Farm Bill 2008

As I was wandering around the web this morning I noticed a headline that read that our illustrious president has threatened to veto the new farm bill. That got my curiosity aroused so I went looking for the current bill online to see if I could find out what it said. What I found was a list of items that went through the last bill just changing the dates from 2007 to 2012. Well that told me a lot of nothing. Why are we not given the whole of what they are changing so we can see for ourselves what it is that President Bush is talking about?

That got me to thinking about the biofuels. With all of the subsidies that we pay the farmers not to plant crops wouldn't it be better to pay them a decent price to raise corn or peanuts to be used as fuel. The price of oil is outrageous and no one is benefiting from it but the stock holders of the oil companies while our farmers are going bankrupt everyday because they can not make a living farming. The president wants a $200,000 gross income limit put on what farmers can earn to get the subsidies which sounds to me like a reasonable limit, but how much of the income is expenses and how much is the net income that they have to survive on. I have watched dairy farmers here in the northeast stop producing and end up turning the farmland into housing developments or just lay fallow because they can not afford to pay for grain to feed the cows. Yet the price of milk is going out of sight in the grocery stores. It may sound naive to say it appears that we need to rethink the whole process and come up with maybe a subside to pay for the corn or peanut seeds for the farmers to grow a totally renewable source to generate a fuel that would be cleaner to use and possibly help with all the greenhouse gases that are produced each day. I personally hate the fact that I can not drive to work each day without adding to the problem. I am hoping to travel full time within 4 years in a RV and would love to be able to use biodiesel to run it. If farm equipment can run on it then why not a recreational vehicle?

There is a lot of information on the web about biofuels and if we can produce enough grains or what ever crop can be used to make a difference. The consensus is no, there is not enough land with which to do this. I am thinking that even if we can produce 25 to 50% of what we use then it would be better than what we are doing to the earth right now.

There was a movie made in 2004, titled The Day After Tomorrow. If you have not seen it then maybe you should. We have had some of the strangest weather this year that I have seen or been aware of in my lifetime. I think about this movie and wonder just what could happen if we keep adding to the global warming process.

If anyone has anything to add, please feel free to comment.

Have a great day!
Debs