

At the moment, 90 percent of agriculture subsidies go toward the production of just five crops — corn, wheat, rice, soy and cotton. “Most of that 90 percent went to the large farming corporations,” said Annie Shattuck of the Institute for Food & Development Policy. “Much of those commodities were not used for food, but for animal feed and industrial applications. Cotton is not even a food.” Yet lawmakers on the Agriculture Committee feel that this wasteful spending is more important than helping Americans families weather the Great Recession.

Yglesias

Foreign Cows vs Foreign People

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 27, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Charles Kenny contrasts America’s stringy treatment of foreign-born people who’d like to move to the United States with our generous treatment of foreign-born cows:

Once in the United States, Canadian and Mexican cattle have to be treated just like native-born cows — they can’t be labeled differently to consumers or otherwise discriminated against. Canadian and Mexican people have no such luck. For example, Canadian Kiefer Sutherland, star of the hit TV show 24, couldn’t apply for the government job he pretends to have on TV, despite his character’s role as a forceful practitioner of truth, justice, and the American way.

One element of this bovine bias is that cows get immediate access to the U.S. welfare system. In 2009, 9 million dairy cows living in the United States received $1.35 billion in subsidies, regardless of their country of origin. That’s about $20,000 a year per bovine household (or herd, which averages around 133 cows). Meanwhile, annual payments for the average human household on welfare are only around $16,800 — and, of course, around four-fifths of legal immigrants aren’t on any type of welfare at all, while illegal and nonpermanent human residents aren’t even eligible. If you want to see a real welfare queen, check out a dairy cow.

By the standards of the rich world the United States is an outlier in terms of having better policies toward both immigration and farm subsidies than does Europe or (especially) Japan, but there’s still tons of room for improvement here.

Climate Progress

Growing Democracy In Egypt Requires Feeding The People

By Guest Blogger on Feb 22, 2011 at 5:35 pm

Our guest blogger is Jake Caldwell, Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade, and Energy at American Progress.

Ensuring Egyptians have access to a reliable and affordable food supply during its political turmoil is an urgent priority for both Egypt and the United States. Regrettably, conservatives in the House of Representatives appear headed in a different direction and are slashing funding for international humanitarian assistance. This includes funding for emergency food aid, investments in women and small landholder farms, and efforts to combat climate change in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world.

Any effort to stabilize food prices in Egypt must be led by Egyptians to identify and meet local needs. But the United States has a role to play to support the Egyptian people, collectively the world’s largest importer of wheat. In the short term the United States should:

– Temporarily reinstate a program to provide low-cost financing that enables the Egyptian private and public sector to purchase commodities to fill strategic reserves and maintain full and transparent wheat stocks beyond Egypt’s current six-month minimum.

– Support low-cost loans to Egyptian farmers to increase agricultural output.

– Work directly and through the U.N. World Food Program to identify and provide targeted emergency food aid to Egypt’s school-feeding programs and most vulnerable populations.

– Arrange for the upgrade and expansion of grain-storage capacity at major ports, including Alexandria, to facilitate relatively rapid investment in Egyptian food-distribution infrastructure.

– Mitigate shipping risk and provide further technical assistance to improve the efficiency and transparency of Egyptian financing, customs, and tariffs procedures to make sure that arriving overseas grain is offloaded efficiently and can get to where it needs to be in the shortest time possible.

– Ensure the Suez Canal operates at full capacity to ensure global grain shipments reach their final destinations expeditiously.

In the midterm to long term, the United States must increase its investment in Egypt’s agricultural development. Agriculture directly employs one-third of Egypt’s labor force and cost-effective and strategic agricultural investment in Egypt can produce lasting dividends while minimizing the impact of uncertainty on food markets.

This increased U.S. and private-sector investment and technical assistance should be used to strengthen yields in key domestic food commodities such as wheat, edible oil, sugar, and dairy to bridge Egypt’s food gap. A focus on women farmers and small landholders and the production of high-value export crops such as fruits, vegetables, and livestock can boost incomes and employment and take advantage of Egypt’s proximity to potential markets.

Food prices are at record levels partly due to population growth and increased demand from a recovering global economy, tight supplies, high oil prices, and weak agricultural production attributable to climate change-induced weather disasters and crop loss in key producing nations.

Climate change is causing extreme weather events such as massive flooding in Australia, Pakistan, and Brazil; unprecedented heat waves and drought in Russia, Ukraine, and now China; heavy rains in Iowa and Illinois; and dry conditions in key U.S. wheat-growing regions such as Kansas and Colorado. These are all affecting food production and have injected a level of doubt into forecasts for upcoming harvests, current stockpiles, and the prospects for the spring planting season. Read more

Yglesias

Farm Subsidies Benefit Landowners

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 20, 2011 at 9:27 am

(cc photo by luckywhitegirl)

Via Tad DeHaven, research from Barry K. Goodwin, Ashok K. Mishra, and François Ortalo-Magné tries to assess who derives the ultimate benefit from farm subsidies and discovers that much of it accrues to owners of agricultural land rather than farmers as such:

Farm subsidies make agricultural production more profitable by increasing and stabilizing farm prices and incomes. If these benefits are expected to persist, farm land values should capture the subsidy benefits. We use a large sample of individual farm land values to investigate the extent of this capitalization of benefits. Our results confirm that subsidies have a very significant impact on farm land values and thus suggest that landowners are the real benefactors of farm programs. As land is exchanged, new owners will pay prices that reflect these benefits, leaving the benefits of farm programs in the hands of former owners that may be exiting production. Approximately 45% of U.S. farmland is operated by someone other than the owner. We report evidence that owners benefit not only from capital gains but also from lease rates which incorporate a significant portion of agricultural payments even if the farm legislation mandates that benefits must be allocated to producers.

Highly regressive transfer, in other words.

Yglesias

Farm Subsidies and Fine Print

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 12, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Vicki Hartzler beat longtime Democratic Representative Ike Skelton in Missouri and at first glance appears to be delivering some much-needed Real Talk on farm subsidies:

The congresswoman-elect would exempt some of the federal budget’s high-cost categories — including Social Security, Medicare and the Pentagon budget — from cutbacks. But she would not exempt agricultural subsidies, another major area of federal spending popular in rural areas such as west-central Missouri’s Fourth District. Among the many farms to receive such subsidies is the 1,700-acre Hartzler farm, which — according to the Environmental Working Group’s “Farm Subsidy Database” — received about $774,000 in federal payments (mainly commodity subsidies for corn, soybeans and wheat) from 1995 through 2009.

“Everything should be on the table,” she says. While she says some agriculture programs represent a “national defense issue” because they help guarantee that “we have a safety net to make sure we have food security in our country,” Hartzler adds: “Should we continue the CRP [Conservation Reserve] program, where you pay farmers to not plant ground and set it aside for awhile? I’m not sure. The time for that may be over.”

That sounds decent, but as Sallie James observes when you peer into there’s much less here than meets the eye:

Let’s be clear about what Ms. Hartzler is talking about here. Those “some” agricultural programs she says should be guaranteed on “national defense” grounds (see below) are what we commonly think about as “farm subsidies” — payments to farmers to produce certain commodities, whether those payments are funded by taxpayers or consumers. They encourage overproduction and thus alienate our trade partners, complicate efforts to make global trade freer, harm poor farmers abroad and damage America’s reputation in the process. They cost us billions of dollars a year.

What she’s talking about cutting isn’t the main suite of farm price support programs. Instead she’s “open to cutting farm programs that at least pretend to have environmental benefits.” These programs aren’t my favorite idea about how to spend money, but paying land-owners to maintain their land in ecologically sound ways is much less pernicious than paying them to overproduce corn and soybeans. What’s more, it’s a much smaller share of the overall budgetary pie.

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