NUCLEAR FAMINE REPORT: LIMITED NUCLEAR EXCHANGE IN ONE OF WORLD’S REGIONS WOULD TRIGGER MASS GLOBAL STARVATION AFTER SLASHING CHINESE, U.S. FOOD PRODUCTION

NUCLEAR FAMINE REPORT: LIMITED NUCLEAR EXCHANGE IN ONE OF WORLD’S REGIONS WOULD TRIGGER MASS GLOBAL STARVATION AFTER SLASHING CHINESE, U.S. FOOD PRODUCTION Amidst Growing Tensions in Asia, India-Pakistan Confrontation Used to Show Dire Consequences Around the Globe; More Than A Billion People Would be at Risk Under “Nuclear Famine” Scenario. CHICAGO, IL.///April 25, 2012///More than a billion people around the world would face starvation following a limited regional nuclear weapons exchange (such as a clash between India and Pakistan) that would cause major worldwide climate disruption driving down food production in China, the U.S. and other nations, according to a major new report released today by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its US affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Dr. Ira Helfand, the author of “Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk—Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition,” said: “The grim prospect of nuclear famine requires a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons. The new evidence that even the relatively small nuclear arsenals of countries such as India and Pakistan could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems and threaten hundreds of millions of already malnourished people demands that action be taken. The needless and preventable deaths of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would bring an end to modern civilization as we know it.” The findings and the methodology on which the study is based will be published in a forthcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change. Released during the World Summit of Nobel Laureates in Chicago April 23-25, 2012, the Helfand report was made possible with the financial support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Among the specific findings outlined in the report: * Corn production in the US would decline by an average of 10 percent for an entire decade, with the most severe decline (20 percent) in Year 5. Soybean production would decline by about 7 percent, with the most severe loss, more than 20 percent, in Year 5. * There would be a significant decline in middle-season rice production in China. During the first four years, rice production would decline by an average of 21 percent; over the next six years the decline would average 10 percent. * Resulting increases in food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest. Even if agricultural markets continued to function normally, 215 million people would be added to the rolls of the malnourished over the course of a decade. The 925 million people in the world who are already chronically malnourished (with a baseline consumption of 1,750 calories or less per day), would be put at risk by a further 10 percent decline in their food consumption. * Significant agricultural shortfalls over an extended period would almost certainly lead to panic and hoarding on an international scale, further reducing accessible food. The IPPNW/PSR report concludes: “There is an urgent need to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states and to move with all possible speed to the negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention that will ban these weapons completely.” For more details go to, http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/nuclear-famine on the Web. Commenting on the report, Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a member of the governing board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the former UN Under Secretary General of Disarmament Affairs, said: “Scientific evidence continues to confirm empirically what we already know - that nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapon of mass destruction ever invented with unrivaled genetic and ecological effects. And yet, unlike biological and chemical weapons, they have not been outlawed because of vested interests. Nine countries have 20,530 nuclear warheads among them 95 percent with the US and Russia. As long as these weapons exist others, including terrorists, will want them. As long as we have nuclear weapons their use by intention or accident; by states or by non-state actors is inevitable. Their total elimination through a Nuclear Weapons Convention is therefore the only solution." Former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the founding chairman, Green Cross International, said: "I am convinced that nuclear weapons must be abolished. Their use in a military conflict is unthinkable; using them to achieve political objectives is immoral. Over twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I ended our summit meeting in Geneva with a joint statement that 'nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,' and this new study underscores in stunning and disturbing detail why this is the case and why we must discard Cold War-style plans for the possible use of these weapons and move rapidly to eliminating them from the world's arsenals." Dr. Helfand is the North American vice president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Working with data produced by scientists who have studied the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Dr. Helfand and a team of experts in agriculture and nutrition determined that plunging temperatures and reduced precipitation in critical farming regions, caused by soot and smoke lofted into the atmosphere by multiple nuclear explosions, would interfere with crop production and affect food availability and prices worldwide.

AFBF Urges Senate Ag Committee to Move Farm Bill Forward

AFBF Urges Senate Ag Committee to Move Farm Bill Forward WASHINGTON, D.C., April 23, 2012 – Numerous provisions of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s draft farm bill follow the American Farm Bureau Federation’s core principles for “rational, acceptable farm policy,” but there is room for adjustments to improve the legislation. AFBF President Bob Stallman delivered that message to Senate Agriculture Committee leaders in a letter today following a meeting of the organization’s board of directors. In the letter, AFBF urged the committee to approve the draft “as a vehicle to move the farm bill to the Senate floor in a timely manner.” While the letter said “the importance of completing a farm bill cannot be overstated,” it also said that AFBF would seek opportunities “to make adjustments and refinements to improve the legislation.” The letter, sent to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), started by commending them for moving forward in a bipartisan fashion to write the 2012 farm bill. The letter specifically outlined AFBF’s support for several points included in the Senate farm bill, including: the decision to “stand firm on utilizing the figure of $23 billion in savings suggested to the Super Committee last fall”; the fact that the Senate bill protects and strengthens the federal crop insurance program and does not reduce funding for the program; that programs are not based on cost of production; and that it includes “a commodity title that attempts to encourage producers to follow market signals rather than make planting decisions in anticipation of government payments.” AFBF’s letter stated that while the draft legislation addresses many of its policy priorities, the organization continues to support a single program option for the commodity title that is extended to all crops and it has concerns about the need for improved “equity across all commodities.” The letter also stated that AFBF will continue to work toward provisions in the bill for a financial safety net that includes a “catastrophic revenue loss program based on county level losses” with coverage at 80 percent of revenue levels. “Catastrophic loss events are typically beyond any producer's control, and are events that would endanger the financial survivability of the farm,” Stallman said. “These events, in the past, have prompted enactment of ad hoc disaster programs. Having a catastrophic plan in place would protect farmers from these situations and extend program benefits only when they are needed, rather than potentially being a supplemental source of annual income.” While AFBF will seek further refinements in the Senate farm bill, Stallman’s letter highlights a number of the bill’s provisions supported by the organization. Included among a larger list of those provisions were: * Support for elimination of direct payments, countercyclical payments, the average crop revenue election program and the SURE program; * Maintaining the current marketing loan program; * Rejecting any provision linking conservation compliance with crop insurance; * Eliminating the dairy price support program and the Milk Income Loss Contract program and using the funds associated with those programs to offer a voluntary gross margin insurance program for dairy producers; * Mandating that USDA’s Risk Management Agency develop by 2013 a revenue insurance product that meets the needs of peanut producers; and * Achieving the vast majority of necessary reductions in conservation funding from land-retirement programs rather than working-land programs.