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Panel says climate, carbon policy must be voluntary & work for all farmers

Farm and environmental leaders say any future climate change and carbon policy and legislation needs to be voluntary and include incentives and carbon markets.  American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall told the Agri-Pulse Food and Policy Summit, “The farmer is the first conservationist. We are environmentalists” adding, “We want to be treated like a partner. We want to be treated fairly.”

Rob Larew with National Farmers Union says so far, he’s concerned about how farmer-friendly some of the early carbon markets are. “We know we’ve seen the beginnings of some of these market opportunities. Some of these contracts, they are exceedingly complicated, if you look at the details of those.”

Chuck Conner with the National Council on Farmer Cooperatives says whatever carbon sequestration plans get enacted, they must fit all sizes of farms. “That’s got to be for all classes of farmer. This can’t just be about, you know, the 15-thousand acre row cropper out there. It’s got to create economic value for the guy scraping it out on a few hundred acres, too, and I think it will be a key part of what we focus on going forward here.”

Elizabeth Gore with Environmental Defense Fund says any climate programs must make business sense for farmers to succeed and keep participating.

The four are part of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, and all say the farmer programs should go through USDA.

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