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May 6, 2016
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Carl Sampson
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O ur V iew
Meatless Mondays won’t save the planet
A
sk any environmentalist
and you are likely to
hear that livestock
production in the United States
is responsible for 50 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions. The
story goes that cow flatulence
and manure methane are killing
the planet. If you want to save
the planet, they say, cut meat
from your diet.
Not so fast, says Frank
Mitloehner of the University of
California.
Mitloehner, a professor and air
quality specialist, used data from
the Environmental Protection
Agency to show what most of us
in agriculture already believed:
Livestock production accounts for
a small portion of greenhouse gas
emissions.
In a white paper released late
last month, Mitloehner documented
that livestock production accounts
for only 4.1 percent of greenhouse
gas emissions in the United States.
That compares to 27 percent
attributed to transportation and
31 percent attributed to electrical
power production.
Beef cattle account for 2.2
percent of emissions, dairy
cows 1.37 percent. The other
domesticated farm animals
combined account for the
remaining six-tenths of a percent.
What about widely publicized
campaigns to institute “Meatless
Mondays” at schools, colleges and
other institutions? Pointless, if the
goal is to impact in any meaningful
way greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is sometimes difficult to put
these percentages in perspective;
however, if all U.S. Americans
practiced Meatless Mondays, we
would reduce the U.S. national
GHG emissions by 0.6 percent,”
Mitloehner says. “A beefless
Monday per week would cut total
emissions by 0.3 percent annually.”
For many advocates, attributing
greenhouse gas emissions to
livestock production has more to do
with getting people to stop eating
meat than it does with impacting
climate change.
We doubt the facts will calm
that rhetoric.
Follow the money
(if only we could)
By KATIE BALTZOR
For the Capital Press
W
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
‘Go-slow’ federal agencies hurt farmers
I
t appears the federal agencies that
coordinate the H-2A program
to obtain guestworkers for
harvesting crops and other farm
jobs are giving U.S. farmers the
“slow no.”
That’s when they slow down their
work — even more than usual —
and make farmers wait ... and wait.
They make the folks at the driver’s
license office look as though they
are in overdrive.
Ironically, the slowdown only
hurts farmers who jump through
all of the H-2A hoops to operate
legally, without cutting corners to
hire illegal or quasi-legal workers
with questionable documentation.
Through the slowdown, the
Obama administration appears to
be making a point about the illegal
immigration problem — a problem
it has helped create. By making
bringing guestworkers into this
country even more difficult, the
administration apparently hopes
farmers will beg Congress to fix the
immigration mess.
In fact, many farmers who
rely on labor have been begging
Congress to act on the immigration
mess for years — long before
President Obama was elected.
President Obama has had almost
eight years to fix the immigration
problem. The best he could do was
a couple of executive orders that
landed him in court.
The Obama administration
burned every bridge with Congress
to get its health care law passed. It’s
still suffering from the breakdown
in communications with Capitol
Hill.
Now it’s putting pressure on
farmers to push Congress for
immigration reform.
That would be interesting
political patter if it were not for the
fact farmers in 20 states risk losing
some or all of their crops because of
the H-2A program’s slowness.
Many of them say the
Department of Labor is understaffed
and has a hard time processing
H-2A applications and the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration
Services is unresponsive.
Last year, H-2A workers were
delayed because of visa printing
problems, WALFA, an organization
that helps farmers procure H-2A
workers, said in its annual report.
The slowdown appears to be
purposeful. The American Farm
Bureau and other organizations
point out that H-2A paperwork
cannot be sent via email, as is
nearly every other document in the
federal government, including tax
returns. Instead, the paperwork
must be sent by the Postal
Service’s “snail mail.”
If the administration wants to
make progress on immigration, it
should first unleash the turtles and
help U.S. farmers obtain adequate
harvest labor in a timely manner.
Then it should get out of the
way and let Congress and the new
president get the job done.
Let’s find out how GMOs impact organics
O
rganic growers worry
that their crops will be
contaminated by genetically
modified crops growing nearby.
It’s a legitimate concern. By
definition, commodities that are
certified organic can’t have even
a trace of GMO contamination.
A contaminated crop won’t fetch
the premium normally attached to
organics, and the grower’s reputation
could also be tainted.
And, it happens. According to the
USDA organic agriculture survey
conducted in 2014, organic growers
reported losing $6.1 million due to
GMO contamination. Not much in a
market that was worth $5.4 billion,
but troubling enough for the growers
who lost their crops.
Where is the contamination
occurring? Turns out, no one is really
sure.
The National Organic Standards
Board wants to find out. Seems like a
pretty good idea.
“The data that we really
need to identify first is whether
contamination is coming from
the seed or from pollen drift, or
from post-harvest handling,” Zea
Sonnabend, a board member, said
during the group’s recent meeting in
Washington, D.C. “The marketplace
data collection is ‘Are you being
contaminated?’ not ‘Where is it
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coming from?’”
The board wants funding for
a study that would answer that
question.
Anti-GMO advocates tout pollen
drift when they push for tighter
controls on growers who produce
GMO crops. But the truth is the
contamination could just as easily be
the work of unscrupulous or careless
seed suppliers or processors.
Growers of all stripes have an
interest in what’s really happening.
It makes sense that the NOSB
collect some data to quantify the
contamination problem by source.
You have to know what the
problem is before it can be solved.
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OR 97308; or by fax to 503-370-4383.
hat began as a law
with good intentions
to “protect the small
business community from
governmental overreach” and
to “make sure that a party
cannot be harassed by unjus-
tifiable government activity
solely because of the prohib-
itive expenses of attorneys’
fees,” the Equal Access to
Justice Act has morphed into
a revenue source for litigious
environmental groups.
EAJA was signed into law
in 1980 and originally, EAJA
dollars were tracked and re-
ported to Congress. Howev-
er, in 1995, the tracking and
reporting requirements were
eliminated due to the small
amount of payouts.
Once these requirements
were excluded, the number of
lawsuits filed by extreme en-
vironmental groups soared and
the payouts became enormous.
The lack of traceability pre-
cludes anyone from knowing
where the money actually goes.
From 2001-2010 the Gen-
eral Accounting Office at-
tempted to track EAJA funds
and found $44.4 million was
paid out on 525 cases. This
information was based on
only 10 of 75 agencies within
the Department of Agriculture
and Department of Interior
that kept records. Sixty-five
of these agencies didn’t have
a tracking method to know the
amount they paid in attorney
and legal fees.
Between September 2009
and August 2010, $5.8 million
in legal fees were paid to 20
environmental groups in suits
against the U.S. Fish & Wild-
life and the Bureau of Recla-
mation. In that same year, the
U.S. Forest Service paid over
$6 million.
So where does this money
come from to pay these legal
fees? Directly out of the fed-
eral agencies’ budgets. Money
that could be allocated for wa-
ter development, range health
improvement, prescribed burns,
juniper encroachment or sage
grouse habitat is being used in-
stead to pay the attorney fees of
environmental groups. Federal
agency employee time is re-
quired to be spent on paperwork
to prevent lawsuits more than
ever before, as environmental
groups have become very adept
at finding reason to sue.
Environmental
groups
utilize several tactics to gain
EAJA dollars. Many times they
use a “sue and settle” method.
They file a lawsuit against a
federal agency and then work
out a settlement agreement.
This is just as legally binding
as a court decision, but by de-
sign, the settlement is negoti-
ated in private, thus effectively
eliminating public participa-
tion or comment by affected
individuals.
Another tactic is to overload
an agency with requests or pro-
tests. An example of this is when
WildEarth Guardians proposed
over 600 species at one time to
be listed as endangered or threat-
ened. This caused the agency to
miss a timeline, thus providing
the WildEarth Guardians basis
to sue. The Fish & Wildlife Ser-
vice couldn’t possibly achieve
the required paperwork and re-
search to complete their reports
in the time requirement, thus
Guest
comment
Katie Baltzor
WEG sued the agency for the
missed timeline.
Often environmental groups
join forces in a lawsuit and if
they win on even one point, they
could each be reimbursed for
their legal fees.
Currently, Western Wa-
tersheds Project, WildEarth
Guardians, Center for Biolog-
ical Diversity and Prairie Hills
Audubon Society have joined
forces to file a lawsuit against
Assistant Interior Secretary Jan-
ice Schneider, BLM and USFS
regarding the sage grouse plan.
They list many issues and have
the potential to have their legal
fees paid due to the EAJA.
Environmental groups have
found certain federal judges
that are much more sympathet-
ic to their cause and attempt to
have their cases heard by those
judges. Meeting the eligibility
criteria and prevailing on even
one issue does not guarantee the
court will grant you the EAJA
award.
Individuals, local govern-
ments, associations, and busi-
nesses have a cap of their net
worth for eligibility for EAJA
funds. However, 501c(3) non-
profits are eligible regardless of
their net worth. For example,
Sierra Club has a net worth of
over $80 million and can still
tap EAJA funds and has found
a loophole to exceed the hourly
attorney rate stated in the law.
EAJA caps the rate for attor-
ney fees at $125 per hour; how-
ever, the court may determine
an increase in this amount due
to cost of living or other “special
factors.” Environmental lawyers
meet this criterion according
to several courts. Karen Budd-
Falen, a Wyoming attorney,
found that with Endangered
Species Act cases, the average
reimbursement of attorney fees
is approximately $491 per hour.
Her research has shown the
highest hourly fee for environ-
mental attorneys has been $775
per hour.
While this is an obvious
problem with EAJA, it is not the
only one. The lack of account-
ability costs taxpayers millions
each year. Our tax dollars are
supporting these litigating en-
vironmental groups, many of
which strive to limit, if not elim-
inate, multiple uses of public
land.
There are other issues with
EAJA and some changes have
been proposed. In late 2015,
The House of Representatives
passed HR3279 Open Book
on EAJA. This requires EAJA
funds to be tracked, create a
searchable database with award
information and require a report
to Congress of all transactions.
The Senate version of this
bill is S350 Judgment Fund
Transparency and currently sits
in the Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee. I encourage you to write
your senators to encourage them
to support this bill. This abuse
of a well-intended law needs to
end.
Katie Baltzor is a cattle
rancher from Harney County,
Ore. She is a member of NCBA,
Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon
Cattlewomen’s Association,
Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
and the Harney County Cattle-
women’s Association.