By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The health care bill, climate change legislation, estate tax and animal welfare were some of the issues Bob Stallman, American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) president talked about with reporters during a recent visit to Ohio.

AFBF has concerns about how the health care bill will affect rural health care and what it may mean for farmers and ranchers as small business people and as employers.

“The first things we were concerned about were mandates for individuals to be required to have insurance,” Stallman said. “Our policy and our philosophy is generally against government mandates of that nature.”

Mandating that farmers and ranchers, who possibly can’t afford health insurance, must have it, isn’t going to help the problem unless something is in place that reduces the cost of health care, he said.

“A lot of details have to be written, but at the end of the day we are skeptical that it (the health care bill) will actually bring down health care costs and that it will actually be anything, but an additional economic burden for farmers and ranchers,” he said.

While the Waxman-Markey climate change bill which passed the House will probably not reach the Senate, there is an effort by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to craft some kind of alternative, Stallman said.

AFBF is involved in those discussions, but is opposed to a carbon tax, mandatory cap and trade and “frankly any structure that undermines U.S. agriculture as an industry,” Stallman said.
Also, the U.S. EPA was given about a 35 percent increase in funding at the end of 2009 and it appears they are ready to circumvent Congress, Stallman said. That agency is ready to move forward with greenhouse gas regulations under their interpretation of the Clean Air Act and the authority it gives them.

“We fully believe that their so-called endangerment finding was a flawed process; we have actually challenged that in federal court and there are other groups monitoring similar challenges,” Stallman said. “But they’re ready to regulate if they’re not stopped by the courts or put on hold by Congress in some fashion.”

Under current law, if the EPA moves ahead with their version of greenhouse gas regulation based on what the actual law in the Clean Air Act said, over 90 percent of livestock operations would ultimately be brought into that regulation and that is not acceptable to AFBF, Stallman said.

The estate tax situation is in a state of flux, Stallman said. Democrats and Republicans agree that the issue needs to be addressed this year before the first of 2011, when the issue reverts back to what it was 10 years ago.

Calling the efforts by HSUS and other activist groups to restrict modern livestock production “probably one of the greatest threats facing livestock production in this country,” Stallman said that Ohio, which passed legislation to form the Livestock Care Standards Board, has been on the frontlines.

The Humane Society of the United States plans to try to overturn that vote in the next election. Farm Bureau’s goal is to defeat that attempt.

“I don’t know how it is in Ohio, but in Texas if an outside group with a huge amount of money comes in and tries to dictate what Texans should believe in or vote for in terms of a referendum they frankly would be rejected,” Stallman said.

Stallman, a rice and cattle producer from Columbus, Texas, was elected president of the AFBF in 2000.