The Farm Beat: Climate Change Debate Heats Up

Ag people are keeping a close watch today on the House of Representative. It is close to passing a bill that aims to reduce climate-changing emissions via such means as renewable energy and storage of carbon dioxide in plant matter and soil.

The bill “could be the most sweeping conservation legislation enacted in the 21st century,” says Jon Scholl, president of the American Farmland Trust.

Not so fast, says Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., who said it “promises to destroy our standard of living and quality of life with higher energy costs, higher food prices and lost jobs.”

Whatever your stance, the current power structure in the capital suggests that the bill will pass. Then we’ll see what happens on the ground. Will we have another, longer ethanol boom, perhaps from plant sources other than corn so feed prices don’t jump? Will more dairy farmers generate power from methane in manure, thus reducing an especially worrisome greenhouse gas? Will peach and walnut growers get financial credits for showing that their trees suck in carbon dioxide that otherwise would make trouble in the atmosphere?

Or is the gentleman from Oklahoma right — that we are asking for another economic plunge just as we’re climbing out of the current one? For better or worse, it’s clear that the economic climate for agriculture is about to change.