Presidential candidate Joe Biden says he wants to move the nation’s vehicles away from fossil fuel to electricity. In addition, his party has called for U.S. agriculture to be the first in the world with net-zero emissions. However, American Farm Bureau said that’s not a reality.

The AFBF’s Andrew Walmsley said energy-intensive agriculture, which is already using biofuels and other alternative energy, is a long way from going exclusively electric.

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“Just out of the sheer mass of what our farm equipment is required to do, and the size of it. I don’t know if there’s an extension cord long enough to run a combine on a couple of thousand acres. And I question how heavy the batteries would be to power a machine like that.”

Walmsley points out some combines have 200 to 300-gallon tanks and use a large amounts of fuel. He added a ban on combustion engines would be a “huge threat to agriculture.”.

“Additional costs put on ratepayers, which farmers are ratepayers, to put in the infrastructure for charging stations. And then you have the question of increased generation; where is that going to come from?  I don’t think we’re at a point with renewables to meet that demand. We’re not building new coal facilities, so where’s that going to come from? Probably, natural gas.” 

Which, he said, would drive up fertilizer prices and require even more fracking, a policy opposed by the former Vice President’s party. And then there’s food costs.

“The long-term impacts would be higher food costs," Walmsley pointed out. "And when you think about food costs for a consumer, the farm portion of it’s really not the most expensive.  It’s the processing and transportation costs.” 

Some trucks could go electric, but Walmsley says if those costs go up, so will the cost of food.

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