Ag Policy Blog
Following up with NCGA on Drought and Energy Taxes
One of the speakers this year at No-Till on the Plains was a regional climate director from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Doug Kluck highlighted all of the records broken in 2012, or records approached due to the heat and drought that swept across the country. He also pointed out our recent variability in some areas of the country swinging from flood to drought conditions.
The probability is that drought will persist or intensify across much of the plains through April, according to NOAA models. It's a 30-40% chance over the next six months that Kansas will get enough rain throughout most of the state to pull out of a drought. Throughout much of Texas and parts of Nebraska, the likelihood is lower. Farther west from New Mexico up through Colorado and Utah, the likelihood is even less.
Kluck cautioned, however, about the tendency in media to associate every major weather event to climate change. Research is required to associate the probability or intensification that came from a significant shift in weather, but we tend to pounce on these events and their impacts more readily in the press.
That brings me around to the New York Times piece last week, "In Energy Taxes, Tools to Help Tackle Climate Change." My initial blog posting on that piece was up to 17 comments at last count. I don't think I'd get 17 comments if I announced I had won the Powerball and was going to run off and buy farmland somewhere.
I talked with National Corn Growers Association President Pam Johnson on Friday about the interview with the Times. Much like Kluck was saying, context is needed to separate the line regarding how farmers cope with a particular weather event such as a drought and whether to implement an energy tax as a solution to climate change.
In the Time's piece, Johnson described some of the losses on her farm, but also noted that she was somewhat lucky with 40-bushel loss of her corn crop. Others were much worse.
"We are concerned about weather volatility and that's why it is so important for farmers across the United States to have access to crop insurance," she said when we talked.
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Insurance will keep those farmers in business who may have suffered much deeper losses.
The issue of an energy tax is a separate discussion. Johnson said it wasn't until the Times article came out that that she realized the piece was about whether an energy tax would help solve the problem of climate change.
The core of the Times piece was about an energy tax, and the prospects of getting one implemented by the federal government. The talk with NCGA's Johnson was an anecdote used by the writer as a way to lead into what the reporter was really writing about: whether the country needs an energy tax to deal with climate change.
The Times article doesn't cite any specific legislation, and no such serious bill exists as far as that is concerned.
Johnson shouldn't need to be on the defensive for stating the obvious: farmers would be deeply affected by an energy tax.
An editor likely read the reporter's first draft on that story and asked "What did the farmers think of an energy tax?" Rather than get a follow-up interview, the question, and a quick response back from Johnson, was texted.
One element certainly missing from the Times piece was probing just how much industries such as agriculture would be affected by an energy tax.
Johnson noted that NCGA's policy on climate change cites that the group is mindful of the need to balance stewardship and energy supply, and the necessity for long-term profitability.
"We work very hard every year as farmers to deal with weather variability and that's why we invest in research, so we have better seed genetics and better agronomic practices," she said. "We certainly farm differently now, today, than we did in the drought of '88, or '56, or '36 and we know the benefits of having more organic material in the soil that not only sequesters water but captures carbon."
If and when proposals such as energy taxes or climate legislation are discussed, NCGA wants to be at the table, she said. "We do have a lot at stake," she said. "We want to be there to negotiate so energy costs here for industry and passed to consumers are affordable and we can continue to compete in the global marketplace."
We also need to reiterate that NCGA and other agricultural groups are working on ways to measure and improve agricultural sustainability. That includes projects helping track greenhouse-gas initiatives. Field-to-Market is one such group in which NCGA is working on an assessment tool that involves farmers in about a dozen pilot projects. In most cases the farmers the pilot project will be with USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service to make practice changes that can help farmers lower their emissions.
In another element of context here, farm groups and their associates in these endeavors need to broaden out and tell the stories in better, more detailed fashion about how they are working on these topics. Take another bite at the apple. Invite the Times reporter, or others, out to these pilot farms to come see how these projects are working.
The Times piece from last week: http://dld.bz/…&
I can be found on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN
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