Southern West Virginia News

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Carol Miller (R-WV) wrote an op-ed highlighting the difficult regulations imposed on American farmers by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Lootpress titled, "Why is the EPA Making It Harder for Family Farms to Succeed?"

Op-Ed: Why is the EPA Making It Harder for Family Farms to Succeed?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken on the role of enforcing unnecessary and harmful regulations on America’s agriculture and energy industries. Before the EPA implements new rules, regulators should be required to visit the parts of the country that stand to get destroyed by higher costs. It’s important for the EPA to understand the unintended consequences of their actions.  

The EPA officials who want to make air quality rules tighter should visit my district in rural West Virginia where we produce the goods our country relies on. While those fields are a primary source of livelyhood for my constituents, they are a primary target for the EPA. 

The EPA’s proposal’s to raise the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) targets a pollutant called PM2.5. This will have a major impact on my district. PM2.5 is a type of dust that gets kicked up when you till a field or drive down an unpaved road, which happens every single day in rural areas and agricultural regions.

West Virginia is well known for our wild and wonderful mountains, but a fair amount of agriculture takes place here. Ninety-five percent of West Virginia farms are family-owned – the highest percentage in the country. My family owns a bison farm, and we know many family farmers who grow apples, corn, and many other crops who struggle with overbearing and unproductive EPA regulations and government overreach.  

It's not easy being a farmer in the United States with China waiting to snatch up any American farmland they can. We’ve seen examples across the country of the Chinese Communist Party buying farmland in order to have a sizable presence in American agriculture. Now, even the EPA is working against farmers with these top-down regulations that put farmers out of business.  

Our farmers are also getting older. We need to attract younger people to this industry and work with them to establish up-and-coming businesses. This proposed rule would do the opposite. It would increase costs for new farmers who are already facing high barriers to entry. The startup costs for a farm could be up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is an eye-watering sum for young people who want to leave a positive impact on God’s earth through farming and agricultural production. 

Instead of identifying the appropriate balance between commonsense protections and economic growth, the EPA is taking the opposite approach and seeing how difficult they can make life for farmers. The EPA’s own data shows that the United States has reduced pollutants, including PM2.5, by almost 80% in the last 50 years. 

The agency needs to step back and enforce the regulations that are already on the books instead of inventing new ones that will potentially kill our family farms. I invite EPA officials to visit us in West Virginia, drive on our roads, and talk to the people who will be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy if this proposed rule is finalized. Making it harder to succeed in business is not the American way. We can and must do better so our family farms have a chance to succeed.

Original source can be found here.