Farm Bureau, critics clash over Saturday Anti-Cap and Trade Rally

BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, September 3, 2009 7:10 pm

The Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation is part of a coalition promoting an Anti-Cap and Trade Rally in Lincoln on Saturday as a prelude to the University of Nebraska's first home football game of the season.

Spokesman Jordan Dux said the 2:30 p.m. rally at Embassy Suites is aimed at federal legislation that would allow companies to meet global warming obligations by buying the credits farmers earn from keeping greenhouse gases tied up in the soil.

Dux said the state's largest farm organization favors the cap-and-trade concept, but has several concerns, including that House-passed legislation would drive the cost of fuel, fertilizer and other crucial farming inputs beyond the potential for credit income.

"It's the idea that there's not enough money coming in to supplement that higher input cost," he said.

The Farm Bureau is being criticized by the Nebraska Farmers Union and other groups for aligning itself with the American Petroleum Institute and what they view as its anti-ethanol stance.

Todd Sneller of the Nebraska Ethanol Board declined to comment Thursday. John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, chose to speak up.

"What's disappointing," said Hansen, "is that any agricultural organization would have anything to do with the American Petroleum Institute" and what he called a fake grass-roots effort.

Dux said the Farm Bureau agrees with the Farmers Union that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and not the Environmental Protection Agency, should be in charge of the cap-and-trade effort.

But he also raised concerns about what House language says - or, in some cases, doesn't say - about how to handle such issues as methane production by livestock operations and farms where the no-till methods that earn credits may not be feasible.

"Sugar beet farmers out in western Nebraska can't sell credits," Dux said, "because they can't no-till farm. It's just not something they're able to do."

It's under those circumstances the Farm Bureau agreed to join the Energy Citizens group that has ties to the American Petroleum Institute.

"We had chatted with them and we were contacted by their Nebraska individual," Dux said of the latter group. "And we said that we would certainly provide agricultural perspective to the cap-and-trade debate at these rallies as something that we wanted to do."

In some respects, he said, "Farm Bureau has decided to work with an organization with whom we disagree."

But on the subject of ethanol, "the American Petroleum Institute has members that are ethanol producers," he said. "I wouldn't necessarily characterize them as rabidly anti-ethanol."

Hansen isn't persuaded.

"Ironically, the opposition to cap and trade is, in most cases unknowingly, and in some cases knowingly, setting agriculture and America up for the worst-case scenario, which is ongoing and developing EPA rules and regulations," he said.

He said there's nothing to suggestions that credit compensation will come up short in covering higher input costs.

"That's not consistent with USDA data or with University of Missouri data, or Iowa State data, or any reputable third-party assessments," Hansen said. "Only oil company-funded foundations have come up with numbers that would support their position."

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.