Tag Archives: Climate

Government is the problem, cows are the solution

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, September 29, 2023

WASHINGTON – Several important amendments aimed at limiting USDA and FDA powers in the administration’s climate agenda, nutrition mandates, even an amendment on checkoff transparency, peppered the hotly debated FY2024 Ag Appropriations bill in an overnight marathon at the end of September as House of Representatives worked to avoid a government shut-down Oct. 1.

Some amendments passed and others failed.

Perhaps most notable was the Spartz Amendment (76) related to commodity checkoff transparency. It passed on a voice vote in the near midnight hour Sept. 26, but a recorded vote was requested by the opposition, and it was soundly defeated 326 to 72 in the late afternoon on Wednesday.

Here’s what we’ve learned from C-SPAN coverage and other sources about key agricultural amendments that are included and excluded.

The defeated Spartz Amendment would have prohibited use of taxpayer funds to carry out, administer or oversee the 22 commodity checkoff programs.

Other amendments that succeeded would prohibit USDA’s use of the appropriated funds to carry out the administration’s “climate agenda” via a long list of executive orders. Some amendments that passed prohibit USDA’s use of appropriated funds to enforce certain school meal rules, such as a proposed to ban chocolate milk in elementary schools and the current 14-year ban on whole milk at all grade levels.

A half-dozen amendments targeted specific USDA and FDA bureaucrat’s salaries by using the Holman Rule to cut down to $1 the salaries of, for example, the USDA Food Nutrition Services deputy under secretary for her role in expanding SNAP eligibilities beyond congressional intent and in expanding USDA diet-police tactics in schools by implementing the whole milk ban from a la carte offerings in 2012.

On the failure side, in addition to the Spartz amendment, another amendment offered by Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman would have undone the USDA mandate for electronic cattle identification. It would have left the funding in place for farmers and ranchers wanting to use the electronic ID (EID) system, but would have removed the mandate language.

Said Hageman: “Ireland required this. Today, a year later, there are untold numbers of reports they must fill out for the government, and Ireland now is considering killing off 1.3 million head of cattle to reach their ‘climate targets.’ Their EID mandate will help them carry out this slaughter.”

She said mandatory EID “will cost ranchers millions in compliance cost, causing smaller farms to sell out and accelerating vertical integration so the farmers and ranchers will be nothing but serfs. This is supported primarily by the four big packers — two of which are owned by Brazil and by China.

In opposition to the EID amendment, Chairman of the House Ag Committee, Glenn G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), said technology and innovation are needed to protect livestock agriculture from disease outbreaks.

On the Spartz checkoff amendment, Thompson said the place to handle this is in the farm bill, not appropriations.

In defense of her approps amendment, Indiana Congresswoman Victoria Spartz said: “I am a farmer, and my cosponsor is a farmer, and we want to stand with the farmers.

“Farmers used to pay a checkoff voluntarily to promote the commodities. Then Congress made it mandatory, and there is no transparency,” she said. “If you are going to force farmers to pay the money, they should know where their money goes. Do they promote commodities? Or do they promote very wealthy jobs?”

She explained further that her amendment had two parts. One calls for checkoff transparency language in the farm bill. The other sought to be included in the Ag Appropriations, simply stating that no taxpayer funds can be used to carry out or oversee checkoff programs.

“It’s a simple amendment, but the special interests have gone on the attack saying: ‘How can Congress ask us what we’re doing with the money?’” said Spartz. “Now it has become imperative since they are now lobbying with this money against this amendment and against transparency.

“They say they aren’t using taxpayer money… So, just clarify this to Congress — that no taxpayer dollars are going to these boards that who knows where they spend the money,” she explained.

Cosponsoring the amendment, Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky said: “This program has gone rotten and no longer serves farmers. In fact, we just sent a bipartisan letter to Secretary Vilsack reminding him that the USDA is required to report annually to Congress on the disbursement of these funds and show a third-party audit of their effectiveness.”

Massie noted that these reports to Congress have not been filed since 2018 for dairy, during which time dairy farmers paid over $1 billion, and more than 6000 have gone out of business.

Thompson stressed that the debate on checkoff transparency “should be reserved for the farm bill, not appropriations.” He said taxpayer funds are not being used in checkoff programs nor to oversee them.

Thompson expressed caution that some recent challenges to checkoff programs can be a veiled attack by animal rights groups that see this as an opportunity to weaken livestock agriculture. He said the farm bill is the place, “where conversations are already occurring, to improve these programs, to refine them, and to make them more transparent. I see the farm bill process as the appropriate path forward for achieving this transparency.”

“They should already want to be transparent to show this great thing they do for farmers,” Spartz countered. “But they are serving large monopolies, contributing to more consolidation so the little guy cannot survive.”

Spartz noted that Congress should “not be afraid to challenge these programs… to be the lobby for the people.”

For the three days leading up to the vote on the Spartz amendment, many agricultural groups with close ties and joint programs with commodity checkoff organizations amassed a barrage of lobbying efforts in opposition.

National Milk Producers Federation and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association spearheaded these efforts, including a letter signed by 130 organizations, saying that the Spartz amendment “unfairly targeted ‘producer-led’ checkoff programs that only use funds collected from proceeds of sale of these commodities – not taxpayer funds.

Here’s how I see it… If that premise is true, then what are the lobbyists opposing it so afraid of? No foul, no harm, right?

Perhaps they are afraid of the auditing that may be required to prove to Congress that no taxpayer funds are used to carry out checkoff programs. In fact, at the 11th hour, the Ag Environmental Coalition signed on to the letter opposing the Spartz amendment that was sent broadly to congressional offices urging a ‘no’ vote.

Could it be that taxpayer funds in the USDA coffers are being coughed up to further so-called ‘net-zero’ pathways initiated by the national dairy checkoff via DMI and its various tentacles?

It was USDA Secretary Vilsack, himself, who was first to announce Dairy Net Zero while testifying to the U.S. Senate in 2019 — asking them to fund Net Zero pilot programs. At that time, he was employed by checkoff, pulling down a million dollar salary via checkoff.

Now, Net Zero is the centerpiece of DMI’s “U.S. Dairy transformation” and the USDA ‘climate agenda’.

In fact, during a debate on an amendment offered by Florida Congresswoman, Kat Cammack, she cited a recent report citing Vilsack’s coordination with Arabella Advisors, a Soros-funded group, on “transforming the U.S. food system.”

She said the U.S. “can’t produce and process food for this country and abroad if we can’t rely on fuel and food systems not to be hijacked by the extremest climate agenda” and noted “many of these radical things do more harm than good to our environment. Our farmers and ranchers are the best in the world, and this amendment prevents the Biden administration from pushing its climate initiatives. It safeguards farmers and ranchers from these misguided policies.”

Could there be some blurred lines between taxpayer and checkoff funds piled into the climate-smart wheel-of-fortune?

Is there some leakage of taxpayer funds into certain checkoff industry structures and pre-competitive proprietary partnerships that create winners and losers among farms, among processors, among regions?

Certainly, Secretary Vilsack’s salary has been drawn from two pockets over the past 15 years (taxpayer, then checkoff, then taxpayer). This raises eyebrows as do the shared pathways to the same destination (net-zero) being paved with funds from both pockets. Each may fund a different track, but moving in unison to the same destination: putting the cow in the loser column so that Big Food and Big Tech can collect Big Money with the tools to move her over to the winner column (temporarily, folks, because cows don’t stop belching).

The way I see it, DMI and its many tentacles have charted a path for dairy that deems the cow a loser while developing the pathway to be her savior — to turn her into a winner and then tell her story. They promote the RNG projects, feed additives and sustainability practices that reduce her natural methane emissions, but forget to promote the fact that

With or without these pathways to Net Zero, the cow is already a winner! Cows are not the problem! A cow’s global warming potential (GWP) is not new, it is a constantly recycled baseline in a natural biochemical cycle that is as old as life itself. Math matters here!

Meanwhile, some of the checkoff-promoted tools deemed to make her loser-methane a “winner” will actually consolidate the dairy industry even more rapidly.

Large new production sites hinge on huge Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) projects that hinge on lucrative renewable fuel credits. Each permit recorded over the past two years and forward for the next five equals 2500 to 10,000 cows in expansions and new dairy sites.

These operations are less dependent on the level of the milk price to cash-flow, and they are bound by contracts to milk large numbers of cows to produce quantities of methane to then offset via RNG production to then generate credits for the exchanges.

At the federal milk pricing hearing in Indiana, we have heard processors lament that the FMMO minimum prices are too high. They’ve said the proof is the negative premiums and dumped milk this summer.

Are they really looking at getting the milk price minimums low enough that they can pay for those large new and expanded farm methane credits for their own scope 3 portfolios? Some processor testimony has mentioned sustainability costs in the make allowance part of the FMMO hearing. Do they want to weaken FMMO uniform pricing so they can cut farms that don’t measure up and use creative methane math to buy credits from others via milk premiums built on lower FMMO minimum prices?

We even have a global processor in New York State already doing a ‘pilot’ right now to monitor methane by analyzing their shippers’ Dairy One milk test data to benchmark farm methane emissions and make “recommendations.”

There’s a lot of money to be made by keeping cows in the loser column, and then building the consolidated pathways to move her into the Net Zero winner column.

Unfortunately, the math doesn’t add up, and the real losers will be our beloved cows – foster mothers of the human race — and our children and grandchildren who are already deprived of the very best our cows have to offer during 2 meals a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year at school.

Farmshine editor and publisher Dieter Krieg hit the nail on the head in his editorial in the September 22 edition. The anti-animal agenda is real, and that fox is has been inside our henhouse with an agenda that began in 1995 when DMI was created to manage both halves of the checkoff structure, and it has become more obvious since 2008, when the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy was created. This is also the year the whole milk ban train started rolling and DMI began conspiring with USDA to “advance the dietary guidelines” via a memorandum of understanding that initiated GENYOUth.

We’ve reported extensively on the murky methane math, the ten-fold typographical errors, the worsening dietary guidelines that ignore science, and the progressively more restrictive fat rules for school meals that are now morphing to anti-cow climate considerations.

More recently, we’ve reported on how the bubble-up in milk production in the Central U.S. that led to dumping of milk and unforeseen disastrous prices this summer was largely fueled by new RNG projects like are promoted by checkoff to help our very-bad, no-good cows become good for the planet.

The misappropriation of math and science has been staggering. Government is the problem, not the solution. Cows are the solution, not the problem. Newsflash: cows are already good for the planet, and they provide us with optimum natural nutrition we enjoy.

Dutch farmer protest update: What if you woke up tomorrow and learned your farm is to be reduced or closed based on climate targets that use fuzzy math?

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When food is plentiful, and climate reduction targets kick-in… How do farmers attract the strong public support they need to continue?

By Sherry Bunting, previously published in Farmshine

NETHERLANDS — Headlines here in the U.S. indicate the Dutch government is offering buy-out of up to 3000 farms and other so-called ‘peak polluters’ to reduce ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions to bring the country into compliance with EU pledged targets. They say farms will be offered more than 100% of their value to quit, but the value of these farms is now reduced by the reduction targets. 

A November 30 article in The Guardian quotes the Dutch nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal saying “there will be a stopping scheme that will be as attractive as possible,” and that forced buyouts will follow next year if the voluntary measures this year fail. 

Some may read these headlines and figure Holland is such a progressive agricultural powerhouse that the number of planned closures is but a dent. 

Think again.

Farms in Holland and around the world are the thin green line. Challenging them with inflated climate data and restrictive targets puts world food security at risk.

Consider that the BBC reported recently that Ireland is also looking at agricultural emissions, namely methane from cattle and sheep, in terms of meeting its Climate Action Plan targets of a 25% reduction by 2030. Estimates vary on how much culling would need to occur to meet these targets, how the methane is measured, and how fast various feed additives can help farms meet new targets. The most glaring concern is how carbon equivalents and methane are measured.

What if you woke up tomorrow and learned that your farm is targeted for similar reductions or closure based on the location of your farm on a map, based on climate targets set by your state or your milk buyer or the federal government, based on making cuts from where you are now — not from where you might have been before whatever improvements you’ve already made?

We reached out to Dutch dairy farmer Ad Baltus this week for an update from Holland, having interviewed him six months ago for the story about the Dutch farmer protests in July 2022.

Baltus farms 170 acres in the village of Schermerhorn with his wife and 7-year-old daughter. They milk 130 dairy cows, grazing in summer and growing corn and collecting fresh grass and dry hay from fields as well.

In July, he reported that his farm is one of the “luckier” ones. He is in a location in North Holland that will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen (or sell cows) by 10 to 15%. Some zones have been designated to reduce by up to 75 to 90%. The percentages are to meet reduction targets, and are not based on what a farm is measured to produce. Building and infrastructure projects can’t move forward without near-term offsets, which is why the situation has reached this extreme point in the Netherlands.

“It feels like the government throws figures in the air, and they wait to see what will happen,” says Baltus. “In my point of view, they try to make farmers worried as a tactic of smoking them out. That’s what you see now. The farms (targeted for higher reductions based on location) nearby the nature areas are getting tired of it, and they sell. I see the last couple of months a lot of farms, nice farms, being sold, and that worries me. If they stop farming, and go abroad, what will be left in Holland?”

He observes that the older farmers stay on the farm until they stop for retirement.  “But when the young farmers stop and go abroad — that’s the future leaving. The young farmers are the future. The young farmers don’t want to wait for what is clear and what is going to happen. The problem is now — in the next five years,” he says, indicating a cycle of new targets that never seems to end. “Every time the government throws new figures out. This time it’s the nitrogen, then it’s the water quality, and then it’s the biodiversity, then there is CO2. Every time there comes new regulation, young farmers worry about their future.”

He sees agriculture in his country at a crossroads and warns that if this can happen in Holland, where agriculture is so progressive, it can happen anywhere.

“It could go the right way, and they will begin to appreciate farming in Holland, or it could go the other way, and farming may be over in 10 or 20 or 30 years. My biggest worry is you need some minimum amount of farmers to let the companies behind the farms live. I see it that when you have a feed company, they need a certain amount of farms to deliver their feeding products. When it comes down below some level, they say that is too small for us, and it is a spiral going down. That’s a worry for me, that we make it difficult for too many farmers, and they stop.”

Baltus confirms that the large Dutch farmer protests of the summer have quieted down, but the efforts and periodic protests continue on a different scale. “We are not giving up. We are struggling ’til the end, but it is a hard battle to convince (the government) that this is not the good way to go.

“We also see the farm groups talking to the government. We see the (symbolic) red handkerchief. The Dutch flags turned upside down for a month got attention. The protest is maybe not as loud as it was, but it is still there, and a little spark to the gunpowder barrel, it will explode again,” he says, noting that there are elections in March 2023.

As for the big picture, Baltus describes it as Dutch farmers having to ‘catch up’ quickly to the long-time networks built by the NGOs.

“Farmers have been too long on their own farms, and now you see things changing. Since 2019, when the first farmer protests began, you see farmers are now talking more to the media. They get a better speech to government officials,” says Baltus.

On the other hand, the NGOs, like Greenpeace, and a variety of others, are a small number of people relative to the population of Holland, but they have already been working 20 to 30 years on this. They are well-organized, well-funded, and have people throughout all levels of government and media, he explains.

“We are just now three or four years fighting against that, and it takes a time to change and get that understanding of nature and practice to the government,” Baltus relates, adding that it also takes time for new technologies to come to market that will help farms make further reductions, though European farms are already pretty progressive that way.

Baltus sees European farmers coming together more for each other now — even if their respective governments are not. As other countries in the EU are beginning to experience similar pressures of emissions targets that could essentially reduce dairy and livestock numbers or put farms out of business, solidarity is on the rise among those farmers who are paying attention.

Farming is hard work with a lot of risk, but as Baltus points out, Holland is a good place to farm, with good soil, good logistics, and a good climate for crops and livestock.

“It is one of the best jobs in the world. I love what I do. I want the adventure that every day is different. I like working in nature, working outside,” he says. “When the younger generation doesn’t have to worry about all of the things which are not farming, then they will go to farming because the work is that good. It is only the things that come from outside into the farm that make it hard.”

One part of a future solution is exemplified in something Baltus has done at his farm for 30 years — providing a school on the farm to teach young children how to make cheese and to make jam. His cheese school reaches a few thousand children each year.

“We do it so the children learn how much work it is to make that little piece of cheese and that little pot of jam,” he says. “When they learn the effort that goes into food, they appreciate it more, I think.”

The children get a bucket of milk, and in two hours they go home with a little cheese. They have to turn in 14 days and put on a little salt, and in another 14 days they eat their own cheese. When Baltus started the cheese school 30 years ago, maybe one or two farms did this kind of thing.

Today, more farms are doing similar memorable learning experiences. Baltus sees more farms connecting with the public in recent years. Some have cabins on the farm that they rent to the public. Others provide daycare on the farm, so children can grow up with some real-world attachment to farming. In his neighborhood, there are four farms with daycare. 

“The new generation learns what it is to farm, so maybe they will be farming or an advocate. If they go to work as a plumber or a trucker, but as a child lived a few years on a farm at a daycare, it’s good for when they are older, even if they work in other things,” he explains.

“The solution is also that everyone you speak with — say to them what you are doing. When you are at a party or on holiday, say you are a farmer, say how you do things, why you do things — explain it,” Baltus suggests. “People come to appreciate these things when they know about them. There are things (farmers) can do better, but when we explain that we need 5 or 10 years (as technology develops), they accept we’re not perfect but are working to make it more perfect.”

In general, Baltus has found the public has a good opinion of farmers. When he meets someone from the city, they say “Oh, you’re a farmer. That is good of you.” And that’s that. They think well of farmers, but have no reason to worry about food, and therefore don’t make the connection to the impact of the threat the farmers face.

“People have other worries. Do I have a job next year? Can I pay my bills for electricity? Will my children have a good education? But food? There is always food. People will worry about food when there is no food,” he says.

As it stands now in Holland, “What is happening with farms is not really their business. People can go to the supermarket, and most everything they want they can buy there,” Baltus observes, saying he understands this disconnection.

Even if there are changes to the mix of foods available in stores and restaurants, there is no fear of finding food to eat. While Holland is considered a large agricultural exporter, Baltus notes that his country is a net-importer of food when looking at it on a protein and energy needs basis. 

“We have the cheese and potatoes and cabbage, but we don’t have the coffee, the cocoa and the citrus. I see it in the way of trading. When that balance is lost, what happens when there is a shortage and we don’t have the cheese or potatoes to export?”

The bottom line, says Baltus, is that “When you are a carpenter or a plumber and there is, every day, food in the supermarket, why would you have to worry about food?

“In Africa, they know food is important. They know what it is like to not have food. But in the western world, there is food everywhere. You can pick up the phone, and in 30 minutes have a pizza on your plate.”

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