Ag groups are hailing last week’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s final rule on reporting greenhouse gas emissions. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart says the 2022 SEC proposed rule wasn’t a good idea to begin with.
“Farmers and ranchers across the country would have had to submit their greenhouse gas emissions, eventually providing those reports to the federal government.”
That’s simply because a producer sold to a publicly traded firm.
“Fortunately, those companies will no longer be required to submit that information.”
The reporting proposal first raised alarms at the American Farm Bureau. Their general counsel, Travis Cushman, says the process would have been onerous for farmers across the country if the Scope 3 provision had been included.
“Scope 3 would have required public companies to report on the greenhouse gas emission of their supply chain, meaning that farmers would potentially have to be tracking all their emissions constantly. Anytime you sell a bushel of corn, we’d have to say, ‘These are how much of seven different types of greenhouse gases were emitted for every bushel I’m selling.’”
For most of the country, this issue is now put to bed. The only exception is, of course, California.
“California recently passed a rule that would also require disclosure of Scope 3 for anyone to do business in California,” says Cushman. “We have sued California over this as well.”
Hart says the EPA already does a greenhouse gas inventory that shows beef cattle contribute just two percent of GHG emissions.
Source: NAFB News Service
