WASHINGTON — U.S. senators on the Budget Committee dug into the impacts of climate change on farming during a Wednesday hearing, raising concerns about what the next few decades hold for food production and the way of life.
But Republicans and representatives of farm groups pushed back against increased government regulation. Brent Johnson, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and a fifth-generation farmer, said farmers tend to respond better to incentives for new programs, rather than penalties.
“I think progress is always made better with carrots instead of sticks,” Johnson said. “Voluntary, incentive-based programs have made a lot of positive progress in agriculture in the entire history of the industry.”
Chair Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the country’s agriculture landscape is being upended by a series of droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes that have harmed farmers and contributed to rising grocery bills for consumers.
“Unpredictable weather has always been a challenge to raising crops and livestock, but farmers are seeing more frequent and extreme weather variability than ever before,” Whitehouse said. “Events that used to be considered anomalies now occur with increasing regularity.”
Whitehouse noted that federal programs “that protect growers and stabilize the agricultural economy move the costs of damaging weather to the federal government.”
During fiscal 2022, Whitehouse said, the U.S. government paid out $15 billion for crop insurance, including over $11.6 billion in premium subsidies.
During three years of an emergency relief program, he said, the federal government disbursed more than $7.4 billion to assist agriculture producers in addition to the wildfire and hurricane indemnity program.
“As climate change makes farming and raising livestock more unpredictable, that cost will continue to grow,” Whitehouse said.
Farming and the environment
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member on the panel, noted that “farmers’ relationship with the environment is often difficult for folks” who haven’t experienced the challenges of farming to understand.
“Family farms want to make sure that they leave the land better for the next generation than when it was entrusted to their care,” Grassley said.
A lifelong farmer himself, Grassley said, “the first step to running a sustainable farm is for the farm at least to be able to pay the bills. Only then can a farmer implement practices that reduce emissions and improve soil health.”
Martin Larsen, a fifth-generation farmer near Byron, Minnesota, told the committee that crop diversification is one of the ways he and other farmers in his region are trying to lessen the impacts of severe weather.
Larsen said that because different crops are harvested at different times of the year, that can prevent a farmer from losing an entire harvest.
