I know this is going to cause some farmer grumbling, but an old nemesis has added some food for thought on the climate debate and agriculture.

While almost all analysis so far in the U.S. on agriculture and climate change has focused on the costs of climate legislation or regulation, the Environmental Working Group released a report Wednesday looking at the cost of climate change itself to farmers.

The underlying report concludes "that climate change itself, not climate legislation, is the real threat to American agriculture, and that climate-induced losses will cost taxpayers and farmers far more than ever could be caused" by the House climate bill.

The report, labeled "Crying Wolf" takes the tone that agricultural leaders have been howling too much about the potential costs of climate legislation, particularly for a subsidized industry.

"Instead of wringing our hands about the small, if not negligible, amounts that the climate bill might cost farmers, we should be very worried about how much the experts are telling us climate change will cost them," the EWG report states. The report questions how much crop insurance losses could be due to climate change. Crop-insurance losses over the last five years averaged $4.3 billion annually. EWG cites a new report from the National Academy of Sciences forecasting that corn and soybean yields could decline between 30 percent and 63 percent by the end of the century because of higher temperatures.

When examining the cost of the House climate bill, HR 2454, the EWG cites the analysis from USDA economists in July. EWG notes that USDA's study shows the climate bill would reduce net farm income about $600 million a year in the near term, which "pales in comparison" to the 38 percent decline in net farm income seen just from last year to this year because of the global economic recession.

The EWG report also highlights that the forecast costs of the climate bill from 2012-2018 would amount to about one bushel of grain per acre. Thus, a fractional increase in yields would compensate for the increased costs, EWG argues.

Highlighting its traditional focus, EWG also states that farm groups complaining about the costs of the bill "neglect to acknowledge that the payments farmers get from taxpayers every year far outweigh the potential cost of the climate bill." While some opponents of climate legislation have cited the lack of benefit to rice or cotton farmers, EWG notes that the farm payments rice producers receive are 45 times larger than the projected costs and cotton payments are 76 times larger than the additional costs predicted by USDA economists.

http://www.ewg.org/…

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