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For many, 2022 was a year of change and transition. As we all thankfully watched the worst of the pandemic pass, new challenges arose, especially in farm country, as post-pandemic changes in consumer behavior, global supply chains, and monetary policy caused major shifts in the economy.

It was a year of transition for me personally, as I joined the American Farm Bureau as Executive Vice President. A priority for me once onboard was to get out and meet our members, so I traveled the country doing just that. I’m grateful to have been warmly welcomed into the Farm Bureau family and look forward to advocating for solutions in 2023.

Monster Subsidies That Are Unnecessary, But Seemingly Unstoppable

Cato's Lincicome pointed out that Australia and New Zealand both largely eliminated agricultural supports years ago and remain major producers. Their farmers learned to adapt and innovate in response to the market.

Estimates of global biodiversity trends vary depending on their data and mathematical model. The most apocalyptic models gather extensive press coverage, even when based on controversial data (for example, ‘biological annihilation’5, which described trend estimates based largely on expert opinion; or ‘insect Armageddon’, which is based on data disputed by the original collectors6). However, even analyses of the best available data reach conflicting conclusions. An analysis of a global dataset of abundance time series of vertebrates estimated that, on average, vertebrate populations have declined by more than 50% since 1970 (Living Planet Index2 (LPI)); however, other global analyses found that the mean population size7,8 and species richness9,10 have remained stable over similar timeframes. Explanations for the discrepancies have been proposed8,11,12,13, but not resolved.

One crucial consideration is that summary indices may be easily misinterpreted. Calculating the geometric mean across populations is the most common and straightforward approach, but is strongly influenced by extremes. To illustrate, imagine an ecosystem in which one population declined by 99%. Even if a second population increased 50-fold or 393 populations increased by 1% (that is, a large net increase), a geometric mean would show a catastrophic 50% decline. Thus, a geometric mean decline of 50% could arise from substantial, widespread loss that is occurring across many populations (we term this the ‘catastrophic declines’ hypothesis) or from a few extremely declining populations (we term this the ‘clustered declines’ hypothesis). Both scenarios involve important conservation issues, but suggest vastly different underlying problems and require different mitigation strategies14, thus distinguishing between them is of real-world importance.

There is no scientific basis to suggest that climate breakdown will “annihilate intelligent life” (by which I assume the report authors mean human extinction) by 2050.

However, climate breakdown does pose a grave threat to civilization as we know it, and the potential for mass suffering on a scale perhaps never before encountered by humankind. This should be enough reason for action without any need for exaggeration or misrepresentation!

Still, that money will do little more than make up for cuts — including those to the Conservation Stewardship Program — in the past two farm bills, according to Day. Groups like the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and even the more conventional American Farm Bureau Federation want to see Congress spend more on the conservation programs and target emissions. In recent years, those programs have shied away from funding “climate-smart” agriculture, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis published last year. Currently, half of the farm bill-authorized funds for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which shares costs for conservation-minded farm projects, goes to farmers’ livestock needs. That includes bankrolling methane digesters — systems usually made up of sealed tanks or ponds — that some farms use to convert methane from manure into fuel, called biogas, and fertilizer.

“On the surface, that absolutely reduces the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions,” Day said. “However, those methane digesters also support an existing agricultural system that is built around high fossil-fuel use.” Digesters are often, though not always, used at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, sometimes called CAFOs, industrial livestock pens that are a major source of methane emissions. Rather than propping those facilities up, Day said the farm bill should subsidize practices like perennial grazing and agroforestry, which involves diversifying farmland with trees and shrubs that limit soil erosion, create wildlife habitat, and store carbon. Day said she’s not sure yet if such proposals will see bipartisan support but that incentive-based policies stand a better chance than mandates.

Although it seems like everyone in D.C. is buzzing about a “climate farm bill,” some of the most impactful changes, including crop diversification and shifting diets from meat toward plants, are barely on the negotiating table.

For the past decade, Emma Jagoz has been stewarding and expanding a thriving organic farm that now spans 25 acres near Frederick, Maryland. At Moon Valley Farm, she grows a wide variety of vegetables that end up in CSA boxes and restaurant kitchens in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia year-round.

In this telling, “political capital” is finite. When you spend it, you lose it, and if you spend it on the wrong things, you can’t get it back. But that doesn’t make any sense.

Actual “capital” isn’t spent; it is invested. The point is to get a return on that investment by directing capital to some productive use. The point of capital, in other words, is to produce more capital.

But it also reflected a more disturbing reality for the 79-year-old president: in the space of just 17 months, he has already burnt a lot of the political capital he had when he walked into the Oval Office in January last year.

According to the Realclearpolitics.com polling average, just 39.6 per cent of voters approve of Biden’s performance in the White House so far, compared with 54.9 per cent who disapprove — a wide gap of 15 percentage points that will be hard to close.

My research does not support Greenstein’s theory. Instead, my findings align more closely with those of George Edwards in At the Margins, where he argues that the “national preoccupation with the chief executive is misplaced,” and that presidential power is, in fact, limited in the Constitution’s “purposefully inefficient system in which the founding fathers’ handiwork in decentralizing power defeats even the most capable leaders.”50

Instead of focusing on legislative skills as a source of presidential influence, Edwards argues that party support and public support are more important. Legislative skills are only critical for “members of Congress who remain open to change after other influences have had their impact.”51 In a time as polarized as today, where very few members of Congress are “open to chang[ing]” their vote, these skills play a minor role in legislative negotiations. Similar assertions are made in another book by Edwards, Predicting the Presidency. He argues that exploiting existing opportunities (consolidating existing party and public support) is much more important for presidential success than creating opportunities (convincing legislators to change their vote vis a vis legislative skills).52

As David Roberts of Vox observes: In 2009, Obama and his aides made the mistake of thinking that their major initiatives had to be rolled out one at a time in sequence, because he had a finite store of “political capital” that had to be spent carefully. But political capital is not something that exists apart from any particular issue; it isn’t a special sauce that has to be poured on a policy in order to make it palatable.

And with the parties as polarized and unified as they are, political capital has become all but meaningless. There may have been a time when a popular president possessed so much capital that a senator from the opposition party would feel compelled to support him on part of that president’s agenda, but that time is long gone. There is no account Biden can draw on to turn Republican “no” votes into “yes.”

DO AI COMPANIES need to pay for the training data that powers their generative AI systems? The question is hotly contested in Silicon Valley and in a wave of lawsuits levied against tech behemoths like Meta, Google, and OpenAI. In Washington, DC, though, there seems to be a growing consensus that the tech giants need to cough up.

Today, at a Senate hearing on AI’s impact on journalism, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle agreed that OpenAI and others should pay media outlets for using their work in AI projects. “It’s not only morally right,” said Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law that held the hearing. “It’s legally required.”

As the Democratic takeover of the House and divided government becomes official, Washington, D.C. seems as polarized as ever. And with Washington stuck in a budget stalemate, the American people are left wondering if bipartisan progress is possible. Fortunately, even with Washington paralyzed, there is growing agreement on an issue that affects everyone — intellectual property (IP) and patent reform. Policy makers from both parties recognize the American patent system is extremely valuable to our economy and under siege from serious international and domestic challenges. Foreign countries steal American intellectual property, while innovation-stifling U.S. court decisions weaken our system, causing patents to be wrongly invalidated. The effects of theft and invalidated patents are the same: innovators lose claim to their inventions and are less incentivized to develop new ones. America’s technological edge over the rest of the world is at stake. The 116th Congress has an opportunity to fix this. Patents allow creators to use their innovations to drive advancements that promote economic growth. They are a national treasure. As director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Andrei Iancu explains, “With American patents, humans have made light. Have begun to fly for the first time. Have treated countless diseases. And have enabled communications around the globe instantaneously with tiny devices in our pockets.” Think about your smartphone. How many innovations were needed to create these mini computers, faster than those of the Apollo missions, that fit in our pocket? A strong patent system ensures that innovators can reap the rewards of their ideas, incentivizing them to work harder and dream bigger. As an inventor myself, I can attest to the drive patent protection brings. Republicans and Democrats often disagree, but most believe the creativity enabled by free markets is an advantage economies like ours have over statist competitors like China. Defending our intellectual property against theft and modernizing our patent system for the 21st century must be top priorities for the United States to compete and win. This pressing issue creates unlikely political alliances. Take President Trump and Congressman Jerry Nadler. Mr. Nadler, a Democrat, will be the next chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, overseeing many of the investigations related to the administration and the 2016 campaign. Ideologically, he and Mr. Trump are enemies. They may not know it, however, but on the issue of intellectual property and patent protection, Mr. Trump and Mr. Nadler appear to be more alike than expected. Mr. Trump prioritizes combating China’s intellectual property theft, and Mr. Nadler defends strong patent systems. Indeed, their views are virtually coextensive. Without a strong patent system, the United States cannot combat China’s intellectual property theft; and without combatting China’s intellectual property theft, we inherently weaken the U.S. patent system. “The United States leads the world in innovation and creativity, which are key drivers of economic growth,” Mr. Nadler explains. “But creators cannot safeguard their inventions from infringement, exploit them for profit, or avoid unnecessary litigation, without a strong patent system to protect them.” Mr. Nadler’s counterpart in the Senate will be Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mr. Graham has a history of forging bipartisan compromises and is one of President Trump’s top allies. He too has spoken out in defense of America’s IP rights, calling out China for engaging in “unfair trade practices including forced transfer of technology and intellectual property.” Bipartisanship works when both sides of the aisle claim a win, and IP reform achieves that goal. It is why in recent months we’ve seen bipartisan proposals emerge, such as the “Restoring America’s Leadership in Innovation Act of 2018” and the “STRONGER Patents Act” — bills that would strengthen patent rights to protect our innovators. Kentucky’s Libertarian-leaning Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the first bill and was joined by Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur — two members usually not aligned on much. The STRONGER Patents Act brings together conservatives such as Rep. Steve Stivers and Sen. Tom Cotton with some of Congress’ most liberal Democrats, including Sens. Chris Coons, Dick Durbin and Mazie Hirono, and Rep. Bill Foster. The American people are clamoring for leaders from both sides of the aisle to find common ground, and with a foundation of trust already emerging, IP and patent reform represents perhaps the best chance for major bipartisan cooperation.

If a new farm bill can’t pass this year, it is expected that another one-year extension will be passed. Grassley said farmers would receive protection but not adequate protection. Getting beyond an extension of the same-old would be up to a new Congress, and as of now it is anybody’s guess who will be in charge.

It’s not as if the existing hang-ups are going anywhere. Fights over food stamps in the House stalled the last farm bill by two years. House Speaker Mike Johnson walks on egg shells in his caucus room as he is accused of caving in to Democrats on spending. The same sticking points will be as sticky in 2025.

House Republicans’ new farm bill proposal is drawing opposition from a coalition of left- and right-wing groups that agree on little else.

The proposed version of the $1.5 trillion omnibus unveiled last week by House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) includes several priorities of big agribusiness — proposals that frustrated both right-aligned groups such as the Heritage Foundation and left-leaning ones including the Environmental Working Group amid progressives’ and populists’ broader dislike of what they see as crony capitalism at the U.S. farmstand.

A partisan fight over federal food support programs is posing a major challenge to both chambers as they try to craft a mammoth farm bill ahead of an early fall deadline.

Congress has just four months until a Sept. 30 deadline to finish work on the bill, after both parties agreed to kick the can last year on the bill.

MINNEAPOLIS – U.S. Sen. Tina Smith says she’s disappointed there’s been “so little progress” on a new Farm Bill this year, and indicates part of the problem is funding for nutrition programs including SNAP.

The Minnesota Democrat says, “the Republicans in the House — and also in the Senate — are looking to cut the nutrition programs and we just can’t go along with that, particularly when so many Minnesotans are worried about where their next meal will come from.”

WASHINGTON — Republicans moved their long-awaited new farm bill through the U.S. House Agriculture Committee last week, despite opposition from most Democrats about cuts in SNAP payments and nutritional benefits that could stall further advancement.

The massive $1.5 trillion legislation would set policy and funding levels for key food, agriculture and conservation programs for the next five years. After a marathon markup Thursday, the GOP-authored bill cleared the committee after midnight Friday, 33-21, with four Democratic votes.

Progressive Farmer’s Joshua Baethge reported this past Friday that odds remain quite low that a full farm bill will pass this year because lawmakers have completed only a very small percentage of the steps required for a farm bill to become law. Despite recent progress on the 2024 Farm Bill — including passage of the House Agriculture Committee’s version of the bill and competing frameworks released in the Senate Agriculture Committee — lawmakers in recent days have been hinting that passage of a full farm bill in 2024 is growing more unlikely and that another extension of the 2018 farm bill remains the most likely outcome before an end of September deadline.

Agri-Pulse’s Steve Davies, Philip Brasher, Noah Wicks, and Rebekah Alvey reported this past Friday that “a farm bill doesn’t appear to be headed anywhere in the Senate, even though Ag Committee Republicans have now outlined their proposal. Senate Ag Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., doesn’t think the House Ag Committee’s bill can pass the House and fears a Senate bill could face the same fate, she says on this week’s Agri-Pulse Newsmakers.”

While advocates for local food and sustainable agriculture have suggested a number of provisions to help farms of all scales stay in business during the COVID-19 crisis, farmers have another support system already embedded in the relief and stimulus efforts. Food aid — like SNAP and WIC — is a critical component of any economic recovery package, but it does more than keep jobless people from going hungry. The goal of a stimulus is to strategically put money in pockets so the economy keeps moving, and the nutrition assistance programs in the stimulus package are a vital lifeline to help farmers and food producers weather this downturn.

How Nutrition Assistance Can Help Farmers

Such considerations warrant decoupling biodiversity loss from climate change, because the former has been consistently subsumed by the latter as a mere effect. Biodiversity loss is a distinct environmental crisis with its own unique syndrome of causes, consequences, and solutions—such as restoring habitats, creating protected areas (“biodiversity parks”), and practicing sustainable agriculture. The sixth extinction. The repercussions of biodiversity loss are potentially as severe as those anticipated from climate change, or even a nuclear conflict. For example, according to a 2015 study published in Science Advances, the best available evidence reveals “an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.” This conclusion holds, even on the most optimistic assumptions about the background rate of species losses and the current rate of vertebrate extinctions. The group classified as “vertebrates” includes mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and all other creatures with a backbone. The article argues that, using its conservative figures, the average loss of vertebrate species was 100 times higher in the past century relative to the background rate of extinction. (Other scientists have suggested that the current extinction rate could be as much as 10,000 times higher than normal.) As the authors write, “The evidence is incontrovertible that recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history.” Perhaps the term “Big Six” should enter the popular lexicon—to add the current extinction to the previous “Big Five,” the last of which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But the concept of biodiversity encompasses more than just the total number of species on the planet. It also refers to the size of different populations of species. With respect to this phenomenon, multiple studies have confirmed that wild populations around the world are dwindling and disappearing at an alarming rate. For example, the 2010 Global Biodiversity Outlook report found that the population of wild vertebrates living in the tropics dropped by 59 percent between 1970 and 2006. The report also found that the population of farmland birds in Europe has dropped by 50 percent since 1980; bird populations in the grasslands of North America declined by almost 40 percent between 1968 and 2003; and the population of birds in North American arid lands has fallen by almost 30 percent since the 1960s. Similarly, 42 percent of all amphibian species (a type of vertebrate that is sometimes called an “ecological indicator”) are undergoing population declines, and 23 percent of all plant species “are estimated to be threatened with extinction.” Other studies have found that some 20 percent of all reptile species, 48 percent of the world’s primates, and 50 percent of freshwater turtles are threatened. Underwater, about 10 percent of all coral reefs are now dead, and another 60 percent are in danger of dying. Consistent with these data, the 2014 Living Planet Report shows that the global population of wild vertebrates dropped by 52 percent in only four decades—from 1970 to 2010. While biologists often avoid projecting historical trends into the future because of the complexity of ecological systems, it’s tempting to extrapolate this figure to, say, the year 2050, which is four decades from 2010. As it happens, a 2006 study published in Science does precisely this: It projects past trends of marine biodiversity loss into the 21st century, concluding that, unless significant changes are made to patterns of human activity, there will be virtually no more wild-caught seafood by 2048. Catastrophic consequences for civilization. The consequences of this rapid pruning of the evolutionary tree of life extend beyond the obvious. There could be surprising effects of biodiversity loss that scientists are unable to fully anticipate in advance. For example, prior research has shown that localized ecosystems can undergo abrupt and irreversible shifts when they reach a tipping point. According to a 2012 paper published in Nature, there are reasons for thinking that we may be approaching a tipping point of this sort in the global ecosystem, beyond which the consequences could be catastrophic for civilization. As the authors write, a planetary-scale transition could precipitate “substantial losses of ecosystem services required to sustain the human population.” An ecosystem service is any ecological process that benefits humanity, such as food production and crop pollination. If the global ecosystem were to cross a tipping point and substantial ecosystem services were lost, the results could be “widespread social unrest, economic instability, and loss of human life.” According to Missouri Botanical Garden ecologist Adam Smith, one of the paper’s co-authors, this could occur in a matter of decades—far more quickly than most of the expected consequences of climate change, yet equally destructive. Biodiversity loss is a “threat multiplier” that, by pushing societies to the brink of collapse, will exacerbate existing conflicts and introduce entirely new struggles between state and non-state actors. Indeed, it could even fuel the rise of terrorism. (After all, climate change has been linked to the emergence of ISIS in Syria, and multiple high-ranking US officials, such as former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and CIA director John Brennan, have affirmed that climate change and terrorism are connected.) The reality is that we are entering the sixth mass extinction in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth, and the impact of this event could be felt by civilization “in as little as three human lifetimes,” as the aforementioned 2012 Nature paper notes. Furthermore, the widespread decline of biological populations could plausibly initiate a dramatic transformation of the global ecosystem on an even faster timescale: perhaps a single human lifetime. The unavoidable conclusion is that biodiversity loss constitutes an existential threat in its own right. As such, it ought to be considered alongside climate change and nuclear weapons as one of the most significant contemporary risks to human prosperity and survival.