Farmers Relax (a Little) After Cow Tax Scare

To ranchers, they were two of the most absurd and terrifying words in the English language: "cow tax."

Last last year, rumors that the Environmental Protection Agency was considering a tax on methane in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused angst in the farming community.

Methane, which the E.P.A. considers over 20 times more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is emitted when cattle burp. The New York Farm Bureau calculated that such a tax could amount to $175 per dairy cow, and about half that for beef cattle.

The outrage was palpable.

"Before white men came over here, there were thousands and thousands and thousands of buffalo," said Bob Duke, who manages about 100 head of Brangus cattle at a ranch in Utopia, Tex. "They didn't change the global warming deal."

"How are they going to tax cattle without taxing all of the town dogs and cats?" he added.

— Mark Huseth, rancher.

Richard Daugherty, a past president of the Tennessee Cattlemen's Association, called it the "economic persecution of a minority."

The hysteria, however, is now dying down — largely as the ranching and farming communities have come to realize that the E.P.A. was never seriously pursuing a methane tax.

"After the dust kind of settled, why, us producers sort of had a chuckle over it," said Mr. Daugherty. "Admittedly it was a nervous chuckle."

Many farm and ranch owners suggested that the idea of a methane tax was particularly nettlesome for them because the gas causes no obvious disturbance to the local air.

"It would be different if we had a hazy cloud over our livestock operation all the time, but we don't," said Mark Huseth, who runs about 500 cows near McLeod, N.D. "It's clean and fresh all time."

Still, some farmers remain worried that the Obama administration, which has signaled that climate change will be one of its signature issues, will regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

"A cow tax is clearly a bad idea and, if implemented, would have huge impacts on U.S. agriculture," wrote Cynthia Cory, the director of environmental affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation, in an article on the organization's Web site this week. "But since no one proposed a cow tax, the question instead is: Should President Obama's administration use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions?

"If the administration is listening," Ms. Cory continued, "the answer is, ‘No.'"