Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack initially previewed the USDA study's results the day before they were presented by USDA Chief Economist Joseph Glauber during a Dec. 3 House Agriculture subcommittee hearing. Glauber's 60-page testimony concluded that despite a 14.4 percent reduction in U.S. cropland, U.S. agriculture "on net" would be a 'winner' if the House climate-change bill was enacted.
But two weeks later — on Dec. 16 — Vilsack announced from the Copenhagen climate-change summit that he now believes the model used to obtain the estimate is 'flawed,' and directed USDA to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve it. 'The conclusions of that report obviously depend to a certain extent on what model is used and what your starting point is,' Vilsack said on USDA Radio. 'The model that was used, the EPA model, candidly I think that there are other models more current and more complete that might lead to significantly, and will lead to significantly different conclusions.'
Vilsack's about-face caused a bit of an uproar on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., who served as secretary of agriculture during the latter years of the Bush administration, urging the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee to conduct hearings on the matter, and whether USDA was shopping for numbers. Previously, an analysis conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation estimated that at least 50 million acres of U.S. cropland and rangeland would be diverted to afforestation under the House climate-change bill. Other studies have estimated the impact could be even greater.Link source Shirl Kennedy DocUticker
