With sustainability and environmental awareness an ever-growing movement, agriculture has risen as a major player in the game.
This is why more than 20 agriculture groups and organizations have banded together to form the Farmers for a Sustainable Future (FSF)—a coalition committed to environmental and economic sustainability. The group’s mission is to serve as a primary resource for law and policymakers as climate legislation begins to develop.
“Whether you believe in climate change or not, or anything in between—our members on the producer side run the gamut on that front—I’ve been saying it doesn’t matter what you believe; the reality is our consumers who are buying beef products are concerned about these issues,” Scott Yager, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) chief environmental counsel told WLJ.
This is why NCBA, along with other organizations such as American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union and a slurry of crop organizations, have joined together to share agricultural data with those making the rules in D.C.
Yager said the group has been working behind the scenes for the past year, meeting with the House Agriculture Committee, majority and minority staff members in both the Senate and House of Representatives, senior political officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, and others.
“We’ve been doing a lot of the ground game already for the past year—last week’s announcement was the outward-facing press event announcing to the world, to media, that we exist, we’re here and this is what we’re doing,” Yager said.
Guiding principles
“Livestock and crop production are the backbone of American agriculture, and ensuring they continue sustainably is critical for future success,” read an FSF fact sheet.
“But, that report and other reports from the UN continue to paint livestock as a major culprit in climate emissions.”
“Building upon the strong foundation of voluntary stewardship investments and practices, including those in the farm bill, we look forward to working with policymakers to further advance the successful sustainable practices used by U.S. agricultural producers.”
To achieve this goal, FSF has a guiding set of principles it plans to follow.
“We want to make sure [policymakers] know what ag is all about, as well as what the real facts are, and showing what our coalition agrees upon as far as what our major overarching policy principles are,” Yager said. “Not only do we want to get the right data out there, but we are here to be a sounding board for policymakers and we support certain things.”
FSF is supportive of voluntary incentive-based programs, science-driven data and research, and outcome-based goals.
“If climate legislation comes around that meets all those buckets, then we may be in a position as a coalition to be supportive of it,” he added.
The reason for formation
Yager said FSF was formed as a result of a roundtable a year ago. This was during the time period when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14) proposed her Green New Deal, a plan to address climate change and economic inequality. The plan was widely met with criticism from the agriculture industry, which felt the proposal contained inaccurate information about agriculture’s impact on the environment.
At the roundtable, a number of the groups now a part of FSF agreed there was a need for agriculture organizations to join the climate and sustainability conversation.
“The whole idea was we want to make sure policymakers in D.C. know the real data that underlies our ag system in the U.S.” Yager said. “U.S. agriculture is often mischaracterized for global emission numbers.”
Yager explained a lot of the mischaracterization is a result of reports put out by the United Nations (UN). In 2006, the UN put out a report called Livestock’s Long Shadow, which called the livestock industries a major culprit in climate change emissions—even more so than the transportation sector.
“The whole idea was we want to make sure policymakers in D.C. know the real data that underlies our ag system in the U.S.”
“That report has been largely discredited,” Yager said, “But, that report really colored the conversation for us back in 2006 and people still think about it today.”
In the report, every aspect of the livestock industry was analyzed for its effect on the environment, down to additives in feed. For transportation’s effect, only tail pipe emissions were analyzed. Yager said it was comparing apples to oranges.
“But, that report and other reports from the UN continue to paint livestock as a major culprit in climate emissions. That is just not true when you look at the U.S,” Yager said. “How we do it here is much more efficient and conservation-minded, and because of that, our emissions from the beef cattle sector are 10-50 times lower than the rest of the world.”
With USDA Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue’s recently announced sustainability target goals for agriculture, Yager feels there is an opportunity for FSF and USDA to work together.
“[USDA] has some really lofty and bold targets and goals, and timelines associated with them—regardless of whether I support those or not, there may be a way for us to play a role as a coalition to make sure USDA is going in the right direction and being as helpful as they can,” Yager said. — Anna Miller, WLJ editor
