Rural America More Exposed With Climate Change Regulation

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, CO – Rural America is disproportionately exposed to climate change regulation given the unique configuration of the rural economy. That’s one main takeaway from recent research from CoBank Knowledge Exchange economists. Almost half of rural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes from agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, mining, and energy. Since each has a significant environmental footprint, and they are under varying degrees of pressure from environmental advocates, policymakers, regulators, consumers, socially responsible investors and others for whom climate change is an important priority. Upon close examination of the environmental track record of production agriculture, electricity generation, water utilities, energy extraction, etc., it is clear that significant progress has been made in recent years to reduce their environmental impacts. One example is the level of crop nutrients applied to U.S. row crops on a per-bushel-of-output basis, taking into account both the usage of fertilizer (which impacts the environment) as well as food supply and food cost (an important competing value). CoBank explains that farmers today use about half as much fertilizer to produce a bushel of corn, wheat or soybeans as they did 40 years ago (1980). Additionally. irrigation for farming accounts for over a third of all freshwater consumption in the U.S. and often puts farmers and ranchers in conflict with environmental advocates. But technological innovation has enabled producers to cut absolute water usage by more than 20 percent over the past 30 years.