Colorado is blessed with natural resources vital to renewable energy development. Whether it is bright sunlight, strong and consistent winds, or abundant supplies of biomass from agriculture and forestry, Colorado can reap the benefits of the new energy economy. Our abundant natural resources are supported by thriving research and development network, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, outside of Denver. Colorado has the resources, the know-how, and even the workforce we need to meet our ever-growing demand for energy. Rural America is where the need for new jobs is most acute, and rural Colorado is no exception. Renewable energy development can put rural Americans to work.

But that won’t happen unless the Farm Bill continues to promote renewable energy development. Renewable energy depends upon developing energy resources on our rural lands, and the Farm Bill plays a major role in those efforts. What we call “the Farm Bill” is the primary federal support for our nation’s agricultural productivity, but the bulk of the bill funds food support programs for the disadvantaged, and it also provides programs to ensure national energy security. Today the farm bill is under threat of significant cuts, and renewable energy programs, a small but vital part, are particularly targeted.

The Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) could lose its funding. REAP provides grants and loan guarantees to farmers and rural communities for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Every state has rural areas rich in renewable resources, and REAP guarantees bring development projects within reach. REAP projects in every state are creating jobs in rural America, contributing to U.S. energy security, and promoting new markets for agriculture.

Two other vital programs are the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) and the Biorefinery Assistance Program. BCAP encourages farmers to grow dedicated energy crops, and the Biorefinery Assistance Program provides grants and loan guarantees for the construction of advanced biorefineries. Biomass energy has tremendous potential, especially in Colorado. Today, the main biomass feedstocks for power are paper mill residue, lumber mill scrap, and municipal waste. Agricultural residues such as corn stalks, leaves, and husks show great promise, as do crops like perennial grasses and algae. BCAP and the Biorefinery Assistance Program are vital to continued development of this technology.

With a robust energy title in the next farm bill, Congress can help farmers and others in rural America become more energy efficient and more profitable. Congress can ensure that we develop new markets for agricultural and forestry producers. With federal support, farmers and ranchers can continue to make a vital contribution to our food and energy needs, which are crucial to national security. These are all goals worth achieving even in tough economic times.

Farmers and ranchers understand the importance of a balanced budget. But it’s a false economy to cut programs that will lead to significant economic growth. Renewable energy is a rapidly growing industry. We should not handicap our country’s economic growth by cutting vital farm bill energy programs such as REAP, BCAP and Biorefinery Assistance.

As Congress searches for budget savings, please take a moment to tell your representatives that you support the energy title in the Farm Bill.

At 3 p.m on November 17, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union will host a public meeting at Cheyenne Little America to examine the problem of creating transmission corridors to deliver renewable energy to customers eager for this clean energy.

The panel will be moderated by former PUC commissioner Ron Lehr. Speakers include Craig Knoell (Transmission Infrastructure Manager for the Western Area Power Administration), Loyd Drain (Executive Director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority), Brent Orr (President, Cornerstone Transco) and RMFU Director of Renewable Energy Development Bill Midcap.

The panel will look at obstacles and challenges to corridor development. It will offer a new model for cooperative corridor development that includes landowners in the research and development process, provides those in the corridor with fair compensation for the use of their property, and promises to facilitate the build-out necessary if we are to shift our energy use to clean, renewable sources.

Craig Knoell will provide an update on WAPA’s existing transmission infrastructure plan, and Loyd Drain will discuss implications of transmission issues in Wyoming. Bill Midcap will introduce an RMFU white paper on landowner alliances to facilitate corridor development through collective bargaining and annual payments for corridor easements. Brent Orr will discuss his experiences putting into action the ideas presented in the white paper.

The white paper (click for PDF), prepared by the RMFU Foundation’s Renewable Energy Development Center, will be distributed at the panel, which will begin at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17. This event is open to the public.

The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) Cooperative Development Center learned this week that it has been awarded a Rural Cooperative Development Grant of $225,000, which will be used to foster and promote cooperative businesses in rural Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
Announcing the awards to RMFU and 35 other organizations in 26 states, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “These grants help cooperatives support local projects and initiatives that create jobs and improve rural economic conditions.”

Colorado Senator Mark Udall sent his congratulations to RMFU. “Investing in rural Colorado is a critical piece to our economic recovery,” Senator Udall said, “and I am pleased that RMFU will continue its focus on spurring rural economies so that we can ensure farming and ranching remain a part of Colorado’s way of life.”

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, which represents family farming and ranching in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, has been a leader in cooperative development for many years. Since the founding of the Cooperative Development Center in 1996, RMFU has helped create, manage and sustain more than 100 cooperative businesses.

As part of a three-day legislative visit coordinated by National Farmers Union, members of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union met with Interior Secretary Salazar today in Washington, D.C. The group presented Salazar with a banner carried in the Manassa Pioneer Days parade to recognize his commitment to addressing national problems without causing local ones. Secretary Salazar’s family roots are in Manassa, with many generations of farming in Colorado’s San Luis Valley.

As the Interior Department prepares to update a key federal plan for developing solar projects on public lands in six Western states, RMFU members urged the Secretary to protect traditional land uses, natural resources, and rural families. They provided the Secretary with their on-the-ground perspective about the importance of siting solar plants and transmission lines in a way that will serve local communities, protect the public lands and sustain the region’s agricultural economy and natural heritage.

“Our members support responsible solar development in the San Luis Valley and throughout the West,” Midcap said. “Solar farms are spreading across the country, and many more will be developed in the near future. The Secretary’s personal leadership is the key to ensuring that solar energy is developed in a directed and responsible way.”

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, which represents family farming and ranching in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, has been a leader in rural renewable energy development for many years.

RMFU President Kent Peppler praised Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s announcement today that Interior will look closely at water issues and agricultural impacts as the discussion of oil shale development moves forward. “Secretary Salazar described water use as an essential issue in the oil shale debate, and we couldn’t agree more,” Peppler said. “Most of the oil shale lands are on the Colorado River basin, which has been over-allocated from the beginning of the interstate compact. We need to know how much water oil shale developers need, where they expect to get it, and what condition it will be in when they are through with it. Agriculture is the cornerstone of Colorado’s economy and the basis for America’s food security. The secretary understands this, and we urge him to keep it in his thoughts as we move forward slowly on oil shale development.”

In cooperation with R-CALF USA and Colorado Independent Cattle Growers, RMFU is sponsoring workshops in Colorado and Wyoming to help farmers and ranchers prepare for the USDA/DoJ hearing in Fort Collins on August 27, which will focus on livestock markets.

On August 27,for the first time since the creation of the Department of Agriculture by President Lincoln, the USDA and the Department of Justice will hold a joint meeting. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are scheduled to attend.

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard will make a whirlwind tour of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming during the fi rst week of August. His presentation, Under Siege, documents the concentration of cattle markets and the impact on both consumer prices and producer revenues. The workshop (see schedule, right) will prepare attendees with details on how corporate control of the market has driven consumer costs up while crushing the “wholesale” value of the independent ranchers’ livestock to little more than the cost of production.

We need to preserve the future of rural America and the independent livestock producer who cares about land, cattle and consumers. Bullard’s presentation will explain the threat to rural economies and to the American family farmer and rancher, leaders in agriculture for the world.

Livestock Meetings Schedule

Monday, Aug 2 – Delta, Colo.
Bill Heddles Recreation Center
530 Gunnison River Drive, Delta, Colorado
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Tuesday, Aug 3 – Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Steamboat Springs Community Center
1605 Lincoln Avenue, Steamboat Springs, Colorado
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Wednesday, Aug 4 – Lander, Wyo.
Oxbow Restaurant
170 Main St, Lander, Wyoming
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

Thursday, Aug 5 – Laramie, Wyo.
Ramada Center Hotel
I-80 & Hwy 287, Laramie, Wyoming
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Friday, Aug 6 – Julesburg, Colo.
Sedgwick County Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall
Julesburg, Colorado
7:00 PM – 9 PM

Thursday, Aug 12 – Burlington, Colo.
Burlington Livestock Exchange
Burlington, Colo.
11:00 AM – 1 PM
Thursday, Aug 12 – La Junta, Colo.
La Junta Senior Center
La Junta, Colo.
7:00 PM – 9 PM

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, RMFU President Kent Peppler urged the department to proceed with caution on oil shale development. “The oil companies have been long on promises and short on delivery with oil shale,” Peppler said. “What we do know is that oil shale development will use up scarce water supplies. That’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, and agriculture can’t afford it.”

The letter to the Interior Department points out that 30 years ago, oil companies were claiming that commercial production of oil shale would allow the U.S. to “completely eliminate” imports of oil and gas in the next century, with Exxon estimating a “production level of 15 million barrels per day achieved” by 2010.

Today, that promise has not been fulfilled, and oil shale development is still far from reality. “Given the questions that remain about the impact of oil shale development on local communities and water supplies,” Peppler said, “that is probably a good thing.”

Farmers and ranchers remain concerned that commercial oil shale development could hurt rural communities and agriculture. It’s not clear how much water could be pulled away from agriculture. It’s not clear how much farm and rangeland would be overrun by development. It’s likely that rural communities would be transformed into industrial ghettos by commercial-scale oil shale development operations.

Shell Oil recently stated that its oil shale experiments consume three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced. If that proportion holds, then producing millions of barrels of oil from shale each day, as they have forecast, could wipe out many farms and ranches across the West and damage or destroy already stressed watersheds like the Colorado River.

Water is the lifeblood of the West. Generations of Coloradoans have said it, in English and in Spanish: “No water, no life.” The letter concludes, “We should not risk our water, our food security, and our regional economic stability for a promise that has not been fulfilled for over 100 years. It is time to move on to more viable forms of energy development, such as wind and solar.” The letter urges the department to look carefully at potential impacts to local water supplies and communities as it studies the impact of oil shale development.

In a statement today, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union President Kent Peppler endorsed Senator Debbie Stabenow’s Growing Safe Food Act, S 2758, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.

“Grants to help small producers improve food safety benefit everybody who eats,” Peppler said. “This program will help cooperative extension services, community-based organizations, colleges and universities expand their offerings in best agricultural practices and food processing. But it’s no substitute for a real food safety bill that addresses the food handling problems in corporate industrial plants. RMFU will support a food safety bill that puts its muscle where it’s needed and doesn’t burden small producers with industrial-scale regulations. The federal government has a long history of using food regulations to bankrupt small producers and encourage the concentration of markets in the hands of a few multi-national corporations. That has to stop if Americans want beef without E. coli and peppers without salmonella.”

Concerned by the sudden rush to pass the Food Safety bill (HR 2749), Rocky Mountain Farmers Union President Kent Peppler sent a message to the congressional delegation from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming: “Now just a dang minute!”

Although the bill was improved by amendments before reaching the House floor, it is still, as Peppler testified in Washington last week, potentially devastating for small farmers and ranchers.

The letter points out that “The bill treats the family who cans their neighbors’ peaches in Montrose as if they posed the same food safety risk as a corporate dogfood maker importing melamine-laced wheat gluten from China. That,” Peppler concludes, “is ridiculous.”

As written, the bill simply taxes the small farmer to subsidize corporate agriculture. A farm family that cans their neighbor’s peaches will be required to create a plan for ‘scientific’ maintenance of food safety and pay a $500 annual fee to cover inspection costs. “That family, making $5,000/year of supplemental income by canning peaches, will pay a fee of $500 to cover FDA ‘inspections.’ That $500 fee will also ‘cover’ inspections of plants turning out a hundred tons of canned beans a day. Does anyone seriously believe that it will cost $500 to inspect a family farm? Or that $500 will even begin to cover the cost of inspecting that industrial plant?”

“Set aside the attack on the slim profits of organic and natural food growers and local producers with small, diversified operations,” Peppler commented. “On top of that, the bill allows the FDA to require food growers to follow ‘scientific’ methods. Agriculture has spent half a century trying to get out from under the monoculture, petroleum-guzzling ‘science’ forced on us by corporate monopolies. No thanks.”
The letter to the congressional delegation concludes, “The very companies that created the problem, a problem the farmer and the consumer have been demanding solutions to for more than a century, will be coddled, subsidized, and given yet another advantage over the local, sustainable, natural food competing with them in the marketplace.”

“We need to hit the switchboards in Washington and get Congress to give this bill a closer look,” Peppler said.

An opinion piece appeared last week in more than one Denver newspaper that attacked Farmers Union for “selling out” agriculture by supporting the amended Clean Energy bill. The piece presents the author’s views and statistics as facts. They are just opinions, not facts, and there are some other facts that should be mentioned as we consider the bill and what it means for agriculture.

Condemning the action by Congress ignores a key fact. The EPA is poised, by order of the Supreme Court, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). If a majority in Congress had let the bill disappear into “the shredder,” then farmers could thank its opponents for inviting the EPA to regulate agricultural emissions with no input from agriculture. Thanks to the compromise amendment, we have an opportunity to manage any increased costs to farmers and ranchers. As amended, the bill allows agriculture to have a say in addressing a problem that affects us all.

Farmers Union opposed the bill that came out of Rep. Waxman’s committee because, like so much federal legislation, it failed to take into account the interests and needs of the national community of farmers and ranchers. Through the efforts of Rep. Collin Peterson, Farmers Union, and the National Association of Wheat Growers, the bill was amended to remedy that problem, and we support it because it is the right thing to do. Farmers Union hasn’t sold anyone out, not to the government, not to the boardrooms of corporate agriculture, not to the power companies or partisan political agendas.

A partisan attack group, the Heritage Foundation, tried to alarm consumers and producers with wild estimates of the effect on energy costs. Compelling evidence from a non-partisan entity, the Congressional Budget Office, projects that the costs of electricity, gas and oil will work out to be about $175 per family per year.

What about the cost of sticking our heads in the sand and waiting for problems to go away? That approach doesn’t usually work. Farmers and ranchers, who live agriculture and resource stewardship, understand that there is more to “costs” than dollars on an accounting ledger. Inaction will have serious consequences for the farm, the nation, and the world. If we don’t act, circumstances and consumers will force us to. The Clean Energy bill lets agriculture help solve those problems, rather than bear the brunt for others.

Agriculture has a role to play in addressing those problems. Farmers Union saw to it that this role was reflected in the new bill. Polluting industries will be coming to American farmers for carbon credits to offset their impact on our air and water, using that cap and trade model that got acid rain under control a generation ago. Cap and trade is not nebulous bogeyman; it’s a policy that was endorsed by both Presidential contenders in the 2008 race. Farmers Union has been a leader in creating a carbon credit program that has generated more than $8 million in revenue for farmers and ranchers without government support. With the new cap and trade rules, carbon may well become a major cash crop.

The Clean Energy bill mandates a shift to renewable energy that offers financial benefits to farmers and ranchers. Wind farms will generate electricity for citizens and industry while generating revenue for landowners harvesting the wind. All the forms of renewable energy have the potential to reduce agriculture’s dependence on foreign oil and create new crops for our farmers and ranchers.

Farmers Union recognizes the enormous costs of a petroleum-based agriculture. The average food is shipped 1,500 miles to the consumer, and why is the greatest agriculture nation in the world importing our own food. The emphasis on energy costs will create new markets for local foods produced by small farmers and ranchers. Farmers Union built its history on support for local produce, sustainable farming, and cooperative economies that marry producers to consumer markets.

Addressing America’s energy needs has been a struggle, and we applaud the members of the Colorado delegation in the House who voted for the Clean Energy bill. We are proud of them, and proud of our role in shaping the bill to include agriculture. By being at the bargaining table rather than sulking in the hall, we helped shape a policy that will impact all our lives. Farmers Union improved the energy bill and made our nation’s farmers an active part of our energy future. Our engagement in the process that amended the bill reflects our commitment to protecting the interests of the small minority of our population who grow America’s food. The farmer must make a living wage, or America will find itself dependent on foreign food just as it is on foreign oil. The Clean Energy bill presents us with a chance to keep our food secure.

Kent Peppler, President
Rocky Mountain Farmers Union