US House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Frank Lucas, says the cap and trade bill currently under consideration will have a devastating economic impact on production agriculture and rural economies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set a June 19 deadline for movement on the bill, which won't give other committees such as Agriculture much time to review and amend the bill.

But Mr Lucas stressed it was important for Congress to allow the legislative process to work by holding hearings and having a markup.

Although agriculture will be significantly impacted by this legislation, Mr Lucas said the bill largely ignores farmers and ranchers, and fails to specifically recognise the role agriculture can play in providing carbon offsets.

Worldwatch Institute has co-published a report that shows agricultural practices are the only innovations available today to sequester greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere by pulling in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to grow and sustain more plants.

The report says mobilising agricultural carbon sequestration is an essential tool in the effort to reduce the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases to the 350 parts-per-million level that many scientists argue we must achieve to stem climate change.

The 25x'25 Alliance has issued a list of proposed amendments to the legislation that the organisation said are needed to maximise the benefits that agriculture and forestry can provide in the cap-and-trade program outlined in the measure.

At the US National Press Club on Friday morning, 25x'25 Carbon Work Group chairman Nathan Rudgers said the program must have domestic offsets with identical characteristics and risks, and sequestration offsets must be for a contracted duration, with a suggested "permanence" of 50 years.

Rudgers also said USDA should be the lead agency to assume responsibility for the majority of farm and forestry offset functions.

The 25x'25 Alliance says it is critical that the current legislation be amended to provide the kind of necessary detail that will insure the viability of the cap and trade system's offset components and provide a program that can deliver significant near-term biological sequestration and greenhouse gas reduction services.