From DTN News: NAWG Reverses Policy on Climate Change
A statement Friday from Karl Scronce, National Association of Wheat Growers president and a wheat producer from Klamath Falls, Ore.:
“The NAWG Board of Directors met this morning via conference call and voted 26 to 2 to approve a new resolution regarding greenhouse gas regulation. The Board also voted 24 to zero to remove existing resolutions relating to greenhouse gas regulation and an agriculture cap-and-trade program.
“The new resolution reads:
“’NAWG is opposed to greenhouse gas legislation or regulation that has a negative impact on production agriculture. NAWG will strive for a net economic benefit to farmers, agriculture and food production. We believe neither greenhouse gas regulation nor legislation should take effect until the major carbon emitting countries of the world have agreed to regulate their own greenhouse gases in a like manner to ours. NAWG urges USDA to do a detailed economic analysis of any legislation or regulation before it becomes law. Furthermore, NAWG will oppose EPA regulation and will work to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.’
NAWG staff and grower-leaders plan to continue to work on this issue to achieve an outcome that the Board feels is in the best interest of our grower-members. “
Here is the official NAWG resolution statement at the NAGW website
h/t to WUWT reader “CuriousGeorge)
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For a moment while reading this I though they were going to say that reducing greenhouse gas (i.e. CO2) would be detrimental to all crops and plants. It would be agricultural suicide to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere since plants would certainly not benefit from any cut in CO2, etc, etc, etc…
But no this is not what followed… and I thought they understood how plants grow. Well, I am sure the farmers do.
This would seem a gutsy move on their part as I am sure that they have been threatened with the removal of subsidies if they don’t cooperate. The potential negatives of CO2 regulation must be very large for them to risk that. Of course, they may just be trolling for pork in exchange for cooperation, but that is a dangerous game.
Why should anyone other than wheat growers have any interest in what a wheat growers lobby organisation has to say?
Ray, I think you’ve been taken in by the “CO2 is plant food” propaganda. CO2 is no more plant food than O2 is human food.
RW, Are you really suggesting that:
a) O2 is not important to humans?
b) CO2 is not important to plants?
And how long can you go without breathing? A human being can survive days without food or water. O2, not so long.
This is open defiance of the AGW religion. It doesn’t matter by who, so much, as just the fact of the public defiance itself.
Three cheers for NAWG. I especially liked the sentence “Furthermore, NAWG will oppose EPA regulation and will work to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.”
I might even cough up a small donation to such a cause, should a reliable legal-expense fund be established and identified to the public.
I wonder if NAWG ever considered the alternative name “Domestic Association of Wheat Growers.” We country boys could more easily relate to the acronym.
Narrow mindedness. We all eat and benefit from wheat. Low prices and higher yields are beneficial. I can’t imagine tax collected from CO2 output would be directed to American Farmers. I do know that taxes will increase fuel prices.
Wheats up with that?…
LOL – O2 is not “food” to humans in the same way CO2 is “food” to plants… frankly I was literally laughing out loud at your comment, RW.
And seriously, if you don’t care, why on Earth did you click in????
Meanwhile, GOOD for NAWG… next step for them is to create a better name 😉 As more and more groups start reading the fine print and realizing all of this C&T and other regulation is just going to kill them, more will push back.
By the way, if anyone thinks these are “dumb farmers”, I urge them to find out just how many college educated farmers there are, percentage wise. You’d probably be surprised.
Wheat farmers can benefit through Carbon Credit programs that provide $2 to $4 per acre of zero-till or pasture land. But lately, the Carbon Credit markets have tanked so those options may not be available unless the market improves. Cap-and-trade will make that market more viable again so wheat farmers should generally be in favor of the regulations.
Eventually, however, the EPA is going to go after Nitrogen fertilizer as well since it is the biggest source of N20, the third biggest greenhouse gas. Wheat farmers need a lot of Nitrogen. A very large percentage of Nitrogen fertilizer ends up in the atmosphere as N20 and its greenhouse potential is 300 times that of CO2.
I think you may be neglecting the “C” on the front of “CO2”. That stands for Carbon which the plant uses to grow. That makes CO2 a plant food just as our Carbon sources are foods for us. It is odd to think of something “eating” the air, but that’s what happens. There’s Carbon in the air just as there’s Carbon in a BK Broiler.
Another part of this is that a large part of the farming community would not benefit from the carbon offset provisions in the House climate bill.
From the Texas A&M report
Partial excerpt (conclusions): “In general, the feedgrain/oilseed farms located in or near the Corn Belt and wheat farms located in the Great Plains, have higher average annual net cash farm income under the three cap and trade alternatives.
Most cotton and dairy farms and all of the rice farms and ranches will likely experience lower net cash farm incomes under the cap and trade alternatives. The rice farms and cattle ranches, are assumed to not participate in carbon sequestration activities so they experience higher costs, without carbon revenue and their commodity prices do not increase enough to offset higher costs.
Most of the feedgrain and plains wheat farms have higher average ending cash reserves under either of the C&T without Ag Carbon Credits or C&T with Ag Carbon Credits scenarios. In addition, all but a few of the feedgrain/oilseed farms end the analysis period with higher cash reserves even under the saturation scenario. Eight wheat farms are better off under the C&T with Ag Carbon Credits scenario, while one cotton and no rice farms or cattle ranches are better off. One dairy (WID145) is better off because it produces and sells surplus corn and soybeans which are projected to see higher prices as a result of cap and trade.
The average level of carbon prices necessary for the farms to be as well off as under the Baseline were estimated for farms who would be worse off under the C&T with Ag Carbon Credits scenario. Given the assumptions in this study, for some farms such as rice and the cattle ranches, no level of carbon prices
would make them as well off as the Baseline. While a few farms would be as well off as the Baseline with only slightly higher carbon prices each year, there are also several farms that would need carbon prices of $80 per ton per year or more to make them as well off as the Baseline. ”
End excerpt
Here’s the A&M report (pdf). Contains a US map showing representative farms and expect gain or loss. They only considered Feedgrain, Dairy, Wheat, Beef Cattle, Cotton, and Rice, so the timber, fruit, and veggie folks are not included. I have no idea how they (timber, etc. ) might fare, but probably in line with the Cotton and rice producers. In other words; a loss due to higher input costs, and the unwillingness of consumers to foot the bill.
http://www.afpc.tamu.edu/pubs/2/526/rr%2009-2%20paper%20-%20for%20web.pdf
This means veggies, cotton, root crops, fruits, livestock, etc. are left out of any potential benefit (or offset of increased costs ) if this or similar legislation were to pass. This inequitable treatment (aside from the science debate ) is one of the major issues with this poorly crafted bill (Waxman-Markey and it’s cousins or potential offspring ).
And it hi-lites the widespread incompetence, in dealing with reality, that is being demonstrated in DC.
Yeah, like I am going to trust anything that comes from Big Wheat. /sarc
In the future, agriculture will mop up the huge unemployment caused by cap and trade. I envision a new green agrarian economy in which 25% of the population toil in the fields, singing songs as they wield hoes made from sustainable wood in a carbon neutral economy.
Sorry, RW, I beg to differ with both your points . . . .
WRT “Why should anyone other than wheat growers have any interest in what a wheat growers lobby organisation has to say?”
There is often a flip side to every cause for which lobbyists lobby. To take an example from recent news . . . . a fishermen’s association that lobbys for more water for fish, if successful, could mean less water for farmers; note the current “drought” in California’s San Joachim valley.
I hate it when politicians use “special interests” as a dirty word. We all have aspirations and objectives and they can often be in competition or even conflict with each other. It’s good to know what other “interests” are out there and in what they are interested.
WRT “CO2 is no more plant food than O2 is human food”
No one, probably disagrees. What humans need to live is food, air and water. I think that most agree that “food” has caloric value but that does not make air or water any less essential for life.
Green plants manufacture their own “food” but that process does not run without CO2 being available.
Anyway, that’s what I think.
Who Cares??
Every farm state has TWO SENATORS who care, deeply, what “wheat growers” think. And, Obama had better “care deeply” what those “Farm State Senators” think.
UAH anomaly for Aug. is 0.23
In France, recently there was a poll concerning the carbon tax that should brought into operation in 2010. The result is: 74% of the interviewees are opposed to it, of which 56% are totally opposed!
This tax will make energies that produce CO2 (oil, gas, coal) more expensive and this in a time of deep crisis. Electricity should be excluded from this new tax. (Most of electricity in France is produced by nuclear energy.) There is still much discussion concerning the amount of the increase.
The government is not amused. Now, they propose to give another name to the tax. Instead of the name “carbon tax”, they may speak in the future of “energy climate tax”.
The poll has been done by telephone on 2 and 3 September among a sample selection of the population of 1,006 persons of more than 18 years.
French website: http://info.france2.fr/france/75-des-Fran%C3%A7ais-oppos%C3%A9s-%C3%A0-la-taxe-carbone-56970853.html
The statement is half a loaf. All they say is they aren’t going to suffer the consequences of a handicap if others don’t too.
“’NAWG is opposed to greenhouse gas legislation or regulation that has a negative impact on production agriculture. NAWG will strive for a net economic benefit to farmers, agriculture and food production. We believe neither greenhouse gas regulation nor legislation should take effect until the major carbon emitting countries of the world have agreed to regulate their own greenhouse gases in a like manner to ours. NAWG urges USDA to do a detailed economic analysis of any legislation or regulation before it becomes law. Furthermore, NAWG will oppose EPA regulation and will work to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.’”
That is a clear text, except for this part:
“We believe neither greenhouse gas regulation nor legislation should take effect until the major carbon emitting countries of the world have agreed to regulate their own greenhouse gases in a like manner to ours”.
In other words, “We are prepared to jump of the cliff if other countries make a similar decision”.
I think they have made a mistake to add this text in their declaration since we do not know what the outcome of Copenhagen will be.
The chances that we will see a Global Climate Treaty get slimmer by the day but…
why take the risk.
What’s also missed is a clear rejection of the science behind CO2 and a reference to the current cooling trend that already effects crop yields in Canada and North America.
I applaud their intention to overturn the Supreme Court ruling and to oppose EPA.
The only opening
One wonders how RW thinks plants grow.
This is the first time I’ve heard anyone claim that CO2 is not a plant food. But of course, by nit-picking definitions of ‘plant food,’ Humpty Dumpty could make it mean whatever he wants it to mean. Freeman Dyson points out that corn [maize] will stop growing completely if denied CO2 for even five minutes. If carbon dioxide isn’t a plant food, what is it? Chopped liver? [I note that greenhouse growers don’t put chopped liver into the greenhouse atmosphere. That’s because CO2 works much better.]
Plants take in CO2, strip out the carbon atom to build cellulose, and emit an O2 molecule. When people eat protein, their bodies use it similarly to plants using the carbon from CO2. Only someone really, really desperate would make a flat statement that CO2 is not a plant food. Any farmer will disagree; fertilizer can be effectively sprayed on plant leaves, as well as being put in the soil.
But claiming that CO2 isn’t a plant food has now become a necessary fallback position for the climate alarmists; they must demonize CO2, instead of simply admitting the truth: that it is an entirely beneficial, completely harmless, *very* minor trace gas. And if it weren’t for fallback positions, climate alarmists wouldn’t have a position.
Without CO2 there would be no life on Earth. And if CO2 levels increased from 4 parts in ten thousand to 5 parts in ten thousand, the result would be entirely beneficial. There would be no runaway global warming, no climate catastrophe, no problem of any kind. Plant life would get a boost from the extra plant food. Fewer people would die of starvation — not that Al Gore or Rajendra Pachauri cares.
All life on Earth will benefit from an increase in atmospheric CO2. That’s exactly what happened when CO2 levels were thousands of parts per million — for hundreds of millions of years at a time: [click on image to expand]. When CO2 levels were higher, the planet was teeming with life. We need more CO2, not less. That’s simply a fact of life.
Curiousgeorge (12:43:39) :
Another part of this is that a large part of the farming community would not benefit from the carbon offset provisions in the House climate bill.
Let us not forget the National corn growers were responsible for getting some improvement in the house legislation for farmers. They pushed for and got USDA to be the regulator for carbon sequestration on farm land. Of course they pushed for farming praticed that benifited corn production.
we already have a climate change levy here in the UK, so here’s a thought:
Climate taxes should become their equivalent as rebates depending on the average monthly temperature if we’re having them at all.
My only qualm is that these things are natural cycles, so that means the standing joke of the 70’s has become a truth. Taxing us for the air that we breath
And my second proposition is that only believers in AGW, such as Gore, The Royal Society etc should be levied with climate taxes. This rate ought to be increased according to the passion with which they hold the belief. They ought to put their hands in their pockets for what they believe and show that they are backing what they propose