The farmers and ranchers inside the Missoula Hilton Garden Inn were feeling more endangered than the 50 Black Angus cattle penned outside on the hotel's lawn Monday morning.

"These are too valuable to eat," Big Sky High School agriculture teacher Tom Andres said as a group of Future Farmers of America practiced judging breeding stock. "This is kind of an archaic event compared to what FFA has evolved into."

Many of those students' parents were inside the hotel, hearing from American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman. Along with the common agenda topics of water rights and animal care, Stallman was there to explain the Farm Bureau's opposition to climate change legislation currently before Congress.

"That legislation won't affect the climate, but it will affect energy prices," Stallman said. And with 20 percent of a farmer's food production cost tied up in petroleum-based fuel and fertilizer, he said, the result will be higher prices at the grocery store while the landowners make less income.

Stallman also opposed a proposal in the legislation that would convert 20 percent of U.S. agricultural land into carbon-storage tree farms. Such a move would only give that chunk of the food market over to foreign competitors whose governments have no similar environmental restrictions, he said.

Many of the 500 attendees at the annual Montana convention were signing their names on ball caps to protest the cap-and-trade legislation. The caps will be sent to Montana's congressional delegation.

"This is about as much of a rally as the Farm Bureau gets," Montana bureau vice president John Youngberg joked of the quiet demonstration of opposition. But he added that a farmer who has to put 500 gallons of diesel in his combine for a day's field work takes the issue of fuel prices seriously.

"We can't compete with the countries that don't conserve fuel the way we do," he said. Rather than legislate reductions in fossil fuel use, the bureau wants to see more incentives for nuclear power development and alternative fuel and energy research.

Food producers are also worried about Congress' efforts to reform health care regulation, according to bureau member Bruce Wright of Bozeman. While they want permission to set up their own health insurance coverage similar to their Farm Bureau property and life insurance programs, they don't want a federally mandated health plan.

"It transfers the decisionmaking process away from the individual and to the government," Wright said. "I feel competent as an individual to make those decisions myself."

Wright acknowledged that food producers already have a large dependence on federal regulation, trade protection and incentive programs through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those were necessary, he said, to maintain the country's food supply and farm worker base.

"And the government doesn't make me be a farmer - it's optional," Wright said. "From what I see in health care, I can't do that."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.