Rural America Is Ready for Some Sort of a New Deal, Preferably Green

by Art Cullen (The Guardian) Here in farming country we have the opportunity to rethink our approach to renewable energy and food production -- ... Meanwhile, we’re losing our precious topsoil and polluting our rivers – killing the Gulf of Mexico in the process – as we chase ever-higher corn yields in a vain bid to cut a profit on thin commodity markets. Iowa is losing soil four to five times faster than it can be regrown – already yields and crop quality are declining because of it, which ultimately leads to higher food prices with less nutrition.

The Great Plains from Iowa down through Kansas and Texas lead the world in wind energy production. Yet the wind energy production tax credit is set to wane and expire over the next five years. Those wind turbine royalties are increasingly important in western Kansas where you can barely raise a corn crop even with irrigation because of soil degradation and warmer nights wrought by climate change. Wind energy technicians who keep the blades whirring are paid good union wages and are welcome residents in tiny Iowa villages. They could ply their trade in West Virginia as well.

Wind, solar and renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel have strong appeal in rural areas. While corn-based ethanol presents environmental challenges from growing the feedstock, it presents a pathway to new sustainable fuels production using everything from algae to switchgrass. A fair deal doesn’t cut out corn growers, but helps them find a new way to live amid a landscape transformed by torrential rains in spring and fall. Farmers are looking at new revenue sources as they have lost money five straight years trying to make a living from eroding commodity markets. New, regional food economies that keep local profits local are just starting to take shape if only they could find seed money to organize them to survive.

The concentration of food resources into the hands of a few – four firms produce most of the nation’s meat, and two are foreign-owned – can be regulated or even dispersed by finally enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act, written just before FDR’s New Deal. But no attorney general or agriculture secretary has had the political muscle to actually enforce the act that demands open and transparent markets and guards against exploitation of farmers through contracted production. And, the Trump administration disbanded the Packers and Stockyards Administration enabled by that historic law.

Enforcement could lead to a more diverse food supply network that rewards resiliency in agriculture. And it would be welcomed. But the reverse is happening on all fronts.

The Conservation Stewardship Program is designed to bring cattle out of unsustainable feedlots and back on to lush grass. It rewards farmers who implement conservation plans and adopt rotational grazing practices that reduce chemical use, capture carbon from the atmosphere and into the soil, and restore soil health through microbial renewal. Yet Congress cut that program’s funding in half in the latest five-year farm bill. The Conservation Reserve Program’s acreage has been cut by a quarter in the last decade for lack of funds. Meanwhile, crop insurance is expanded to cover adventurism as those stressed younger farmers are forced to plant up to the riverbank to make their rent.

But there is a new conversation taking place among old farmers and declining rural communities, that a New Deal is better than a raw deal or no deal at all for rural America. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Examiner: JOHN HICKENLOOPER SUPPORTS ‘URGENCY’ OF GREEN NEW DEAL:Centrist Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper told energy industry officials at CERAWeek Thursday that he supports the “urgency” of the Green New Deal, and said climate change requires “hard and fast” action.

"Obviously it's a very ambitious and maybe excessively ambitious goal," said Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor, in comments reported by the Houston Chronicle. "I understand this room is probably divided, but I have come down more and more a sense of urgency is required."

Hickenlooper, who was once a geologist for an oil company, has worked cooperatively with industry, and is more centrist in his environmental approach than most of his competitors, many of whom have wholeheartedly endorsed the Green New Deal.

Hickenlooper, governor from 2011 to earlier this year, oversaw an oil and gas boom in Colorado, with it becoming one of America’s top producing states. He opposed a controversial ballot measure that failed in November which would have curbed fracking in the state.

MCCONNELL READIES VOTE ON GREEN NEW DEAL: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., filed cloture Thursday on the Green New Deal, teeing up a vote on the nonbinding resolution after next week’s recess period, likely the week of March 25. READ MORE