By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Sen. Richard Lugar is patiently awaiting changes, positive changes that will affect the future of agriculture, energy independence and the general mood of America. Like most Republicans, he is frustrated with the Obama Administration’s policies.

“Two years of gridlock doesn’t work,” Lugar told a gathering of energy and farm advocates on Monday. “We need to get rid of congressional Democrats, then President Obama, then we can start to make positive changes.”

He also sees his own party in a mode of “just say no,” which perhaps has also hampered negotiations.

In upcoming congressional elections, Lugar predicts there could be a record number of new Senate members – maybe one-fifth of the Senate body – all jumping into the middle of these debates.
Lugar is the U.S. Senate’s most senior Republican and longest-serving U.S. senator in Indiana history, beginning his senatorial career in 1976. Lugar still manages his 604-acre Marion County farm, and is one of only three U.S. senators actively involved in agriculture production.

He sees two broad developments in agriculture that will intersect. First, the farm budget will likely get a smaller piece of the USDA pie, with perhaps 70 percent of its budget going to food stamps and the school lunch programs. Secondly, farm subsidies - particularly the cotton, sugar and rice industries - will be even more scrutinized by global agricultural players. Brazil’s recent outcry over cotton subsidies resulted in funds “quietly sent” to that country, actions that frustrate Lugar.

U.S. agriculture and GMOs, in particular, are also caught up in debates with the European Union, who believe “you don’t tamper with Mother Nature.”

But Lugar said there is good news in exports.

Russia has stopped all exports from its country because of a drought, China is now importing soybeans and underdeveloped countries in Africa are looking to expand their traditional granular diets. “American agricultural exports could be very dynamic in coming years,” he said. “It puts the pressure on Purdue and other research universities to get the yields up.”

But there is a different point of view coming from administrators and the EPA, Lugar said, citing the current “dust bowl” situations surrounding Indiana’s harvest in the midst of a drought.

“How do you farm without dust?” Lugar quipped, referring to the EPA’s Clean Air Act, which often works against production agriculture. “You have dust, then the chemicals that might be in the dust, then the dust and chemicals that may invade the water supply.”

On championing energy independence, Lugar cited Brazil’s automobile ratio of 75 percent flex-fuel vehicles with ample access to corn ethanol at the pumps.

“That’s just a dream in the U.S.,” he said. “There is always enormous resistance with the auto industries, and total resistance to corn ethanol or soy diesel, at all. The oil industries are in total opposition.”

Lugar said the situation began years ago when a president announced that America had an “energy addiction.”

“The fact is, neither the President nor Congress are moving in a concerted way to make it different,” he said.

Lugar introduced his Practical Energy and Climate Plan, targeting “policies that can bring real money and energy savings while providing flexible frameworks that encourage investment in a more secure energy future.”

Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, in introducing Lugar, said the bill is “based on science, not rhetoric.”

Points in the bill regarding foreign oil dependence include:
•Vehicle efficiency standards for passenger vehicles

•Vehicle efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by 2017

•Fuel efficiency performance program, rewarding purchase of the most efficient vehicle by class with a rebate off-set by a fee on the least efficient vehicle in the same class

•Reverse auction for advanced biofuels, expanding the current Energy Department program to include all renewable feedstocks except grain and increases authorized funding levels

•Production of flex-fuel vehicles now so that sufficient biofuels-capable vehicles will be on the road in the future

Energy efficiency sections deal with construction of buildings for energy performance, construction of federal buildings to exceed national standards when possible, a building retrofit program, rural energy savings, and industrial, appliance and equipment efficiency.
In addition, the bill calls for retirement of the oldest, most polluting coal plants and expanded loan guarantees for nuclear power, which “promises cleaner domestic electricity generation.”

In formulating the energy-efficiency sections of his bill, Lugar said he used models from the Empire State Building down to the most modest country dwelling.

In promoting the bill, he said, “We now have the avenue to move forward on energy independence.”

Charlie Smith, president and CEO of CountryMark, an Indiana cooperative and one of the smallest oil refineries in the country, spoke briefly on the industry.

“One of the things that is evident to me in speaking about American energy is that it is not about foreign vs. American energy, but renewables vs. fossil fuel.”

He questioned the subsidies tossed at the biofuels industries and wonders about their long-term viability. Lawmakers seem indifferent to the fact that those industries can only operate with subsidies.

“That’s the debate we’ve seen,” Smith said, “while the oil industry is a proven viable industry.”