The American Farm Bureau Federation says there were some very important things in President Obama’s State of the Union address for agriculture, although they are concerned about his stance on climate change.
AFBF Public Policy Director Dale Moore says they’re very pleased Obama brought up immigration reform. Moore says, “Here’s an opportunity to address the ag labor needs, which, in many parts of the country a lot of times involve foreign workers. Addressing both the short term and the long term needs that farmers and ranchers have and assuring that they have a stable workforce and that those workers have a simple, straightforward way to become part of that workforce is one of our top priorities.”
Moore says it’s also good the president talked about European trade negotiations moving forward and that he continues to support bioenergy.
However, Moore says they consider what he said about climate change a “red flag”, adding, “Our big concern is that a lot of our competitors around the world are just going to let the U.S. take all of these big steps and Draconian measures that they’ve put on small business, including farmers and ranchers, to meet whatever climate change goals without any scientific evidence of what we’re doing is going to make that big of a change.”
Moore said it was pretty clear that President Obama indicated he would push climate change issues through by executive order since Congress isn’t moving forward on it.
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I’m a Farm Bureau member, but I have to say that Mr. Brown is, unfortunately, off base regarding clean energy and agriculture. A farmer can now completely eliminate his electric bill by generating his own electricity with a solar system — the next-best thing to photosynthesis! Thankfully, at least for the moment, strong incentives are in place for solar installations on farms and other businesses. Those incentives can often cover 80-85% of the upfront cost of a solar system that will then eliminate a farm’s electricity bill for 25+ years. For farms that can make use of a 30% tax credit & fast depreciation, the cash flow break-even is typically 3 years…then clean, no-cost electricity continues for decades more. That, if anything, LIFTS a big burden from the farmer’s shoulders by eliminating what can be a major operating cost. How long these incentives will last, who can say? But let’s make hay now while the sun shines! My mission is to spread solar to farms and businesses all over Ohio. –Jess Ennis | jess.ennis@hotmail.com | 330.835.7704
As a wild horse advocate, I have been following the story of land and water use, decisions made by Interior, USDA, and now, the EPA that seem to stem from the 1992 Un Convention on Biological Diversity. Moreover, President Obama created the Rural Council a couple of years ago and included every member of his cabinet on the council. What I see happening is that the UN comes up with a goal in the name of sustainabillity, and then within a year or two the President creates a federal law, a council, an advisory council, and then develops a plan to implement the plan through groups of federal agencies such as the USDA, Department of Interior, or Environmental Protection Agency. This way, the President can get around the Byrd-Hagle Resolution forbidding any President to sign a treaty that could harm America economically. However, rather than go through the hassle and danger of debating the treaty in the Senate, Presidents are just creating laws primarily through EO’s and then regulating them into existence. In the case of America’s wild horses, now proven through DNA to have been species Equus caballus and to have existed here along with the mammoth, bison, muskox and other large mammals stemmed from the CBD, Article 8 (h) on invasive, alien species. Unfortunately, though there have been some paleontologists and horse specialists who believed that Equus caballus and Equus lambei were the same species, the evidence through microbiological examination of mitrochoncrial DNA found that the horse that became extinct in North America is the genetic equivalent to the horse that survived in Northern Europe. The main reason for the disappearance or dwindling of the horse the first time around was likely due to human management, not just over hunting.
One of the reasons that the wild horse is losing ground in the West and in other areas that really want their wild horses, is the UN pressure on people of good will to try to preserve species that might disappear during climate change, though evidence suggests that after previous climate changes the plants come back. Although I am disturbed at the pro-horse slaughter stance of some farmers and ranchers, I understand what it is to love the land and to love the sounds of spring when new baby lambs and other animals are being born, and I guess because I love horses and you enjoy them outside, on the land, a part of me is tied to it.
However, UN Policies, decided upon prior to 1992, but possibly based on the predictable patterns of climate change that were, by 1983 accepted by NASA as being most influential, such as the atmospheric forces that result in the Earth’s rotation around the sun. Right now the Earth’s northern hemisphere is closer to the sun than it has been in thousands of years, and it is likely to continue in the pattern for several more thousand years. What farmers have to fear in my opinion is that UN creep is going to end up almost regulating all but the biggest farms out of business. If interested in learning more about this,(if you are not aware of it) you might want to go to the Convention of Biological Diversity and go to CAB. There is little doubt that a lot of what the Interior Department has done over the past four years is related to this and other UN Missions. While some of these ideas sound good, the goal of the rules and regulations is not to protect the environment or create sustainability. It is to provide a method whereby every behavior that a person does is prescribed by the government—-and land, land control, and using land to make the government wealthy and keep the people in power in power is the goal. I sincerely hope people who love the land, and make a living from it are able to see what is happening. It is not easy at first, but once you see the plan , it becomes hard not to see pieces of it. Hear’s a heads up, and a prayer that organizations in counties and states recognize what is going on and talk to your local agriculture officies and others in your fields. Take a good look at the Rural Council and articles about it. Good luck.