March 30 2012 07:02 AM

Attorney warns food shortages are possible if agency continues to operate unchecked.

Get Washington, D.C. attorney Gary Baise (pictured) started on the Environmental Protection Agency. Please. It won't take much. Be sure to listen carefully - and be prepared to be frightened and angered in ways you may not have been before.

Baise's specialty is arguing environmental-related cases on behalf of farmers. His frequent opponents are EPA, USDA, and other government agencies. He's been doing it for years, and he believes that EPA is a huge threat to the U.S being able to feed itself in the future. Seriously.

The blunt quote that is the title of this blog post came from Baise during the 2012 annual Conference of the National Institute for Animal Agriculture in Denver this week. What makes his indictment even more chilling is Baise was the chief of staff to the first EPA Administrator and was a former director of EPA's Office of Legislation.

"Have you ever thought of agriculture as being a criminal activity?" he asked the audience. "EPA does. Today, we are seeing the criminalization of manure application on fields and rainfall runoff. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a very serious situation. You are going to have to get a lot more involved in litigation in the future in order to survive."

Little by little, he says EPA's autocratic and oversight-free decisions are taking land out of production, forcing farmers out of business, reducing production efficiency, cutting total food output, and worsening the growing hunger epidemic in America. Without intervention, Baise says EPA may ultimately render the U.S. incapable of meeting its own food needs, let alone continue as the world's number one exporter of food.