L E T T E R S
June 14, 2007
Help save our friends in Agriculture
As we continue to try and help save our friends in Agriculture, I question how affective we are. Attacks on American Agricultural Producers seem to rage on with even more determination.
Some examples include: In Wyoming, wolves are slaughtering livestock; water theft is common in every state; USDA attempts to force Premises I.S. and NAIS on U.S. cow-calf producers; Federal government refuses to enforce Country of Origin Labeling -COOL; a pending ban on horse slaughter (If that goes into law, about 90,000 horses will be left to die of starvation or illness, or dumped along country roads.); and the Army wants sixth generation Coloradans to leave.
Speaking of Army's interest in using the entire Southern third of Colorado for training, did certain elected officials forget to communicate to them that that won't be necessary because of their plans to end the war(s)?\
Whether knowingly or not, President Bush, through the USDA, is choking the life out of ag production.
And why the refusal to correctly refer to the farm bill as The CONSUMER Farm Bill? We were recently told, "Can't change the name right now. The war in Iraq is our focus."
Through lunch room and food stamp programs, consumers receive 51% of the Consumer Farm Bill budget. Integrity should dictate either separating it into two bills...The Farm Bill - The Consumer Bill, or amend the name to The Consumer Farm Bill.
After all, who benefits from perpetuating the crude perception "farmers and ranchers are dumb red-neck welfare hicks?" Probably the same people who preach, "Cows make hummock...ruin land. Cows make gas..ruin air." Since hummocks are on the moon and Pluto's getting global warmed, errant cows must be jumping ON the moon then bouncing over to Pluto to relieve themselves.
As our 13 year old Granddaughter offered while listening to husband Chuck and I talk on these things, "That's messed up."
If you think it's important that Agricultural Production continues on American Soil - and in a welcoming, unthreatened environment that will insure you safe, healthy, locally grown essential goods, please help.
How can you help? Call or fax President Bush and ALL of your elected officials...particularly your county commissioners...and tell them: "My local Agricultural Producers are under ugly, unnecessary, harmful assaults. The aggressors are violating human rights, and jeopardizing assurance of locally grown food products. Here are some ways you can stop these attacks against my ag friends."
a) Order the Army to withdraw its troupes from Southern Colorado.
b) Order the USDA to stop forcing mandatory Premises I.D. on our youngsters.
c) Activate Country of Origin Labeling- COOL. I demand the right to know where my food comes from.
d) You gave over a hundred million dollars to the Nature Conservancy last year. That's my money. So here are some ways I want them to spend it: Improve National Parks, Monuments and land surrounding every US Highway. Move Prairie Rat and Feral Horse villages off private property and onto federally owned land. Eradicate mosquitoes from all designated wetlands, and weeds from barrel pits everywhere.
e) Amend the Endangered Species Act so it can never be used to steal private water and land usage rights.
Tell them how much you treasure your American Producers of Agriculture, and that you want them and their habitats protected forever.
Help save our friends in Agriculture.
Roni Bell Sylvester
Counterpoint - - RE: Help save our friends in Agriculture (Seen below.)
You forgot to mention how farmer's and rancher's property values are being diminished by the irrational exhuberance over ethanol. The diversion of farmland to corn for energy supply has already caused a marked increase in the cost of everything from fuel (ethanol is less efficient than gasoline - thus you need more of it to drive the same mileage previously driven with gasoline), to feedstocks for livestock, to beef, poultry and pork consumer products, to corn and corn-based products, and to all types of crops other than corn that are now grown less to make room for energy corn crops.While ag farmers may benefit from continued agricultural government subsidies for corn-based energy production and are protected by a tariff from competing sugar cane-based ethanol products that could be exported from Brazil, American consumers (especially those that are poor) in the end will be worse off. Also, it exposes U.S. citizens to less rather than more energy security, because ethanol could not possibly meet all or most of U.S. energy needs.
Furthermore, there is the risk to the environment of crop monoculture which could subject corn crops to devasting risks of disease and infestation that could result in crop destruction and thus higher consumer prices for corn, corn byproducts, and corn feedstocks.
Consumers in Europe have begun to feel the same economic pain. Politically charged government policies that favor one fuel source over another (ethanol over petrol) out of an irrational concern about climate change are the cause of such pain. These policies should instead be rationally based, which means choosing all availble energy options to meet national energy security needs.
Any sustainable development program based on the precautionary principle that promotes irrational exhuberance in favor of only one type of energy solution will inevitably lead to a 'risk-risk' scenario in which the recommended solution causes greater human and environmental damage than the hazard of carbon emissions sought to be reduced.
Lawrence A. Kogan, Esq.
CEO
The Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development
116 Village Boulevard, Suite 200
Princeton Center
Princeton, NJ 08540
(o) 609-951-2222 (c) 609-658-7417 (f) 609-897-9598
(web address): www.itssd.org
ITSSD is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the promotion of a positive paradigm of sustainable development. Donations and other forms of support are tax-deductible and do not
influence the views and policies of the Institute.
Roni,
I thought you might be interested in the reply of water attorney:
I would argue that energy prices have been artificially depressed in the US for years. I agree that there is short term dislocation in corn prices, and that corn ethanol is artificially valued. However, environmental (and now national security) externalities of US energy consumption are only now beginning to be valued in real cost terms. That scenario (actual market impact of environmental and security externality) has been on the horizon for years (at least since the passage of NEPA [1969] and the 1974 Arab oil embargo and creation of OPEC). I believe one can easily argue that "politically charged government policies" (redundancy admitted) which favor ethanol production are the reverse side of the policy coin which has favored petrochemical development for decades. Yes, the political and economic pendulums swing.
Roni,
The fact that fossil fuel sources have long been favored over pie-in-the-sky technologies that were not yet ripe for prime-time for many years, does not justify irrational exuberance over ethanol, especially considering that ethanol itself causes negative environmental AND economic externalities. It is not the reverse side of the policy coin because we now know better not to rely solely on one fuel source if we seek energy security.
Environmental externalities are a hoax imposed on society by environmentalists who wish to control the way people undertake their daily lives Environmental accounting is pretty much voodoo and its aim is to undermine long-established financial accounting precepts that serve as the basis for our capitalist free market system. Environmentalists speak glowingly of and essentially 'gross-up' societal-environmental externalities triggered by fossil fuels (using an accounting function) without netting those costs against gross societal benefits that fossil fuels have provided. I suspect that such a 'netting', which is proper in accounting, would yield less than the dramatic environmental results that environmentalists like to publicize, and thus, undermine an important element of their campaign to make people throughout the world more conscious of their environmental 'footprints, carbon or otherwise. The ITSSD has cited several sources knowledgeable about environmentalist antics in its 2005 book "Exporting Precaution: How Europe's Risk-Free Regulatory Agenda Threatens American Free Enterprise", published by the Washington Legal Foundation.
I believe that Czech President Klaus says it best in his recent Financial Times editorial:
"...I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
See: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html which I think GNF should reproduce in its entirety under the ITSSD section of the GNF website
Chuck,
This guy's a helluva asset. Keep up the good work.
Warren
Reliance Enterprises, LLC
Warren Hammerbeck
Roni's clearly lost it.Jim Miller
Director, Policy and Initiatives
Colorado Department of Agriculture
Phone: 303.239.4100
Fax: 303.239.4176
Pager: 303.855.8493
Hi Jim,
You could be right.
Trying to help our ag friends - when they're being hit from every direction, does take its toll. What helpful suggestions to you have to stay ag production in the U.S.?
Let me know. It's rewarding to post good ideas on Good Neighbor.
We're also pursuing Baseline Acre Production - for regardless how terrific we get on gleaning production out of one acre, there must be a point at which an acre is maxed out. We can't afford to be short-sighted and run to the edge of window-sill gardens.
Looking forward to your input, I remain........and that's about it. I remain.
Roni
Roni,
As lengthy as your emails can be, they've made me so much more aware of the plight, challenges and struggles of farmers and ranchers. I've passed this latest one along to my email list.
Jill
Jill L. Marce
Director, Business Development
Women'sVision Leadership Institute
Women'sVision Foundation
www.womensvision.org
303-494-386