Farms and Farmers

If agriculture is going to help solve the energy crunch, Scott Kleeb says we need keep farming affordable for farmers.

  • Transcript


Question: Do we need to revise our agriculture policy?

Transcript:You know, when the Farm Bill was just passed recently, we often forget that less than 20% of the Farm Bill actually deals with farmers or farm payments or anything directly related to agriculture. Most of it is through nutrition programs, school lunch programs, programs that we benefit from across the country not just in states like Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, the Farm Bill states, Iowa, but the folks in New York and LA benefit from it too. So we’re talking about a very small percentage of a very large bill. Agriculture, the Farm Bill also had in it research money for, say, lasik ethanol, the next generation of biofuels. So, to talk about the Farm Bill wholesale, I think, that there is some really good things in there, some new investments, and I’m also the director of Morgan Ranch Beef which is a direct marketing beef company, sells Kobe beef out of the Sandhills in Nebraska internationally. To those, what we used to call niche markets, now they’re the fastest growing sector, the food economy locally sustainable production, that type of agriculture. The [IB] they were more, it was more help for those types of producers whether it’s nuts and berries or Kobe beef. In my example, nuts and berries or orchards in certain areas, not Nebraska. So there was, there’s some very good things in the Farm Bill that we shouldn’t just discount the whole thing and say, “We better start from scratch.”