The EPA conducted a big "listening session" about the Clean Power Plan here in KC yesterday and the interested public could give testimony. I did , too, and by a very peculiar coincidence was in the same of four who shared a microphone with an official representative of the Missouri Farm Bureau. This gentleman spoke strongly against the Clean Power Plan and also got very political about it. One of his other arguments was that it made energy costs too high for farmers. When it was my turn I said that although I also was a member of the MFB as an organic vegetable farmer I looked upon the issue from an entire different angle: Business costs are tax deductible, but I have a hard time to offset the palpable effects climate change already has on our operation with torrential downpours at one time and then extended drought periods following. We all like to eat and that we shouldn't jeopardize that for possible short-term financial reasons. I pointed out the fact that barley as a crop has already all but disappeared from the Midwest since it has gotten too warm for it and that it isn't even grown in the Dakotas, where corn and soy beans have taken over. I concluded we should rather err on the side of caution and do everything we can to reduce climate change.
A number of people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for showing a different side of farmer.