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November 19
AFBF Applauds Senate Delay of Climate Change Bill
American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman applauded the decision by Senate leaders to delay consideration of climate change legislation until the spring of 2010. “This move offers a great opportunity for lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and re-assess the need for this legislation and the impact it will have on all Americans,” Stallman said.
“Legislation previously approved by the House, and a similar bill approved on a party-line vote by a Senate committee, would impose higher energy and food costs on consumers,” Stallman added. “The bills also would create an energy deficit due to limited alternatives.
“Farmers and ranchers would see higher fuel, fertilizer and energy costs. And the cap-and-trade provisions would do little more than downsize American agriculture and our ability to produce food in this nation. None of those are acceptable results to us, and we will continue to tell our members of Congress, ‘Don’t cap our future.’
“The timing for this announcement by Senate leaders could not be better. We now know there will be no international agreement resulting from the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen. Furthermore, we have heard testimony from the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency that the House-passed bill would have no significant impact on the global climate. These bills represent all pain and no gain for our nation and American agriculture and now the Senate has a chance to correct that error.”
Estate Tax Bill Still Expected This Year
While rumors that estate tax legislation would be on the House floor this week proved false, action on estate tax legislation is still expected before the end of the year.
The current estate tax exemption is $3.5 million per person and the top rate is 45 percent. Estate taxes will be temporarily repealed for one year in 2010. When this happens, stepped-up basis will be limited to $1.3 million per person plus an additional $3 million for property passed to a surviving spouse. After 2010, the exemption will shrink to $1 million a person and the top rate will rise to 55 percent and full step up in basis will be reinstated.
Farm Bureau is supporting H.R. 3905, introduced by Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas) to phase in an increase in the estate tax exemption from $3.5 million to $5 million per person and to phase in a reduction of the top rate from 45 percent to 35 percent over 10 years. The Berkley/Brady bill now has more than 20 co-sponsors.
Farm Bureau is working with Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) to secure a $5 million exemption level and 35 percent rate in the Senate.
House Democrats Back One-Year Estate Tax Plan
Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee agreed to back a one-year extension of current estate tax rather than passing permanent estate tax legislation. A permanent fix is expected next year, when other tax cuts enacted under the administration of former President George W. Bush are set to expire.
Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a member of the panel, have been seeking a permanent extension of current law, which would cost $233.6 billion over 10 years but would not have to be offset under the budget framework backed by Democrats.
An estate tax bill is expected to reach the floor after the Thanksgiving recess. President Barack Obama has proposed extending the 2009 estate tax levels permanently.
Senate Committee Approves Food Safety Bill
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday approved a bill to increase the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety authority, including greater oversight of imported food products.
Farm Bureau sent a letter today to committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and ranking member Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) thanking them for their work on food safety legislation.
The bill would allow FDA to require certification for high-risk foods, and to deny entry to a food that lacks certification or that is from a foreign facility that has refused U.S. inspectors.
The Senate isn’t expected to consider the bill until next year.
AFBF Backs Permanent Extension of Donated Food Deduction
AFBF President Bob Stallman submitted a statement to the House Ways and Means Committee today in support of H.R. 3227, introduced by Reps. Sander Levin (D- Mich.) and Geoff Davis (R- Ky.), to permanently extend and expand the charitable deduction for donated food.
“Despite affordable food prices and ongoing government food assistance programs, the economic downturn has increased demand for hunger-relief assistance at food banks. Some farmers and ranchers already donate gleaned food to charitable organizations that feed the hungry. Many more would do so if they were able to bear the costs of harvesting and transporting food from fields to food banks,” Stallman said.
“Even though most farmers and ranchers pay taxes as individuals, current law only allows those who use accrual accounting to take advantage of tax incentives for charitable donations of food. H.R. 3227 makes the enhanced tax incentive permanent and expands the deduction so that farmers and ranchers who use cash basis accounting will also be able to recover some of their harvest and transportation costs.”
Coalition Stresses Importance of Trade for Agriculture
The Ag Trade Coalition has issued a statement on the “Importance of Trade for U.S. Agriculture” to underscore the positive contributions from trade and its importance to the economic recovery and food security of the United States.
The coalition, which includes AFBF, noted that exports are essential to the prosperity of U.S. food and agriculture. About 25 percent of the total volume of U.S. farm production is exported, with many commodities having a much higher dependence on trade. U.S. food and agricultural exports are directly tied to jobs here at home and create economic opportunities for American farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses.
The coalition applauded discussions being held this week between President Barack Obama and his Asian counterparts concerning the need for global economic growth. The group urged support for closer economic integration between nations through trade.
Quotation of the Day
“Farmers and ranchers have been joking for years that if you want to avoid paying the federal estate tax, plan to die in 2010. That’s because Congress passed a law in 2001 that phased down the estate tax, taking it to zero in 2010. But, Congress also specified that it come roaring back in 2011 at 2001 levels. Hence the urgency for getting your dying done before the end of next year.
“I’m eager for Congress to act. I want to leave my farm intact for my family, but I shouldn’t have to die in 2010 to do it.” – Keith Olsen, Nebraska Farm Bureau President.
November 18
Climate Bill May Not Hit Senate Floor Until July or Later
Climate change legislation is not expected to hit the Senate floor until July, it is possible the bill will be put off until the next Congress
“Most of the country doesn’t know what cap-and-trade is. They have no idea. I would say half the Senate has no idea what cap-and-trade is and could not explain it,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, told The Hill on Tuesday.
“You have to get this stuff out to the American people before you change their lives, and we are not paying any attention to that,” Rockefeller said.
Democratic centrists facing re-election, such as Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), are said to prefer consideration of the controversial climate bill shortly before Election Day 2010.
Deluge of Rain Interferes With Harvest
A deluge of rain continues to interfere with harvest across the country, according to a story on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition that aired today.
NPR reports farmers are scrambling to finish harvest before winter sets in. Rainy conditions have left crops in many parts of the country too wet to be harvested with many fields too soggy to handle heavy farm equipment. The longer plants sit out in the field, the greater the risk that farmers’ profits will shrink because of crop damage.
In the NPR report, Nebraska farmer Brandon Honeycutt said it will cost him 40 cents a bushel to dry his wet corn, for a total price tag of $250,000.
Vilsack Urges Congress to Reauthorize Nutrition Programs
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urged Congress to reauthorize school nutrition programs the day after a report by the Agriculture Department revealed that 49 million Americans struggled to get enough to eat last year.
In testimony before the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee on Tuesday, Vilsack said child nutrition programs provide an opportunity to fight hunger.
“Yesterday, the department released a report showing that in over 500,000 families with children in 2008, one or more children simply do not get enough to eat. They had to cut the size of their meals, skip meals or even go whole days without food at some time during the year,” Vilsack said. “This is simply unacceptable in a nation as wealthy and developed as the United States.”
Times Calls for Bolstering Nutrition Programs
An editorial in today’s New York Times echoed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s call for greater congressional support of nutrition programs. “The need to bolster these programs was underscored again this week in a dismaying Department of Agriculture study showing that a record number of households had trouble getting sufficient food at one time or another last year,” the Times opined.
“These facts are troubling enough, but a separate federal study showed that even before the recession began, more than two-thirds of families with children who were defined as ‘food insecure’ under federal guidelines contained one or more full-time worker. This suggests that millions of Americans were trapped in low-wage jobs before the downturn that made it more difficult for them to provide children with adequate nutrition,” according to the editorial.
Farmers Embrace Biotech for Many Benefits
According to USDA, U.S. farmers have embraced biotech varieties of soybeans, cotton and corn at the rate of 91 percent, 88 percent and 85 percent, respectively. This is because agricultural biotechnology allows farmers to grow more food on less land using farming practices that are more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable.
Despite these convincing statistics, a report titled “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years,” claims “farmers are increasingly critical of GE crops.”
However, Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, executive vice president, food and agriculture for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), said farmers continue to embrace biotechnology because of many benefits, specifically crops that yield more per acre with lower production costs while using farming practices that better protect the land and environment.
“This is especially true for American farmers, four out of five of whom choose biotech crop varieties over conventional crops that require more production inputs such as sprays to control insect pests and tilling to control weeds,” Lauristen said.
“Thanks to biotechnology, farmers have adopted no- and reduced-tillage systems that utilize herbicidal weed control rather than plowing. This is delivering important benefits in the form of improved soil health and water retention, reduced runoff, fuel conservation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more efficient carbon storage in the soil.”
November 17
Obama Calls High Level of Food Insecurity ‘Unsettling’
President Barack Obama called Monday’s report from the Agriculture Department showing the highest level of food insecurity since the report was initiated in 1995 “unsettling” and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger.
“Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential—and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation—depends on regular access to healthy meals,” Obama said in a statement.
USDA’s annual report was based on a survey conducted in December 2008. More than 49 million Americans—one in seven—struggled to get enough to eat in 2008, according to the report by USDA’s Economic Research Service.
Benedict XVI Decries Worsening Tragedy of World Hunger
In the keynote address Monday at an international summit on world hunger sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI decried the steadily worsening tragedy of global hunger.
“Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty,” the pope said.
Benedict said it is a “known fact that the world has enough food for all its inhabitants.” The problem lies in the failure to provide political and economic arrangements that ensure the distribution of food to those most in need. He called for “new parameters—primarily ethical but also legal and economic ones—capable of inspiring the degree of cooperation required.” |
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Climate Bill Will Wait Until Next Year in Senate |
The Senate will wait until early spring of next year to pass climate change legislation, with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) saying his panel will wait until January to mark up portions of the Kerrry-Boxer climate change bill under its jurisdiction.
Behind the scenes, Democratic leaders in the Senate are developing a strategy to establish a compromise on the climate bill that could garner 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.
Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (I -Conn.) are continuing to work on a plan that is expected to include more incentives for nuclear power and expanded offshore drilling.
Kruse, Young Outline Faults of Climate Legislation
In an interview with The Brownfield Network at last week’s National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) Convention in Kansas City, Missouri Farm Bureau President Charlie Kruse says he doesn’t envision anything in climate change legislation before Congress that is palatable to farmers. Kruse says increases in energy costs resulting from climate change proposals will devastate farmers, small businessmen and consumers.
“I’ve said many times that if the goal of people in Washington, D.C., with cap-and-trade is to create the largest or one of the largest transfers of private wealth out of the pockets of citizens into the coffers of the federal government, this cap-and-trade idea is a great idea, because that’s exactly what it’s going to do,” Kruse said.
Kruse said current proposals should be discarded in favor of legislation that makes the U.S. more energy independent.
“We need to really get serious about getting more of our own coal, more of our own oil, more of own natural gas and incentivize new uses for energy, like biofuels and wind and solar and nuclear,” Kruse said. “Until we do that, we’ve got a real problem in this country when it comes to energy.”
Meanwhile, American Farm Bureau Federation Chief Economist Bob Young, in an interview with Brownfield at the NAFB meeting, said congressional cap-and-trade proposals will shrink agriculture in the United States. Young said not allowing the offsets will increase production costs and force some producers out of business, while allowing offsets will result in land being brought out of production to be put into trees.
“I think the real question then becomes do you like the agriculture you end up with,” Young said. “It’d be a much more brittle agriculture. It’d be much less resilient to short crop situations.”
November 16
World Leaders Delay Action on Climate Change Agreement
World leaders including President Barack Obama have agreed to delay attempting to reach a climate change agreement next month at a Copenhagen conference. Instead, they will work toward a less specific “politically binding” agreement that leaves concrete decisions on the most difficult issues to be decided in the future.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, and other world leaders agreed that to salvage Copenhagen they would push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.
Representatives of the 192 nations in the talks did not have enough time to resolve the outstanding issues before the conference, which starts in about three weeks. Congress’ lack of progress in approving climate and energy legislation with binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions was cited as a major stumbling block to nations being able to come up with an agreement in Copenhagen. Most recently, administration officials and congressional leaders have said that final legislative action on a climate bill is unlikely before the first half of 2010.
Countries Step Up Aid for Agriculture in Developing Nations
At a food summit hosted by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, world leaders committed to a new strategy to fight global hunger and equip poor countries to feed their own people. Delegates to the summit did not commit to $44 billion annually for agricultural aid that FAO officials say is needed in the coming decades to feed the world’s hungry, currently estimated at 1 billion people.
In a statement issued at the conclusion of the conference, delegates focused on a pledge first made nine years ago to halve the number of hungry people worldwide by 2015. FAO leaders had urged countries to instead commit to 2025 as a deadline to eradicate global hunger.
Historically, wealthy nations sending food assistance to developing countries has been the primary strategy for tackling hunger. Today, improved technology, help setting up irrigation systems, fertilizer and high-yield seeds for local farmers, herders and fishermen are viewed by FAO officials as better long-term options to beat hunger by “helping the needy help themselves.”
$13.4 Million for Community Connect Broadband Grants
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Friday announced the selection of 22 projects in 10 states to receive $13.4 million in broadband community connect grant funds. A list of grant recipients is available online. USDA Rural Development’s Community Connect program provides financial assistance to furnish broadband service in unserved, often isolated, rural communities. The grants are used to establish broadband service for critical facilities such as fire or police stations, while also providing service to residents and businesses. The project must also include a community center that provides community residents with free broadband service for the first two years.
An August 2009 USDA Economic Research Service report supports the idea that “investment in broadband Internet access leads to a more competitive economy.” The report, available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR78/ERR78.pdf , notes that rural communities with broadband Internet access had greater economic growth than communities without it. The study also finds that broadband use fosters community involvement, enhances the provision of services such as health and education and expands household income opportunities.
Rural development, including increased broadband deployment, is a priority issue for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
No Advantage to Controlled-atmosphere Chicken Stunning
Controlled-atmosphere stunning (CAS) offers no significant welfare advantage over conventional low-voltage electrical stunning in the commercial processing of chickens, according to a recent study that included Tyson Foods Inc. and Keystone Foods LLC, two suppliers of McDonald’s Corp. As in most parts of the world, there are no large-scale chicken producers in the U.S. that use the CAS method.
CAS uses a gas such as carbon dioxide to render chickens and other poultry unconscious and insensible to pain prior to slaughter. The conventional technique U.S. poultry processors employ uses low-level electrical stunning to do the same thing. Animal welfare experts have long had mixed views on which stunning practice is more humane.
Testing both practices in a commercial environment included evaluation of several factors, including animal welfare and handling, carcass yield and product quality.
Globally, McDonald’s continues to support its suppliers’ using both CAS and electrical stunning. The latest evaluation confirms that it is the proper thing to do at this time, Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president of corporate social responsibility, told FeedStuffs.
Economist Cap-and-trade Article Features Montana Farmer
An article exploring opposition to climate change legislation in the Nov. 12 issue of the Economist newspaper features Bruce Wright, a Montana farmer who grows wheat and other crops. Wright serves as vice president of Montana Farm Bureau and explained in the article that he did not see how he could continue operating his farm without fossil fuels.
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