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Largest U.S. farm group rallies against climate bill
Posted On 01/10/2010 16:13:58 by administrator

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The largest U.S. farm group will oppose aggressively "misguided" climate legislation pending in Congress and fight animal rights activists, said American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman on Sunday.

In a speech opening the four-day AFBF convention, Stallman said American farmers and ranchers "must aggressively respond to extremists" and "misguided, activist-driven regulation ... The days of their elitist power grabs are over."

Stallman's remarks held a sharper edge than usual for the 6 million-member AFBF, the largest U.S. farm group and often described as the most influential. Its convention opens a string of wintertime meetings where farm groups take positions on public issues.

Climate legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives aims for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. Senators are expected to draft a similar bill this year. Both envision a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions from factories and power plants and to allow the purchase of offsets.

Vast amounts of farmland could become carbon-capturing woodlands under cap-and-trade, "eliminating about 130,000 farms and ranches," said Stallman. One federal analysis says 8 percent of crop and pasture land could be turned into trees by 2050 because trees would be more profitable than crops.

Four dozen climate scientists wrote Stallman last week to argue AFBF divorce itself from "climate change deniers." AFBF opposed the House bill.

Animal rights activists would "destroy our ability to produce the meat that Americans want to eat," Stallman said, by barring modern production methods.

The Ohio Farm Bureau led a successful referendum last fall to create a 13-member state board, with strong farm representation, to set livestock handling rules. The vote pre-empted an expected drive this year to ban practices that activists regard as cruel.

Seven states have moved to ban sow gestation crates, including Michigan in 2009. Action against the cages began in Florida with a referendum in 2002. Five states have acted against veal crates and two bar "battery" cages for hens.

"Ohio's Ballot Issue 2 was a big win and one we must duplicate far and wide," said Stallman.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing Bernard Orr)



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Viewing 1 - 2 out of 2 Comments

From: mas1az
01/11/2010 18:43:01

The environmentalist are so far from truth, if any would pick up the bible and learn that God created a earth with enough resources to affilate all generations of man as long as man exists.  How long man exists is up to him.  If the kooks and such, who are trying to save the earth would open their eyes, they would see, that all they are doing is creating more devastation through their out of body experiences they go through every time, a tree is cut or a field is plowed under. They don't care about this planet.  The farmers and ranchers have been taking care of this mother earth longer than any environmentalist has ever been around.


These people know not God, and I don't care how many of them call themselves Christians.  For if they knew God, and have read any thing about how much carbon, all the volcanoes throughout mans history that has spewed more ash and soot, not counting all the volcanoes, before man knew what they were, than all the cars throughout the world, yet the world keeps right on going and giving just as God intended.  Yet, these angels of idiocrasy wings need to be clipped, and if they care about the environment so much, then why are they breathing, for the carbon, they dispell in all their protests, and law suits, they have to make lawyers rich is way beyond what the farmers and those who produce for this country do.


You know, If I was a farmer or rancher, I'd probably make a stand and try to convince all the others to plow up all their crops and butcher all their animals, and let the rest of the country starve for a while.  I guarantee you, you think our enemies will supply us with food.  You have another think coming.


Our enemies are dancing in the streets, knowing what is and has been happening here in the last few years or longer.  I think all Government officials, and environmentalists should be put on a slow leakin boat to China.  Let them complain and save them, who are truly laughing at all of us, for fighting and having to put up with such stupidity from what the political correct bunch, call them our educated elite.  They can't even save themselves let alone this world.  Only God will save it.  That he will do, whether many believe it or not, in his time.


Frank 



From: PHILesq
01/10/2010 17:06:23

WE SHOULD ALSO CONSIDER WHAT COULD HAPPEN UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND 'F.E.M.A.'S EXECUTIVE ORDERS". ALL PRODUCTION FROM OUR FARMING AND RANCHING WOULD COME UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF F.E.M.A. THEY WOULD DECIDE WEATHER OR NOT A FARM OR RANCH COULD PRODUCE AND HOW MUCH COULD BE PRODUCED AND HOW MUCH THE RANCHER OR FARMER WOULD MAKE (IF ANYTHING) FOR THEIR LABOR INVESTED. I THANK GOD THAT I LIVE IN ALASKA AND IF NEED BE I CAN OBTAIN FRESH FISH AND MEAT FROM THE BOUNTIES OF NATURE. I JUST WONDER WHEN OUR GOVERNMENT WILL PUT CONTROLS ON THIS ALSO....MAYBE ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME. MAYBE ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME WHEN WE THE PEOPLE GET BACK OUR NATION!





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