- Climate control measures will bump up farming costs by 34 percent, report says
- Campaigners say farmers need to cut emissions or face more weather shocks
- READ MORE: Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan firms buy US farmland
By JAMES REINL, SOCIAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 12:03 EST, 9 February 2024 | UPDATED: 12:11 EST, 9 February 2024
The Biden administration’s European-style climate policy will jack up costs for US farmers and leave families spending $1,300 more each year on costlier groceries, a new report warns.
Researchers at the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio-based free-market think tank, say diesel, propane, and fertilizer costs will rise thanks to the federal government’s climate measures.
Farmers will push these costs on to consumers — meaning cheese, beef, and other everyday basics will cost as much as 80 percent more, raising a family-of-four’s annual grocery spend by $1,300.
‘Federal policymakers are pursuing expensive climate-control and emissions policies that have largely failed in Europe,’ said report co-authors Trevor Lewis and M Ankith Reddy.
Some farmers, such as John Williamson in North Bennington, Vermont, have switched to biofuels to reduce emissions
‘The American farm and household will be required to pay for them.’
Climate activists say agriculture takes a toll on the environment, thanks to pesticides and fertilizers, the release of methane by livestock, and other planet-heating gasses from tractors, trucks, and combines.
Researcher Trevor Lewis says grocery prices will spike
Farmers need to help lower emissions, they say, or they’ll see their land laid to waste by droughts, fires, floods, and other extreme weather events that become more common as the planet warms.
In their 49-page report, however, the researchers outline the downside of forcing farmers to go green.
They point to President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the Paris Climate Accords, and a fashion for investing in businesses to promote socially-conscious environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, known as ‘woke capitalism.’
These drive up costs for farmers, says the report, titled Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm.
Farmers will pass costs onto consumers, and grocery store prices will rise by as much as 78 per cent, researchers warn 
Tim Crow in Rocky Ford, Colorado, is one of many farmers to have been affected by water conservation
To illustrate this, they created a model of a hypothetical corn farm that had to abide by new federal environmental regulations and standards.
Researcher M Ankith Reddy says US farmers will be hit
Climate-control policies pushed up the costs of nitrogen fertilizer, diesel, and propane — which farmers rely on – by 34 percent overall.
‘Oil and gas producers, chemical companies and the American farm will likely shoulder the heaviest compliance burden,’ the researchers wrote.
‘But they will inevitably share the cost with US consumers as the government-induced high prices for fuel, fertilizer, and food ripple across the economic pond.’
The model showed farmers had to pass these prices onto consumers.
They calculated that American cheese would cost a staggering 78 percent more, thanks to the climate-fighting rules.
Other pantry basics to be hit include beef (a 70 percent rise), rice (56 percent), chicken (39 percent), and eggs (36 percent).
A typical family-of-four would have to spend an extra $1,300 per year to put food on the table, said the 49-page report. 
Thera Farms in Brentwood, New York, operates on a sustainable model, with leased organic farms, a native meadow, beekeepers and a solar array system
Farmer’s costs will rise by 34 percent, meaning families will have to spend $1,300 more each year on groceries, the report warns
Those rises would be on top of the double-digit inflation Americans have struggled against in recent years.
‘Misguided climate-control policies can and should be resisted at every level,’ the researchers concluded.
Republicans have voiced support for the research.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said it ‘confirms our greatest fears about ESG investing.’
‘Imposing costly ESG requirements on America’s farmers and ranchers will have a devastating impact on US agriculture and world food security.’
Miller was one of a dozen Republican state agriculture chiefs who wrote last month to major financial institutions about how their ESG commitments would hurt farmers.
The recipients included top executives at Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, which are all members of the climate-control Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
The ‘climate cult and ESG elites are causing costs to skyrocket,’ says Will Hild, director of Consumers’ Research, a policy nonprofit
Will Hild, director of Consumers’ Research, a policy nonprofit, said the report showed how the ‘climate cult and ESG elites are causing costs to skyrocket.’
‘America’s farmers and ranchers’ livelihoods shouldn’t be at risk because of inflated operating costs or loss of access to capital from woke banks,’ said Hild.
‘Nor should the American people be victims to a crushing tax put on their groceries by climate extremists.’
Still, climate campaigners argue that the shift is necessary to stave off global warming.
‘The effects of animal agriculture on the environment and climate are vast,’ members of the California-based Oceanic Preservation Society posted on X/Twitter this week.
‘It’s a leading cause of deforestation, it’s responsible for significant biodiversity loss and pollution, and emits large amounts of greenhouse gasses, particularly methane.’