[Scpg] Crops, Cattle and Carbon (6/14/11) PODCAST at Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Crops, Cattle and Carbon (6/14/11) PODCAST
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/crops-cattle-and-carbon-61411
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DURATION: 1:04:58
Crops, Cattle and Carbon



Cynthia Cory, Director of Environmental Affairs, California Farm Bureau 
Federation
Paul Martin, Director of Environmental Services, Western United Dairymen
Jeanne Merrill, California Climate Action Network
Karen Ross, Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture



Making California’s farms more energy efficient, and ensuring that 
farmers can adapt to a warmer planet, will be a decades-long challenge, 
agrees this panel of experts gathered by Climate One. That a serious 
conversation on the linkages between agriculture and climate change even 
exists in California is largely thanks to passage of the state’s 
landmark climate change law, AB32.

Cynthia Cory, Director of Environmental Affairs, California Farm Bureau 
Federation, says the way to sell this new reality to her members, most 
of them family farmers, is to focus on the bottom line. “What they think 
makes sense, is energy efficiency,” she says.

Jeanne Merrill, Policy Director, California Climate and Agriculture 
Network, elaborates on what AB32 could mean for farmers. The proposed 
carbon trading system, currently under development by the California Air 
Resources Board, would enable a farm, she says, “to reduce its own 
emissions, voluntarily, by being part of the carbon market.” Still other 
opportunities await farmers. A cap-and-trade system would generate 
revenue, a portion of which, her organization argues, “should go for the 
key things that we need to assist California agriculture to remain 
viable when temperatures rise and water become more constrained.”

Paul Martin, Director of Environmental Services, Western United 
Dairymen, says farmers should be guided by a three-legged stool of 
sustainability: ethical production, scientific and environmental 
responsibility, and economic performance. His distilled message: “We 
need organic food because people want it. We need grass-fed because 
people want it. We need natural because people want it. And we need 
conventional because people want that kind of food.”

California’s new Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary, Karen 
Ross, is encouraged that food had finally entered the policy debate, and 
expresses optimism that young people will carry it forward. “There’s a 
renewed interest in where our food comes from, how it’s produced, and 
who is producing it.” She highlights the role of cities in shaping a 
more sustainable food policy. “It’s the real intersection of 
agriculture, food, health, and nutrition,” she gushes. “Cities are 
saying, ‘We can do something about this.’ It’s about identifying open 
plots for community gardens. It’s about making sure access to 
nutritious, locally grown food is available. It’s about understanding 
what it takes to help those farmers on the urban edge, or right in our 
local communities.”



This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the 
Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on June 14, 2011