ILLINOIS FARM BUREAU is kee ping state budg et issues among its state legislative priorities following action at the IFB board meeting last month. ..........3
WINTER 2009-2010 already h a s f e a t u r e d h e av y r a i n s a n d snow at many locations in the state and the season is but two weeks old. ...................................5
WINNING PHOTOS from our Member Photo Contest bring rural life in Illinois into focus with images of our state's agricultural landscape and people. ...............6,7
Monday, January 4, 2010
Two sections Volume 38, No. 1
Buffett: Don’t short-change ag post-Copenhagen BY MARTIN ROSS FarmWeek
Periodicals: Time Valued
U.S. agriculture could be “easily short-changed” — along with the growing world population — if global leaders don’t slow the climate policy process long enough to form reasoned conclusions and help farmers help the planet. So says Howard Buffett, head of the Decatur-based Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which oversees ag sustainability projects across the globe. Buffett is concerned about development of onesize-fits-all solutions and inadequate attention to U.S. agriculture’s potential contributions in the wake of December’s Copenhagen climate accord. In a non-binding pact, each of 193 nations at the Copenhagen summit pledged to meet future greenhouse pollution reduction targets — President Obama reported an international process he compared to the World Trade Organization would monitor compliance. The U.S. and others pledged $30 billion over three years to help developing nations reduce pollution while sustaining growth, with reductions in Third World deforestation a
major emphasis. Buffett doesn’t question that, climatically, “something’s changing.” He’s visited Howard Buffett northern Canada on a half-dozen occasions over the past 15 years and has witnessed an increasingly earlier ice melt and later “freeze-up” — “It’s affecting (polar) bear behavior,” he said. However, the farm philanthropist remains uncertain about the extent to which human activity affects climate change and “how we fix it.” As world leaders “speed through this process to develop policy,” potentially impacting future food production, Buffett believes scientists and policymakers must hone more precisely in on climate cause and effects. Major climate/greenhouse forecast models often lean heavily toward theoretical worst-case scenarios, “So you have this really big reaction to what the worst-case scenarios could be,” Buffett
told FarmWeek. U.S. production is “key to feeding the world,” and efforts to “beat up on U.S. farmers” threaten not only future food security but also world-class
tillage/conservation practices that capture and contain carbon emissions, he warned. “There are some things that are identifiable, and those things we should be dealing
with,” Buffett said. “Nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer production are something we can pretty much identify. How See Buffett, page 4
IDEA EXCHANGE
Champaign-area producer Paul Berbaum demonstrates how his innovative new auger dolly transforms the cumbersome job of moving equipment from bin to bin into what he describes as “a simple 10-minute task.” Berbaum’s five grain bins are serviced by a single eight-inch auger. He told FarmWeek transporting the auger was “almost an impossible job” for himself and a back-breaker even with his brother’s help. His dolly enables a producer to easily raise and move an auger and line it up with and insert it into the bin’s auger tube. The invention also saves the cost of equipping each bin with its own auger. The Farm Bureau Farmer Idea Exchange submission will be featured at American Farm Bureau Federation’s Jan. 913 annual meeting in Seattle. For details about the annual meeting, see page 4. (Photo by Ken Kashian)
Senate health plan more ‘rural friendly’ While uncertain how the U.S. Senate’s health care plan would affect Americans overall, industry observers suggested last week it shouldn’t hurt and indeed could help some rural consumers. The Senate package “didn’t have everything we wanted,” but it includes some “good pieces” for rural communities, said National Rural Health Association (NRHA) governmental affairs specialist Alison Renner. NRHA proposes a dual approach to improving health care access: addressing medical workforce shortages in rural areas and reducing inequities in Medicare payments to rural providers. Both an earlier House plan and the Senate plan offer “strong workforce provisions” focusing on primary care needs, though Senate provisions are more “rural friendly,” Renner said.
“It doesn’t appear (rural communities are) going to be negatively impacted,” David Sniff, CEO with Rushville’s Culbertson Memorial Hospital, told FarmWeek. “How positively we’ll be impacted, I’m still unsure. “What’s encouraging is that we have in the Senate leaders that have rural backgrounds and that represent large constituencies of rural people. It’s not that we’re unique and should be treated special. We should be treated fairly,” he said. NRHA won Senate support for a proposed new program to train medical student residents in “community based settings.” Funding under Medicare’s Graduate Medical Education Program would help rural clinics and other approved medical teaching centers develop new primary care residency programs similar to those for which
FarmWeek on the web: FarmWeekNow.com
hospitals already are reimbursed. Added grants would enable medical colleges to develop rural health training programs and recruit more rural students. The Senate bill bolsters funding for the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), which fills needs in underserved areas, and expands teaching opportunities within the Corps. The plan would adjust the existing Medicare physician payment schedule to reduce disparities between regions and, ideally, between urban and rural areas, and proposes improved reimbursements for rural retail pharmacies. Senators rejected a proposal to boost reimbursements for “tweener” hospitals — small facilities that currently do not qualify as federally supported critical See Health, page 2
Illinois Farm Bureau®on the web: www.ilfb.org