For all of the folks that are giddy at the prospect of the government running our healthcare system, and pretty much every other aspect of our lives they might take a minute to read this, if it’s any indication the current administration’s grasp on reality we are in big trouble:
“…the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.”
It turns out that the House Climate Bill has more than a few little nasty surprises in it, not least of which might be an exponentially larger grocery bill for the average American.
As if it’s not bad enough that the idiotic ethanol program has been foisted upon the American consumer, whereby we can deplete the ancient aquifers of the Midwest and burn millions of tons of food at the same time, now the Democrat controlled Congress in collusion with a number of treacherous RINO’s wants to burden our nation with an even more outrageous program, this one tied to the said Climate Bill (read Cap and Tax).
As we find out from this article, these mental midgets have decided that growing food just doesn’t absorb enough of that dreaded substance known as carbon. You know; that same substance that we learned about in sixth grade science, the building block of life. Yes carbon, very bad. Not to worry though, the government has decided to simply convert 59 million acres of prime farm land to forest. That’s right 59 million acres. That’s an area quite a bit larger than the State that Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has called home for the last thirty or so years. You would think that even though Vilsack has no experience as a farmer and is by trade a lawyer he still might have some clue as to just how big a 59 million acre cornfield is.
According to the USDA’s own figures the total acres planted in corn and soybeans last year came in at around 160 million acres. We can quickly see that the Obama’s Cap and Tax plan would take almost 37% of the nation’s most productive farmland out of the food producing business permanently. This is an area considerably larger than Vilsack’s home state of Iowa.
I suppose that the good news is that the Fed will quantitatively ease the money supply so much that we’ll able to afford a trip to the grocery store no matter how expensive. But can I ask what happens to all the folks in the developing nations that are depending upon cheap grain in order to feed themselves and their families? Can the liberals look any of them in the eye as their child starves for lack of grain or will they simply tell them to eat bark? We will have 59 million acres of it afterall.



10 Comments







Oh come on. It’s barely worth debunking the hooey here…
Please put your facts where your mouth is. The article speaks for itself.
Agreed. Only link provided is to the Moonie Times.
Government isn’t the solution–Government is the problem!
Originally his chief economist Joe Glauber testified to Congress that up to 59 million acres of pasture and cropland could be converted by 2050 under a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gases.
http://farmfutures.com/blogs.aspx?fcb=21&fcbp=1008&fcbpc=0&s=11/21/2009&e=1/21/2010
Washington, D.C. — More than 20 million acres of cropland in Iowa and other Corn Belt states would likely be converted to forests under a congressional plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to an Agriculture Department analysis released today.
About 59 million acres of land nationwide would be converted to forest by 2050 because of the carbon-offset program, the analysis showed.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091218/BUSINESS/91218018/USDA–Climate-bill-would-slash-cropland
Do you need more? Thanks.
Well, let’s see…you call it cap and tax for one.
For two, there are 922 million acres of farmland in America:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States
So that means, if these projections are accurate, 5% would be converted? Hollyyyyy shiiiiiittt! That’s a huge problem.
I love my libertarians as much as the next guy, but you’re on a liberal site, so you should probably keep your diary topics to areas of common ground.
I happen to live in farm country and unlike our farm secratary I have spent quite a bit of time down on the farm. Let me inform you that there is a heck of a lot of difference between the rock strewn wheat ground of western Kansas or the apple orchards of Michigan. If you had taken the time to read the articles I cited, and you obviously didn’t, you might have realized that the land they are talking about setting aside specifically refers to the corn and soybean acres that I mentioned in my piece. There’s a reason that corn and soybeans are raised on those acres and not on the supposed other 900 million you speak of and that relates to water availabilty and soil type. Believe me if the wheat farmers could raise corn and make money they would, they simply can’t. Corn and soybeans are raised pretty much every where they can be already and contrary to your delusional postulation acres are in fact limited.
From your linked article:
Wow…5% in 40 years. I’m sure we can figure out a way to ameliorate this huuuuuuge problem by then.
The model is toast my friend. If you over a third of the corn and soybean land is put out of production you can rest assured your cost of groceries will go up a lot more then four or five percent. that’s economics 101. It’s obvious though that I was mistaken about one thing, I thought a liberal might be able to put the kool-aid down long enough to have a reasonable discussion with someone of a libertarian bent. I was wrong.
Good substantiation for all that.
Anyway, like I said, stick to common ground when you post here if you want to continue to post here. This is a liberal site and that’s not changing. There is a lot of overlap these days with liberal and libertarian ideas, and there have been good discussions on them. Feel free to explore that.