Who Isn't Doing Shit To Prepare Farmers For Rapid Climate Breakdown? The Farm Bureau Federation
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Despite the existential threat that climate change poses to farming and food security, the Farm Bureau has never included climate action in its list of priorities. The group doesn't concede the extent of human influence over the climate, promoting a mindset that has taken root among many farmers. The Farm Bureau "is not a scientific organization, nor do we have climate scientists on staff," wrote a spokesman in an emailed response to questions from InsideClimate News. "Our policy positions focus on the regulatory costs-and-benefits of policies in reaction to climate change."
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Some intersecting interests of farming and fossil fuels are obvious. Diesel propels trucks and tractors. Natural gas is used to make fertilizer. Propane and natural gas dry grain and run heating and ventilation of livestock barns. Despite the notable spread of wind and solar energy in major farm states, rural electric coops burn mostly fossil fuels to light up the countryside — and are backing off coal slower than other utilities. The Farm Bureau has focused on this deep reliance on fossil fuels to argue that policies to cut greenhouse gases would lead to skyrocketing costs and threaten the survival of American agriculture.
But the alliance goes deeper. State Farm Bureaus are the building blocks of the American Farm Bureau Federation, and over the years, they organized local farmers' cooperatives that run refineries and directly sell billions of dollars of fuel, alongside seeds and supplies. Less visibly, but more significantly, some state Farm Bureaus hold stakes in insurance companies whose for-profit investment funds hold millions of dollars of securities. The Iowa Farm Bureau's insurance business, through its fund, held investments last year of about $462 million in fossil fuel corporations, according to financial statements.
For decades, these links fostered a powerful alliance between the Farm Bureau and the fossil fuel lobby. Agriculture was historically a conservative force, the more so after the first local Farm Bureaus were set up a century ago as a counterweight to the progressive populism sweeping the Great Plains. Resistance to regulation, like the need for cheap fuel and fertilizer, fed the Farm Bureau's reliable support for drilling in offshore waters and in the Arctic wilderness.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24102018/farm-bureau-climate-change-denial-farmers-crop-insurance-subsidies-drought-future-at-risk
