Farmers’ cap/trade costs – EWG
Oct 30, 2009 10:30 AM, By David Bennett, Farm Press Editorial Staff
In early October, the Environmental Working Group released a study titled “Crying Wolf” that focused on what a cap and trade system would mean for farmers’ energy costs.
The study, said an EWG press release, found “projected increased costs of production due to the climate bill will be so small — $0.45 per acre for soybeans, $0.66 per acre for wheat, and $1.19 per acre for corn, for example — that they amount to well under one half of one percent of current production costs.”
To view the study, see Crying Wolf: Climate Change Will Cost Farmers Far More Than a Climate Bill.
“Climate change will cost farmers far more in lower yields and greater expense to protect their crops than the climate bill,” said Craig Cox, EWG Midwest vice-president and co-author of the report. “Farm groups should be working for a bill that protects agriculture’s productivity, our food supply, and our environment instead of ‘crying wolf’ about the cost of the climate bill.”
As it frequently does, EWG struck a nerve. Almost immediately, Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, ranking member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, claimed “in an attempt to sideline legitimate concerns of U.S. agriculture, data from three economic reports are melded together to manufacture a result they want the public to hear. As it turns out, if their agenda is realized it will ultimately make the United States more reliant on imported food and fiber. They are hoping to deceive farmers, ranchers and consumers that U.S. agriculture will not be harmed by … cap and trade bills.”
The following day, in an interview with Delta Farm Press, Cox claimed Chambliss has it wrong, climate change does need to be addressed and farmers will be better off under new legislation. Among his comments:
Do you have anything to say about (Chambliss’) comments … about you having taken three reports and mashed them together in order to come out with the result you wanted?
“That’s certainly not what we did.
“The primary concern being raised in the policy community was about how climate change legislation would substantially increase cost of production for farmers. Our goal was to look at various estimates of what those cost increases might be and put them in context by comparing them to what farmers’ costs were predicted to be whether there was a climate bill, or not. We thought that was the best way to try and get a handle on what the magnitude of the cost increases might be.
