Why We Need Clean Energy Legislation
Why We Need Clean Energy Legislation. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.
Chris Fritz is part of the new farming generation and it began with helping his family growing up. He is now farming on his own and knows that for agriculture to continue to be successful it will need to embrace clean, renewable technologies.
FRITZ: I think from the Farmers Union standpoint and as a producer’s standpoint we always want to make sure that the general public is taken care of and there is a reason for us to think that way because anytime there is a rift in the market or anything like that, it hurts agriculture. And if we can have some stability, some stabilization of how the quality of your food is going to be maintained and energy as well, it’s just very important that there is sustainability and confidence in what we do.
An important issue regarding developing new energy legislation is looking at the long term effects and that will most directly affect the new, younger generation of farmers.
FRITZ: I think if you want to talk to anybody that’s got a lot of input on it I think you should probably talk to these younger guys because we’ve been going to school and we’re kind of on the frontlines of this because all of our professors have been around it for a while and so we get to talk to them and get some of the inside story because they’re involved in the industry and they know kind of the background of how things come together.
And of course there are a lot of other people involved with years of experience to pull from.
FRITZ: Even if you don’t have a little higher education involved these people still talk to their neighbors and their insurance guys and this all goes around in circles and it seems like the energy that is out there with the young producer, they want to see what happens with this. There’s a lot of interest in that and so we’ve got some time here where we can sit down and discuss this with each other and we’ve got a lot to say about this because we want to know where we are going to turn 40 years old or 60 years old. I think there is a lot of interest there.
When pressed about how he feels about current energy legislation Fritz is adamant that no matter what, agriculture must be a part of it.
FRITZ: It seems like every month we’ve got a different idea of what’s going on with it and until we see some serious legislation on it I’m not able to give you any answer to that but what I can say is that something is probably going to happen with this and so what we have to do is make sure agriculture is involved, we’ve got to be at the table.
For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
www.harvestcleanenergy.org
