Climate 411

The Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture

Britt Lundgren's profileAt first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine’s farmers.

Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine’s raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.

No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer’s wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.

Read More »

Posted in News / Comments are closed

The Final Farm Bill: Global Warming Tally

Britt LundgrenThis post is by Britt Lundgren, an agricultural policy specialist at Environmental Defense Fund.

Last month I posted about the gridlock over the 2008 Farm Bill, and discussed how different programs in the Farm Bill might impact global warming. The conference report (final version of the bill) has now been issued, and Congress is scheduled to vote on it today.

How did it turn out? The final bill includes important new investments in conservation, but doesn’t do enough to expand and improve conservation programs, or reform our antiquated system of farm subsidies.

Here are the details.

Read More »

Posted in News / Read 2 Responses

Why the Farm Bill Matters for Global Warming

Britt LundgrenThis post is by Britt Lundgren, an agricultural policy specialist at Environmental Defense Fund.

You may have heard about the gridlock over the 2008 Farm Bill, which was supposed to have been signed into law already, but hasn’t yet. Versions of the bill have passed both the House and the Senate. Now the bill is "in conference" to resolve differences over new spending and offsets to pay for the bill.

It’s unclear whether the conference will produce a bill that the President will sign. The President has repeatedly threatened a veto, saying he wants more reform of our antiquated system of crop subsidies (a point on which we strongly concur – see my guest post on Grist).

Still, there is much we stand to lose if Congress and the President can’t agree on a good a new Farm Bill. The 2008 bill includes significant new funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s voluntary conservation incentives programs and renewable energy programs.

Read More »

Posted in News / Read 2 Responses