12-21 IAN EPA Killing Farms

 The EPA. What is its agenda? Save the world? Or put farmers out of business. It’s a slippery slope that they are on and I will have details in a minute. 

In just the last three years - the Environmental Protection Agency has set in motion a significant number of new regulations that will significantly change the face of agriculture. 

 Farmers and ranchers throughout the country fear that environmental protection agency proposals to exert greater regulatory control over agriculture will drive up the cost of producing food, fiber and fuel. Illinois Farm Bureau President Philip Nelson explained why before the House Small Business Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade.  “What really keeps me lying awake at night is the potential of this for more regulatory creep. It’s as though we go to bed one night with one set of regulations and wake up the next morning with a new set. Every moment that we spend fighting and then working to comply with needless, duplicative regulations, takes away from what we do best which is producing food. Spending precious resources for this purpose represents neither good public policy nor wise use of taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, it does not make our food any safer, our water and a cleaner or provide one iota of environmental benefit above and beyond what we already achieve on our farms.” There are thoughts that these regulations will have repercussions on the entire economy by the way that they will restrict a land owner in the way that they can use their own property. There are also concerns about the way the new regulations make landowners vulnerable to lawsuits initiated by those who oppose traditional agriculture.