For a guy who hates mistakes --- and whose job is to often point them out in others --- I definitely make my share of them. I've had two this week.

A soybean farmer from Missouri e-mailed me on some numbers in a story I had about the American Soybean Association and United Soybean Board. I had written down there were nearly 59,000 soybean farmers who were eligible to vote on a soybean referendum earlier this year. But a public relations person from the United Soybean Board verified Thursday and sent me another email stating "USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has indicated there were 589,182 soybean producers in the United States this year who were eligible to participate in the soybean checkoff request for referendum. AMS also announced that only 759 soybean producers, or approximately one-tenth of one percent, actually requested a referendum on continuation of the soybean checkoff. I confirmed this information with Kenneth Payne of AMS who is attending the USB Annual Meeting this week in St. Louis."

In an article on Thursday I also misspelled the name on U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who had raised some points about "leakage" of carbon.

Sloppy reporting on both parts and I'm sorry about that.

History's Repetition

I have a lot of time to grumble about these things with a three-hour layover in Houston before heading home to Omaha.

Lately I've been reading a biography about 19th century journalist and poet Walt Whitman. See, I was reading his poetry book "Leaves of Grass" and didn't get it, so I decided it would be better to read about the man himself.

In reading the book I learned most of the newspapers in New York in the 1830s-1850s came with a strictly partisan view on everything. Partisan penny papers came and went. Whitman, though, defended the party system of politics, even as some others suggested the party system was destructive for the country.

"Why, all that is good and grand in any political organization in the world, is the result of this turbulence and destructiveness; and controlled by the intelligence and common sense of such a people as the Americans, it has never brought harm, or never can," Whitman wrote in the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle.

I wonder if he would write that today.

Whitman, by the way, was once tarred and feathered. At least I can say that's never happened to me.

Stallman Responds to Hamilton

In a letter to the editor in the Des Moines Register, Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman responded to a guest editorial last Sunday by Drake University Agricultural Law Professor Neil Hamilton:

Cap-and-trade climate change legislation currently being considered in Congress is bad news for our nation. The House and Senate climate change bills would impose higher energy and food costs on consumers, raise fuel, fertilizer and energy costs for farmers and ranchers, and shrink the American agricultural sector, resulting in reduced U.S. food production.

Unfortunately, Neil Hamilton (Guest column: American farmers must step up on climate change, Nov. 30) sees it through a law professor’s eyes, and not those of a farmer or rancher.

If the legislation passes it would substantially downsize U.S. agriculture, either through higher production costs or through landowners converting productive crop land and food or feed production land into carbon-sequestering forests. Analysis by the Energy Information Administration suggests electricity and natural gas prices in 2030 could be twice as high with the legislation, leading to substantially higher crop production costs. Agriculture would shrink in as it struggles to deal with these increases in the cost of energy.

With carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) prices running as much as $150 per ton and an acre of trees converted from cropland getting credit for removing 5 tons or more of CO ₂ per year, cropland conversion would be an attractive option for many landlords. Some analysts for the Environmental Protection Agency think as many as 70 million acres of cropland could be converted by 2030. We plant 300 million acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and hay in the United States. Seventy million acres would be the equivalent of taking all cropland out of production east of the Mississippi River, except for planted acreage in Illinois and Wisconsin. Contrary to Hamilton, that sure sounds like a forced shrinkage to most Farm Bureau members.

We will have more mouths to feed between now and 2050. The United Nations says farmers will need to produce 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people worldwide. Our national goal should be focused on enhanced food production, not measures that limit food production.

Farmers are ready and willing to move forward on sensible climate legislation. For example, we could write new tax incentives and provide regulatory reform to stimulate green energy. AFBF has long favored nuclear power plant construction and renewed emphasis on domestic natural gas supplies.

To say that Farm Bureau is not engaged on the issue distorts the facts. Farm Bureau is heavily engaged at all levels to defeat this misguided legislation.

Lastly, I have participated in many international negotiations and Mr. Hamilton’s suggestion that we go along with other nations during Copenhagen climate talks, without so much as having passed legislation at home, is not only preposterous, but it’s simply not the way the U.S. negotiates our international agreements. There would be plenty of angry U.S. citizens if our government negotiators agree with other countries without the U.S. Congress first completing its work on climate legislation.

I can be found on Twitter at chrisclaytonDTN.