Inside D.C.

The hits just keep on coming

Commentary

 If I wasn’t before, I’m now completely convinced the most undervalued, taken-for-granted industry in America has to be food production.  I’m talking the farm-to-fork food chain. In the last week or so, I’ve been involved in more meetings on more issues with the obvious potential to whack agriculture and the food industry, and the inevitable “why’d they do that?” always boils down to this:  The powers that be gave nary a passing thought to the impact of this, that or the other policy decision on this country’s ability to produce food that is safe, abundant and affordable. 

The best example is the climate change bill currently snagged in the Senate, and the EPA “declaration of endangerment” on greenhouse gases. The House bill was literally glued together to get it out of the House by one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) arbitrary deadlines, and despite the valiant efforts of House Ag Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D, MN) it stinks as far as its disproportionate economic and infrastructure impact on all of agriculture. As Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, CA), chair of that chamber’s Environment & Public Works Committee, tried to waltz her bill through the process, it wasn’t until the aggies reared up did she hit a wall as all GOP members of her committee refused to show up for the committee markup, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D, AR) said her ag committee wasn’t having any of it.

Food and ag champions in the Senate, including Lincoln, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R, GA), Sen. Mike Johanns (R, NE) and others demanded to see updated impact analyses from USDA and EPA to back up their assertions that the authors of the climate package neglected to think about the farm and food sectors when they set off down the road to save the world from C02.  And they were right, despite Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s now very tired exclamation that farmers will make out like bandits in about seven or eight years. 

Joe Glauber, USDA’s much-respected chief economist, reported last week the no-gloss bottom line: The current congressional approach to climate change legislation means a whopping 56 million of acres of currently productive farm land and pasture will go out of production by 2015 – and this does not include acres already or soon to be placed in existing conservation programs – to replaced by forestland, the big paid “offset” to a farmer’s carbon footprint. This sets off the cascading dominoes of increasing commodity prices, higher feed and crop input prices and reduced cattle and hog production.  Said Glauber:  By 2015, corn production would be 1.5% below baseline, and by 2030, that figure would increase to over 7% below baseline, with prices more than 30 cents a bushel higher in 2015, and 50 cents a bushel higher in 2030. Soybean output would lag baseline by nearly 6% in five years and nearly 10% by 2030. Hog production drops nearly 6% by 2015 and is off 10% by 2030; cattle production would drop about half of a percent in five years, but would be about 3.5% below baseline by 2030.

This approach is, in a word, “nuts.”

If I were the cynical sort – and who’d accuse me of cynicism? – I’d think the simple-minded Capitol Hill/White House/EPA rationale when confronted with the neglect of food production goes something like this:  “Gee, those near-term numbers aren’t so bad, and by the time the big hit comes in 25 years, none of us will be around anyway.”  But again, no one’s looking at the big picture, as in first it’s the “unintended consequences” of bad climate change legislation, multiplied by the silliness of the EPA “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases and its redundant and likely more onerous regulatory scheme, further compounded by the nearly daily tug-of-war between industrial, biofuel and food uses for available commodities, topped off by our zeal to export every kernel of corn and every soybean we can. 

All of this translates quite simply into everyone’s worst fears:  Consolidation of production into ever larger farming operations; fewer independent livestock producers, and, ultimately, reduced exports, constrained supplies and higher food prices as we strive to feed a growing population which FAO says will need a 70% increase in production by 2040.  So much for food security.

Think food and farmers first!