News
Farmers respond to EPA announcement
Gina McCarthy, Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency visited with Hoosier farmers on Saturday. Her visit came less than 24 hours after the EPA dealt a serious blow the biofuels industry by proposing lower renewable fuel volumes for the upcoming year.
McCarthy said her visit was a chance to have an open discussion with farmers about the importance of biofuels. “We have been working hard to make sure that the level of renewable fuels is increasing as much as it can,” she says. “We’re hoping that with the proposal we have the opportunity to look at what those barriers are that keep folks from accessing renewable fuels and get those numbers up.”
As farmers shared dialogue with the Administrator, they called the scale back a “punch in the gut” and said Friday’s announcement “killed agriculture’s golden goose”.
Even so, McCarthy says the administration knows the value of renewable fuels. “I know how important this is,” she says. “What I’m trying to do is let people know that EPA remains open to new data and new information and new ways of thinking about this so we can move it forward. I’m hoping they’ll engage in the process and between proposal and final we’ll be able to make some changes that reflect the real world.”
Once the proposed rule is posted in the Federal Register, there will be a 60-day comment period.
AUDIO: Gina McCarthy, EPA Administrator (3:00mp3)
If ethanol was agriculture’s golden goose, then farmers and their lobbyist plucked every feather. The salient political media issue was ethanol’s tax on the landscape – tax as in environmental burden. Agriculture could have adopted a means to address this, such as a farm [env] portfolio, but chose to put their head in the pile of money instead.
It’s not too late to pull it out and view Thursday’s Nov 21st webinar on what the future of ag-env could look like from a farmer’s perspective
http://www.conservationwebinars.net/webinars/conservation-practices-from-farm-fix-it-to-farm-portfolio