Research Paper Warns Biden's ESG Farming Campaign Will Cost Consumers $1,300 More a Year

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February 9, 2024

Researchers warn that Biden's agenda includes much higher costs for diesel, propane, fertilizer and more, raising a family-of-four's annual grocery spend by $1,300.

Via DailyMail.com:

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

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.

'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.

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.

To illustrate this, they created a model of a hypothetical corn farm that had to abide by new federal environmental regulations and standards.

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.

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.

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.'