09/14/07 Talking Global Warming, Energy & Farm Bill

Talking Global Warming, Energy & Farm Bill. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Global warming is being blamed for a great many of the world's problems. It is driving many industries to create cleaner fuels and making us aware of energy conservation issues. Barry Bushue is the President of the Oregon Farm Bureau and when it comes to global warming, agriculture is greatly affected. BASHUE: The concept of global warming has a huge impact on agriculture. Climate change of course affects what you grow, where you grow and how you grow it. It potentially has the downside of affecting our water supplies and the huge cost of trying to meet emission standards that are likely to come out of crisis management when you talk about climate change and those are all going to have a direct impact on the agricultural industry. Regardless of the cause, Bashue feels that policy makers need to be aware of the impacts of their actions on agriculture. BASHUE: I think the big question to agriculture and the big question to policy makers is  is this a result of mankind? Is this a result of our activities, is it a result of agriculture, is it a result of industry, is it a result of traffic or, is it merely just another cyclic event? And I think there's less evidence that clearly shows that this is all manmade. So from an agricultural perspective, we just want the policymakers to be patently clear that whatever decisions they make can have a devastating economic impact on the agricultural industry and the economy as a whole if they don't get it right. When it comes to the Farm Bill, Bashue seems confident that the Senate version will be close to the House bill. BASHUE: Congressman Peterson did a very good job of holding a very good set of committee hearings and making sure that what came out of that committee had good broad based, bipartisan support in the House version and I think it would be unlikely that a Senate version is going to be diametrically opposed or in any way significantly different. Bashue again cautions lawmakers to dig deep for the facts before making their decisions. BASHUE: The policy makers have to be very careful and very deliberative and make good decisions based on good information and not media hype. 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