Cap and Trade and potatoes
Farm and Ranch November 27, 2009 Proponents of climate change legislation say new opportunities will open for agriculture creating markets for credits from sequestering carbon. John Keeling of the National Potato Council says that may be true for producers of crops which can be grown in no-till or very low tillage systems but it doesn’t work for potato growers. Keeling: “If you take a potato grower where disrupting the soil in a significant way is a part of planting and disrupting the soil in a significant way as a part of harvesting, we are just not going to be able to participate in that. Also, you are taking a crop the farmer has in potatoes has 35-hundred dollars an acre in the crop in the ground. So for a potential benefit of $5 an acre or even $20 an acre that grower really doesn‘t have the ability to make very many significant changes in the production process. So we don‘t see the current climate change reliance on carbon trading, the benefit side, to be valuable to potatoes or any other agricultural product where tillage is important and that is most specialty crops.” Keeling says what the NPC and other specialty crops are trying to get included in legislation for crop producers who can’t sequester carbon is some offsets for the increased costs that would occur under cap and trade. Mitigation measures such as tax credits for example. That’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report. Brought to you in part by the Washington State Potato Commission. Nutrition today. Good health tomorrow. I’m Bob Hoff on the Northwest Ag Information Network. ? ?
