Policy
Pres. Clinton: Carbon Offsets Should be Monitored by EPA, not USDA
Published June 16, 2009 @ 03:11PM PT
If today is a Clinton-themed day, well, the photo should explain why. Yesterday I was able to join a group of progressive blogger types in a meeting with former President Bill Clinton at his Harlem offices.
(I'm at the center left, black jacket, short blonde hair. My partner Chris Bowers is just behind me to the right. Two people to the left of me is Deanna Zandt, also with short blonde hair and wearing a fetching tie, of the Hightower Lowdown and GRITtv - she's the proud owner of the camera used for our group photo. Between Deanna and I, in the orange jacket, is nyceve, who wrote today about Clinton's comments on healthcare at the meeting. We are surrounded by an incredibly cool group of progressive bloggers whom I admit that I was as excited to meet in person as Clinton himself.)
From Chris' post on the event - I didn't get a chance to ask my question, but he got one in for both of us - comes this report on the Agriculture Committee's footstamping over the climate bill:
... In regards to the committee's attempts to have the USDA determine who receives carbon offset credits, President Clinton said that "too many carbon offsets have nothing to do with agriculture" for the USDA to become the appropriate regulatory agency. He added that "it's not the right thing to do. Keep it in the EPA."
President Clinton did note that Chairman Peterson, like many of the Democrats on the committee, comes from a conservative and rural district. However, making the USDA the regulatory authority is something that "not even the coal industry" would support. ...
Right now, Rep. Waxman is in negotiations with Peterson, who may have 35-40 Democratic votes he can whip against the bill, and we'll probably hear this week what the outcome is.
Finding some money for agriculture in this bill, I don't necessarily mind. But stripping the EPA of regulatory authority to determine the effectiveness of carbon offsets? Please, no. It's not fitting. Not when a technical abstract submitted to the USDA's Agricultural Research Service in 2007 describes USDA's soil carbon measurement methods (mandated by Congress, btw) as, "invasive, costly, and ... time and labor intensive," and when the research the USDA relies on may often be significantly corrupted by corporate sponsorship.
I don't support all aspects of the current climate change bill, but I definitely don't support making its oversight provisions even suckier. That seems self-defeating.
[Update: Brad Johnson further details Peterson's anti-science approach to asking for unregulated agricultural subsidies at The Wonkroom.]
(Photo credit: Deanna Zandt, aka, randomdeanna on Flickr.)
Expanding Food Stamps In DC
Published June 15, 2009 @ 03:10PM PT
[Greg Bloom, of DC's Bread for the City, is guest-blogging here with a summary of reporting done on Bread for the City's blog, Beyond Bread.]
A new wave of food stamps is flooding into Washington, DC. And we sure do need it.
Even before the recession, almost a fifth of DC’s residents were living below the federal poverty line. DC also suffers from the urban food infrastructure problems often discussed here – like vast food deserts that leave entire communities without access to fresh, nutritious produce. As a result, some of our nation's worst food insecurity is found right here in the capitol.
And yet, DC also has one of the country’s highest levels of participation in the food stamp benefits program (now known as SNAP). Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to hear that food stamps aren't sufficient to ensure food security: the cost of living – and the swiftly rising cost of food in particular – just doesn’t match up to the meager levels of SNAP assistance. (Here at Bread for the City, we typically hear from our clients that their food stamps run out by the third week of the month.)
But you'll be encouraged to hear that steps are being taken in the right direction. This month, DC City Council passed legislation that will expand the breadth and scale of food stamp assistance in the District.
The legislation does a few different things, all fairly technical (you have been warned!):
Agriculture Killing Climate (Bill)
Published June 12, 2009 @ 06:49PM PT
Speaker Pelosi has apparently personally contacted Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) to secure his support for the climate bill:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) placed a call Wednesday night to her Agriculture Committee chairman, hoping to find out why he is holding up a climate change bill that she wants passed this summer.
Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who has made known that he has enough votes to derail the Speaker’s priority legislation if agricultural provisions aren’t changed, said he spoke with Pelosi “for a while” and that it was “cordial.”
“She’s not putting any pressure on me,” Peterson said. “She knows where I’m coming from.” ...
Where he's coming from ... hmm, where could that be? Over at OpenLeft, Chris Bowers asks Peterson to just name a price and get to the haggling:
... If what members of the Agriculture Committee want in order to pass climate change legislation is more money for farmers, why don't we just start handing out cash to farmers? Cash would be better than these credits, since it both gives the farmers the money they want but doesn't exempt them from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Everyone wins.
Of course, in order to do this, the Agriculture Committee would first need to specific exactly how much cash they want directed to the farmer's in their districts. While it could be as high as $24 billion, that would still be a small price to pay for mitigating climate change. ...
As I've said before, I think it's less morally problematic than the bribes that are going to the coal companies for 'clean' coal research. Agriculture could, in theory, if not as commonly practiced, be a boon to the climate. Coal? Erm, no.
Peterson is at the least being honest, and not asking for something oxymoronic by nature. Still, as Tom Philpott notes, most of the money would go straight to Monsanto: by supporting chemical no-till farming made possible through the offices of their Roundup herbicide.
The best I'll say about the practice is that it may prevent erosion. Though again, slightly less problematic than paying off an industry that's steadily leveling the Appalachians.
Let the haggling begin, I suppose. The result is sure to be a mockery of science, as Peterson is allergic to the idea of independent EPA review of the carbon sequestration benefits of any approved practices, but science isn't the point. The Republican members of the committee don't even believe in that, Philpott says they used their time at the recent committee hearing mostly to deny anthropogenic global warming.
Why is it such a commonplace, acceptable thing for Congress to have whole committees packed with greedy, sometimes reprehensible, human beings? Who knows. But tell you what ...
Next time you want to ask for a raise, don't be embarassed to do it. Congress isn't.
(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
Did I Hear Someone Say 'Payoff'?
Published June 11, 2009 @ 03:27AM PT
Rep. Collin Peterson of the House Agriculture Committee wants to get his people paid from the climate bill, whether they deserve it or not. Like the coal industry, the agriculture industry would like their bribe, please, before they'll let us try saving the planet. Tom Philpott of Grist reports:
... Why would Monsanto and other agrichem firms be so interested in controlling how ag is treated by cap-and-trade? By generating payments to farmers who use their goods, these companies burnish their bottom lines and turn climate-change legislation into a revenue stream.
A case in point is a farming practice called “no-till.” In no-till systems, farmers plant directly into fields without plowing. One of the main reasons farmers plow is to control weeds. In a practice that has become known among critics as “chemical no-till,” farmers idle the the plow and rely on chemical herbicides for weed control.
... As a source of carbon sequestration, chemical no-till is a highly questionable practice. In a 2006 peer-reviewed paper [PDF] called “Tillage and soil carbon sequestration—what do we really know?,” a group of soil scientists led by John M. Baker of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service took a hard look at conventional no-till. They report: “Long-term, continuous gas exchange measurements have also been unable to detect C gain due to reduced tillage.” Translation: No-till doesn’t seem to sequester carbon. Their conclusion: “Though there are other good reasons to use conservation tillage, evidence that it promotes C sequestration is not compelling.” The report compelled climate expert and frequent Grist contributor Joe Romm to declare that no-till farming “does not save carbon and is not a carbon offset.” ...
During the discussions around 2007 Farm Bill hearings, there was an intense discussion among the House committee members, involving Peterson, where members strained to clarify that mentions of the word 'sustainable' in the legislation were in no way to be taken as synonymous with 'organic'. They were horrified by the very idea that the sustainability of doing exactly what they were currently doing might be questioned.
As Philpott notes, organic agriculture using cover crops and manure is the only method of agriculture that can be proven to increase carbon sequestration.
But Peterson doesn't want to hear about that. He wants the law to say that agriculture as practiced right now, with all its excess emissions and destruction of carbon-fixing soil biota, counts as an offset to existing industrial and transportation emissions. He's one of the many people who doesn't see the difference between 21st century organic farming and 19th century toil, steadfastly refusing to admit that the system of doing things that he loves is destroying the farms that he claims to champion.
Whether its global warming threatening crop productivity or large agribusinesses coming up with models that snatch all the profits from actual producers, agriculture's never been in so much trouble. Peterson wants to throw money at the problem without putting any effort or thought into rethinking how we got here so it doesn't happen again.
Shortsightedness FTW!
"The Largest Diet Experiment In History"
Published June 05, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
That's how Dr. Don Lotter describes GMOs in two new papers on genetic food crop science, as summarized by Bonnie Powell at the Ethicurean.
The first paper, The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science – Part 1: The Development of a Flawed Enterprise, covers the flawed research and scientific assumptions that have produced genetically modified food crops. In it, he points to research revealing that transgenic yields are no better than that of the crops they replaced, eliminating their main claim to usefulness. He explains how the very imprecise art of genetic engineering actually works, and highlights the total lack of oversight and caution in the roll out of these products, as well as their unwanted side effects.
But the main message is simple; transgenic seed companies have no idea what they're doing:
Global Land Grab Transparency
Published June 04, 2009 @ 11:59AM PT
Countries with limited agricultural land have been buying up the farm land of poorer countries as a hedge against future need. These contracts are going to start getting more attention:
... GRAIN is launching today a new website that offers the most comprehensive information tool on the global land grab for outsourced food production: http://farmlandgrab.org.
This new site is an improved version of the site initiated by GRAIN last year, which provides an open, up-to-date and easy to search library of over 800 articles, interviews and reports on farm land grabs around the world published since the outbreak of the food crisis in 2008.
The global trend to buy up or lease farmlands abroad as a strategy to secure basic food supplies, or simply to get rich, is not slowing down -- it is getting worse. The scale is becoming more apparent now, with researchers counting some 20 million hectares of good cropland already signed off to foreign investors, or soon to be, worldwide. More countries and corporations are getting involved, from Sri Lanka to Congo or Hyundai to Varun. Farmers' organisations, human rights groups and other social movements are agitating against this obscene approach to feeding their countries, while at least one government – the Ravalomanana regime in Madagascar -- has been brought down because of its involvement in such a deal. ...
The site will have wiki-like features, respect the anonymity of whistleblowing contributors who don't want to be identified, and attempt to bring as much information about these deals as possible into the public domain.
Recent postings to the site include a report on statements by an EU official comparing the trend to a neocolonialism that may harm poorer countries and this one examining farm land outsourcing in Africa, with a focus on Saudi Arabia's purchases.
RFID Journal on National Animal ID System
Published June 01, 2009 @ 06:49AM PT
You'd think the founder and editor of the RFID Journal would be thrilled with the idea of mandatory RFID for farm animals. That's a big market. Yet while he supports the idea to some extent, Mark Roberti believes the government is taking the wrong approach. More, he levels what's really the best criticism of the program:
... It's true that the current plan would not enable the government to track the outbreak of a food-borne illness, because there is no tracking of food after it's processed. That is a bigger issue that needs to be tackled—not just with meat producers, but also with fruit and vegetable growers. ...
Rightly or wrongly, I think a lot of people would be willing to put any amount of regulation on the food industry to prevent the next Salmonella or E. coli outbreak. I sympathize.
However, it doesn't mean salvation from food-borne illness. It isn't even close. It's just an expensive mess that will hurt the small farmers who have to tag individual animals instead of entire herds. Do we have the money to waste this year on things that don't work? I think not.
Not like it'd be fine to waste money otherwise, but it seems like an especially bad idea right now.
