You’ve probably noticed that food prices are soaring.
In fact, grocery bills rose around 15% this past year!
What’s one of the major causes for this increase? You guessed it: regulation.
And if you’re a North Carolinian, agriculture matters in big ways. Not just because these regulations make your food more expensive, but because agriculture is one of our state’s most important industries. And right now, it’s over regulated—and you and I are paying for that overregulation every time we go to the grocery store.
The Cost of Environmental Regulations
As part of the Left’s global climate change crusade, governments passed regulations aimed at lowering carbon emissions. But do you know what many of these policies did? They increased operating costs for farmers. And those costs got passed onto YOU, the consumer.
For example, a practice called carbon pricing can add up to 25 percent of total expenses for a farm (and that makes YOUR food more expensive). And whether it’s fertilizer, grain drying, or fuel consumption, farmers produce a lot of emissions. So carbon pricing makes farming a LOT more expensive.
To add insult to injury, there are even more regulatory burdens, like compliance requirements and mandated emissions monitoring, weighing this critical industry down.
These ridiculous environmental regulations make farming (and your groceries) costlier.
And, that is why we need to innovate…NOT overregulate!
Protecting our natural world is important. We must be good stewards of it. But we don’t have to choose between our duty to protect our state’s environment for future generations and lowering costs for farmers and hardworking North Carolina families today.
That’s why the government needs to work with (not against) farmers when it comes to carbon pricing.
But an even better idea would be to get the government out of picking winners and losers, and simply let farmers start engaging in sustainable farming practices themselves.
Farmers should have the freedom to both help the environment and get more food on the table.
And while you've heard me talk about it before, one of the best ways to let farmers innovate is a regulatory sandbox.
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Join The Carolina Journal’s Editor-in-Chief Donna King and John Locke Foundation’s Mitch Kokai to discuss our May poll! This poll breakfast will be at City Club in downtown Raleigh.
