Farmers can’t stay at home, they ignore climate change

Dan Chiles
| Springfield News-Leader

Garrett Hawkins, a Farm Bureau writer, complained in the June 23 issue of the News-Leader about power transmission lines across Missouri

June 2024 is likely to be the hottest month on record, part of a year that will be the hottest on record after the hottest year on record. Most Americans spend 95% of their time indoors, but farmers don’t. Our crops need mild, predictable weather, year after year. But all over the world, farmers are suffering from wildfires. Droughts. Derechos. Hurricanes. Topsoil destruction. Tornadoes. Rising oceans. Storm surges. Catastrophic flooding. Groundwater collapse. Polar vortices that kill apple blossoms in April. Pollinator destruction. Desperate migrants fleeing devastated farms. A common cause: bad weather.

Farm Bureau plays politics, but their actuaries know the truth. Why are insurance companies abandoning lucrative markets in Florida and California? Why are they abandoning the eastern and southern coastal regions of the United States? Why are they losing their shirts on billions of dollars in new claims due to bad weather? Why are they raising everyone’s property rates? Leaders will tell you: Carbon dioxide pollution in our atmosphere is causing global warming, and that is leading to weather disasters. Burning more coal and natural gas, as Mr. Hawkins recommends, is making our problems much worse, destroying farms here and around the world.

Bad weather means bad farms and less food. Farmers feel the effects of bad weather first and worse than anyone else. Instead of fighting renewables and emitting carbon pollution, Missouri farmers should be Weather Guardians. We should be green energy zealots: innovating renewable strategies and minimizing carbon pollution, because if we don’t, it’s a disaster for us.

Wind and solar facilities produce cheap, reliable power across the Great Plains, and industrial battery banks make them as reliable as any other form of energy. Transmission lines like the Grain Belt Express provide critical jobs in Missouri and deliver cheap, renewable energy to every Missouri city along the line. Crops grow below the wind generators, and industrial solar panels enrich farmers lucky enough to have land near the transmission lines.

One day Farm Bureau will work for the good of farmers and leave the science-denying climate propaganda to the cranks who can’t tell a plow from a pork chop. When?

Finally, Missouri farmers are old. If we want bright, young, ambitious, and educated people to settle in rural Missouri, we should pay attention to them. They care about our overheated planet and want the mild weather we enjoyed when we were their age.

Dan Chiles is co-owner and operator of Rockspan Farm west of Springfield and chairman of the board of Renew Missouri.