Editorial

Like many of our readers, we are worried about HR2445, the 1,000-page climate change bill now before the U.S. Senate. One month ago, it was good to hear Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack say "there are significant opportunities for agriculture and forestry" in the carbon-trading provisions of the legislation.

That's why, with great disappointment, we watched the secretary head to Capitol Hill last week, where the Senate Agriculture Committee is taking measure of the bill. Vilsack showed up armed with a "report" authored by U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

It's 13 pages long, doesn't include any forecast of how woodland owners might benefit from a viable market for capturing carbon and looks at impacts nationwide on only eight crops and broad sectors of the livestock industry. There is an assumption that some owners of pasture and cropland, including many in the Pacific Coast states, will want to switch to growing timber during the next 40 or so years.

As that assumption is played out, there's a separate debate over whether a government-sanctioned carbon bank would require those growing trees to leave them standing or allow harvest.

The USDA paper claims farmers as a whole will make more money than they lose as a result of this bill. You couldn't prove it with a 13-page paper made nice by a few colorful graphs.

Among those who balked at USDA's assumptions is a man who should know, Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. He's one of Vilsack's predecessors at USDA, with more than a passing knowledge of agricultural statistics.

"Different studies come up with varying numbers, but they all paint the same picture: Agriculture loses. None of this should surprise anyone, because the bill is specifically designed to increase the cost of energy," Johanns said in a July 20 Senate speech.

He called for more hearings by the Senate ag panel and predicted to The Associated Press that HR2454 doesn't have the votes to pass the full Senate.

Among our concerns, in addition to the broad-brush assumptions used for those crops covered -- corn, sorghum, barley, oats, wheat, rice and cotton -- is the lack of meaningful analysis of how rising input prices and feed shortages impact livestock operations. We need some idea of how much pasture and hay ground will go if, as the USDA paper indicates, owners put in trees instead of growing forage.

USDA also owes the tens of thousands of vegetable and fruit producers an estimate of the impact on their farms. In fact, the USDA paper didn't even make an attempt to predict impact of cap and trade on a state-by-state basis.

All of this puts us where we were one month ago: Let's take it slow and get it right. The price for doing otherwise may wreck significant portions of the nation's food production system.

This newspaper has long called for figuring out what can be done to err on the side of caution in the face of global climate change predictions. The solution shouldn't ruin the livelihoods of producers.