John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today's commentary --

We have a new President. Congratulations, President Obama. As is always the case, those that support and help to elect the President expect to get their priorities addressed. That is the case even though their views might be a minority of the population.

There is a loud, misguided minority that wants to tell us how to farm -- that can't stand commercial agriculture. They want to go back to nature. They fret about the carbon footprint and global warming. If that is their priority, then ethanol and biodiesel, clean burning fuels, should be at the top of their list. But that's not always the case. If they want to reduce the amount of chemicals used in food production, they should love biotechnology. We use half the chemicals in food production as they do in Europe, because Europeans have not accepted genetic engineering to fight the worms, and insects, and weeds that menace their crops.

Our dairy critics want to stop the use of rBST which increases milk production, even though it does not affect the milk or meat in anyway. It just means we can get the same amount of milk with 8% fewer cows. That's 8% less methane gas.

The animal rights crowd won't let us slaughter horses, even though there is a market for the meat. There are hungry people in the world. We don't have any idea what to do with all the unwanted horses.

Animal rights activists are really vegetarians in disguise. They don't want us to eat meat, even though, in nature the lion eats the impala. They think that is just fine since the lion is up the food chain from the impala. Well, we are at the top of the food chain.

I hope the new President and Congress will rely on common sense and sound science and ignore the disingenuous, selfish, loud mouth crowd that claims to know it all.

If they had their way, they would force a dramatic cut in food production and a third of the world population would starve to death.

Until next week, I am John Block from Washington.