RFD America

Ask any half-baked academic and they'll tell you that Americans have become so far removed from the processes of food production that we no longer appreciate the efforts of family farmers. It's a good thing for us there are plenty of high-minded liberals around to save us poor farmers. In fact, they want to save us with a new commodity, carbon credits. They want all you supposedly ignorant consumers to pay for your consumption through a cap and trade tax. They routinely tell each other and anyone who will listen how a cap and trade tax will benefit family farmers like myself because it will allow us to sell carbon credits. Not only are they wrong, they are unwitting pawns for Monsanto and other agri-giants that will not only benefit financially from cap and trade, they will finally be able to do what they've always dreamed of—destroy the small producer.

Environmentally correct liberals tout sequestration as a method to capture and store the excess carbon in the atmosphere. This is accomplished by farming practices such as no-till and pasture-based production. According to the carbon-is-bad crowd, this will solve the problems associated with corporate dairy production. Really? Here we see the problem with allowing academics to make farm policy. Not only do they have no real farm experience (a university farm is not a real farm), their inexperience and ignorance threatens to destroy organic producers like myself.

What you don't know about the carbon cycle can destroy farmers

According to Jude L. Capper, an assistant professor of dairy science at Washington State University:

It is important to remember that the total amount of carbon present in the global ecosystem is the same as it was thousands of years ago. Carbon cannot be created or destroyed, but its form can be changed.

The claim that we are creating more carbon is just wrong. Carbon is processed through four cycles: