IN THIS ISSUE:
- Ag Cabal’s Dairy Net Zero Restrictions Harm Producers, Report Shows
- Nebraska Sues First Street Activist Group Over Harm from False Climate Ratings
Ag Cabal’s Dairy Net Zero Restrictions Harm Producers, Report Shows
Two advocacy groups have called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to withdraw all support for the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ), a United Nations initiative to reduce methane and other greenhouse gases from the dairy industry supply chain. Launched during Climate Week in September of 2021, P2DNZ counts as members the largest dairy companies and cooperatives, controlling a huge percentage of the milk, cheese, butter, and other dairy product markets.
Many member states of the European Union, having adopted net-zero commitments, are enforcing emission reductions and net-zero goals on their agriculture sector, reducing emissions from livestock and diary production through policies forcing farmers to reduce production and operations and buying up land to leave it wild and count it as carbon sinks.
The global dairy giants that control the dairy market in Europe, who have also wholly bought into Europe’s net zero goals, want dairy producers in the United States and around the world to operate under the same or similar goals and restrictions. With encouragement by the U.N., the multinational and domestic companies that control large parts of dairy processing, wholesale marketing, and distribution networks to retailers in the United States call for greenhouse gas emission reductions from agricultural producers and push “voluntary measures” on individual producers.
Individual dairy farmers get notices or letters from companies that purchase, process, store, and sell their finished products, requesting they report their energy use, account for and report their emissions of methane and carbon dioxide, and state what efforts they are taking to reduce fossil fuel use and emissions to fight climate change. The notice makes clear that the wholesaling and processing companies expect dairy producers to cooperate with the implied, and often directly stated, threat that failure to account for energy use and emissions and take steps to reduce both is likely to end their business relationship. That means they will have no practical way to get their milk to market, because retailers are locked into contracts with the big processing companies and cooperatives.
Among the companies that dominate the U.S. dairy market are Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the largest raw-milk purchasers and marketer, which controls more than 30 percent of America’s raw milk supply. Among the other major dairy companies that hold membership in P2DNZ are Land O’Lakes, with a dominant position (23 percent) in the butter, spread, cheese, and diversified dairy market; Swiss multinational food giant Nestlé, with its dominant position in baby formula, creamers, and chocolate; Schrieber, supplier of dairy and cheese to every major retailer; Lactalis, USA (the U.S. arm of the global dairy giant Lactalis), and Danone North America, controlling large portions of yogurt production and sales; Canada’s Saputo, a major North American dairy processor and cheese producer and supplier; and Leprino, which controls 85 percent of the U.S. pizza cheese market. Each of these companies is a signatory to P2DNZ and actively supports it. In addition, dairy trade groups such as the National Milk Producers Federation and the government-funded (through mandated membership payment) Dairy Management, Inc. are signatories and supporters of P2DNZ.
As is true of many oligopolistic industries, the companies can dictate terms to their 23,600 dairy farmer suppliers. If the farmers don’t agree to big dairy’s demand that they “fight climate change,” they will have a very hard time finding a market for their goods, outside of boutique raw-milk sales at local farmer’s markets, where governments even allow them.
As detailed in a recent report from Heartland Impact and Consumers Defense, “The War on Dairy: Foreign Influence Subverting America’s Dairy Sector,” under President Joe Biden the USDA embraced dairy net zero in its whole-economy makeover to fight climate change. At the U.N. Climate Week in September 2021, where P2DNZ was launched, Biden’s Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, endorsed the initiative, saying it would “position U.S. farmers, ranchers and forest landowners as leaders in addressing climate change.”
On another occasion, Biden himself said, “U.S. farmers are on the frontlines of climate change … but they’re also part of the solution.”
There are many problems with the international and domestic efforts to force dairy producers to endorse and adopt energy restrictions in pursuit of net zero.
A scientific problem is that although the science of climate change is hardly settled, the extant data provide no support for the claim that fossil fuel use, either on or off the farm, is producing a climate crisis. The data is equally clear that agricultural emissions are such a small part of overall global emissions, with emissions from highly efficient U.S. farms comprising an even-smaller share, that restrictions on farmers’ operations and fossil fuel use will have no impact on climate while imposing a big impact on farmers’ bottom line.
Net-zero restrictions definitely increase the cost of operating farms, and rising costs have already forced more than 1,000 dairy producers out of business in just the past year. Anything that increases costs further or replaces the judgement of farmers on the ground with the opinions of the leaders of mega-corporations with no knowledge of local conditions will shutter even more dairy operations. That may be the goal: environmentalists get the symbolic climate win while large producers gobble up small outfits at bargain-basement prices. The new report explains:
Net zero compliance introduces fixed costs into dairy production through monitoring systems, reporting requirements, third-party verification, consultant fees, and capital investments. Fixed costs are inherently regressive. Large operations can spread them across volume; small- and mid-sized farmers and producers cannot.
As margins tighten, smaller producers exit the field and assets consolidate, shifting market power upward. Put simply, small farmers are forced to sell to larger operations, which then get rolled up further into massive global enterprises. Supply chains become less robust and more fragile. This fragility is masked in the short term but revealed during shocks like weather events, disease outbreaks, or input disruptions.
Furthermore, in agriculture, a fragile supply chain opens the nation to food shortage vulnerabilities as an issue of national defense and national security, particularly during wartime.
In any circumstance, consumers ultimately foot the bill.
Dairy oligarchs have no business enforcing climate orthodoxy on individual farmers. In America, a person has the right to believe or not believe in climate change and support or not support any, no, or all supposed climate solutions, without having to ask elites for their opinion. Dairy producers should have to answer only to their bottom line and their best estimate of how to maximize profits while producing the best products possible. Governments and business oligarchs have no right to guide or restrict others’ choices through enforced conformity to the climate views and preferences of elite dairy processors, wholesalers, and marketers. Big Dairy shouldn’t be able to extort climate concessions from producers through the power they wield. This effort certainly raises antitrust concerns.
Because of this, Heartland Impact and Consumers Defense sent a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting the agency disavow its support for P2DNZ, specifically by “disclos[ing] the current nature and scope of USDA’s affiliation with P2DNZ, including any funding, staff participation, grants, contracts, data sharing, technical assistance, or other support; [and to] immediately withdraw USDA from P2DNZ.”
There are some indications P2DNZ will have a short shelf life in the United States. Rollins has previously indicated support for ending the agency’s association with P2DNZ. Shortly after Heartland Impact posted a video publicizing the dangers P2DNZ poses to dairy operators, Rollins said on X the policy would “burden small farms with costly compliance.” Rollins criticized “radical ESG mandates disguised as sustainability” and declared “ESG mandates have no place in American agriculture.”
In addition, a USDA spokesperson told a reporter, “President Trump will not stand idly by while large, consolidated milk processors and the protectionist anti-competition bodies like the EU attempt to force our hard-working producers to hand over sensitive personal farm data as a condition for selling their milk,” in a Center Square story about the Heartland Impact/Consumers Defense report.
“Proponents of these burdens should be on notice: your ESG standards will no longer be applied to American farmers,” the USDA representative told The Center Square.
Ending all association with P2DNZ and making it clear to Big Dairy that they are under investigation for their nefarious climate efforts would be in line with Trump’s consistent actions ending participation in futile and damaging international climate efforts. Enforcing antitrust laws to discourage Big Dairy’s continued support for the climate hoax and anti-fossil-fuel policies would put American farmers and consumers first.
Sources: Daily Signal; The Center Square; Heartland Impact
Nebraska Sues First Street Activist Group Over Harm from False Climate Ratings
Climate Realism (here and here) and the American Energy Institute (AEI) have written extensively about the lies the climate risk advocacy group First Street tells, and the harm their flawed and unverifiable rating systems are causing to property owners.
Taking note of the problem, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers has filed suit against First Street for harming Nebraska homeowners by creating and publicizing inaccurate and misleading risk scores which have made it difficult for Nebraskans to sell their homes.
Hilgers’ lawsuit alleges First Street’s scores are based on inaccurate or incomplete information about the property being scored, being based in part on flawed climate model projections. Hilger also notes First Street’s flood and wildfire claims about properties often contradict the findings of, and official risk maps produced by, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA maps take into account measures property owners have taken to mitigate various risks, factors which First Street ignores in its ratings.
Another factor Hilgers cites in the lawsuit is that First Street withholds its underlying data and rating algorithms as proprietary while instituting a policy of denying any and all consumer disputes—disputes that are hard to undertake anyway because First Street hides the reasons for the ratings.
Major real estate listing agencies often direct people to First Street’s predictions and ratings, linking them to online real estate listings, as Heartland Impact, the AEI, and now Nebraska’s attorney general note. The results: property remains on the market longer than housing-market supply-and-demand conditions suggest they should, and homeowners are forced to sell at below-market rates.
“First Street is making a profit at the expense of the value of Nebraskans’ homes,” Hilgers said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “First Street passes off misleading and often inaccurate climate speculation in a way that drives down home values and increases costs and frustrations for Nebraskans.
“The deceptive behavior has to stop,” said Hilgers.
Hilgers’ lawsuit asks the court for three forms of redress: end First Street’s business practices, make it pay fines, and force it to return profits unlawfully earned.
Lawsuits against home-listing companies using or directing people to First Street’s ratings analyses might be merited as well.
Sources: Nebraska Attorney General; WOWT 6 News, Omaha; American Energy Institute
