Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/30/2009 5:22:44 PM PST by Kaslin
Agriculture: Already buffeted by rising food prices due to biofuels, consumers face a bigger hike if climate-change legislation is passed. Farming costs will rise, and it may be more profitable to plant trees than crops.
If the cap-and-trade provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill become law, you can wave goodbye to those amber waves of grain as America's heartland falls victim to a perverse set of incentives and a process called "afforestation." Soybeans and wheat will give way to elms and oaks.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wants a review of what amounts to an agricultural impact study of HR 2454, which shows it would make planting trees more profitable than planting food.
The study, which was released by the USDA earlier this month, reckons that as a result of cap-and-trade, farmers with energy-intensive crops would see their cost of production go up 10% over the next 50 years. Couple that with the money to be made from carbon offsets, and it may not be long before we're unable to see the farms for the trees.
The USDA projects that under cap-and-trade — or is it cap-and-trees? — fuel costs will rise as much as 5.3% from 2012 to 2018. "The conclusion of all the studies remains the same: that cap-and-trade has the potential to devastate the agricultural community with higher energy prices," says Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Replant the forests that have burned down first....and do it right...in blocks....separated....
the Texas Forest service tells of a program in which the carbon Credits are expected to yield about $100/acre of Texas Pines. This will not only convert food cropland to trees but will also delay the marketing of timber, causing the cost of wood products to increase.
barbra ann
Plant fruit trees.
Seriously. Or walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, olives, chestnuts.
I was hoping there was something to the whole global warming thingy so we could get into zone 4 (zone 3, now) and be able to have a wider variety of fruit/nut trees survive.
Bummer, but we do what we can with what we can.
This came up yesterday as well.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2416878/posts
Suggests that trees should be planted in the “plains states.” I don’t think that planting trees on the prairie is feasible.
Zone 3? Wow. And here I complain that I can’t grow citrus in Zone 6! :)
Yeah... I was looking forward to marketing North Dakota Orange Juice, too...
Waxman-Markey: Let them eat wood.
This proves that government stupidity never goes away, it's just endlessly recycled.
For those who don't know, the original Homestead act, which led to the settlement of the plains, also contained a tree claim provision. You could claim an additional 160 acres and receive title to it if you "simply" planted trees on it, the government's idea being that they would thus turn the plains into forests. All they had to do was grow for 5 years and the land was yours.
Thousands of tree claims were filed, but very few were ever proved, because trees couldn't survive there without supplemental water. To survive, all trees had to be watered, and watering 160 acres of trees with a horse-drawn wagon was no small feat.
Of course today, the trees would survive with the aid of pump-powered irrigation, but the carbon footprint of pumping groundwater from depth would surely be greater than any carbon sequestered by the trees.
But hey, it's the government, so no actual thought is required !
Thanks for info. Truly amazing.
Theres a chance to leave a comment at a national newspaper’s site here.
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