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Carbon credits face distance between science and practice

By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Scientists and policymakers can propose ideas for farmers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and “carbon footprint” – but short of laws mandating such things, they need the cooperation of those farmers to put those ideas into practice.

That’s not always easy. Not all farmers are on board with the causes or even existence of global warming, pointed out a professor with Southern Illinois University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. She was one of many attendees of the Farm Foundation’s “Transition to a Bio Economy” conference in St. Louis last week – at which human contribution to climate change was oft discussed.
“I teach some of those farm kids,” said Silvia Secchi. “They don’t believe in global warming.”

Bill Hohenstein, of the USDA Global Change Program Office, replied that global warming is not “like the Easter Bunny” – it exists even if somebody doesn’t believe in it. But Jimmy Daukas of the American Farmland Trust, who gave a presentation indicating he does believe in global warming, agreed in part with Secchi.

“If you just get a group of farmers in a room,” many do express skepticism about global warming and/or the man-made reasons cited for it, he said.

Secchi, an ag economist, told federal and private policymakers and scientists that if they want future farmers to understand such issues, they need to get university extension educators on board, and others who have direct contact with farmers and ag students; Daukas agreed.

Secchi also said any such programs would require monitoring, and that the Natural Resources Conservation Service (which oversees conservation programs) is already underfunded.

“I believe in the science (of global warming),” she explained – so much, that she’s invited a climatologist to speak to her students in the near future. But, “if people don’t believe it, they’re not going to do something that costs them.”

Media role in perception

But if some farmers are in doubt about global warming, Sara Wyant pointed out there are people, in turn, who are in doubt about farmers and what they do – especially when it comes to issues such as GHGs and conservation.

Wyant, a longtime ag journalist and head of Agri-Pulse Communications, said she often sees reporters and editors with mainstream publications creating a “chasm” between rural dwellers and urbanites.

“Some of them just don’t ‘get it’” about agriculture, she charged, adding while rural America does have its share of critics of such as “food versus fuel,” most of those residents do “get it” – what she termed the positive economic effect that ag-related development, such as farming, wind farms and ethanol plants, has on small towns.

“It is possible to produce not only current commodities, but some of these new sustainable crops,” she said, adding that farmers are environmentalists, since there is no gain for them in a “policy of destruction.”

In another example, Wyant explained her son, in high school, was assigned a paper about the possible use for a piece of land his teacher had taken the class to see – his choices for essay, she said, clearly indicated the teacher strongly favored leaving the land alone rather than even growing anything on it.

When Wyant made suggestions as to how he could write about sustainable agriculture or biofuel algae “farming” that would use the wetlands while keeping them in place, he countered with: “You have some good ideas. Do you want me to write that, or do you want me to get an A?”

“Clearly, there’s an educational opportunity,” she said – for agriculture to set the record straight. Not just through media, she explained, but also in schools and even in Congress, where most lawmakers don’t understand what it is modern farmers do.
Of course, getting that chance isn’t always easy, but for right now, Wyant pointed out that high fuel prices have made most Americans an excellent potential audience to learn more about not just biofuel replacement but also other ag issues – if ag educators figure out how to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Even as prices temporarily lower (right now), that’s not going to last,” she pointed out, “and we have an opportunity to bring people together to talk about some of these tough choices” in land use and environment.

10/22/2008