Grow the World’s Energy Future
Use Eco-Capitalism to Secure Our Energy Future and Curb Global Warming
Farmers in the United States are struggling to compete in today’s global marketplace, while an uneven international playing field in agriculture keeps millions of small scale producers in the developing world mired in poverty. At the same time, ongoing U.S. dependence on oil carries tremendous costs to our economic well-being, agricultural production, national security, environment, and changing climate. In World Trade Organization (WTO) talks, success or failure in the current Doha Round of negotiations will largely be determined by the long-term agricultural policies of rich countries.
The Center for American Progress’ strategy is focused on improving the lives of farming families at home and abroad, and rests on three critical elements.
The Center for American Progress' strategy is focused on improving the lives of farming families at home and abroad, and rests on three critical elements:
1. Invest in the capacity of America’s family farmers to lead our nation into the future—a future of diversified domestic energy production, increased prosperity, and greater security. By bringing the innovations afforded by biofuels and emerging biomass industries to bear, we can create a new generation of marketable products for family farmers. The agriculture sector has the potential to meet a significant portion of our liquid fuels needs right here in the United States. Energy crops can be produced in almost every region of the United States. An agricultural economy that runs on renewable energy will provide two new and potentially substantial markets for farmers to enter: one for energy products and one for the tradable carbon credits that are the mechanism for tracking emission reductions.
2. The federal government should make the investments needed to jump start and sustain an agricultural economy driven by energy and innovation, with some of those investments coming from the redeployment of funds now invested in agricultural subsidies. We propose investments in five key areas:
•Research and development for genomics and other key scientific and technical innovations;
•Investment in the infrastructure that will allow the successful deployment of biofuel production and distribution;
•Financing—including loan guarantees and other mechanisms—for new biofuel production projects to promote deployment;
•Investment in the risk management and other tools required by American farmers to shift into energy production; and
•Market development including, for example, the renewable fuel standards that can extend consumer choice and bring consumers to new energy markets.
3. Promote global economic growth and new markets for U.S. products through investment in the economic development of developing countries by: focusing our foreign aid investments in agriculture and, in particular, increasing the capacity of the world’s poorest countries to produce value-added exports; breaking down non-tariff barriers that constrain expanding market access for the world’s poorest countries; and, importantly, sharing with the developing world the know-how that can allow them to reduce the high cost of oil imports, make energy more affordable and accessible to rural communities, and potentially open new sub-regional markets through the transfer of emerging biobased energy technologies.
For more information: Resources for Global Growth
The Experts: Gayle Smith, Jake Caldwell
To contact one of our experts please call/e-mail Sean Gibbons, director of media strategy, at 202-481-8228
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