Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the bipartisan Fair Access to Agriculture Disaster Programs Act. This legislation would ensure all farmers can access critical U.S. Department of Agriculture disaster relief programs.

Increasingly frequent and catastrophic floods, fires, freezes, and other disasters are threatening the long-term sustainability of agriculture across the country.

The impact has been particularly acute for California's agricultural communities, who face year-round threats from drought, heat, floods, and fires--even in January.

The farm bill authorizes safety net programs to help producers recover, but outdated adjusted gross income, AGI, limits exclude many specialty crop growers, despite facing the same extreme weather challenges as other farmers.

As a result, producers from California to North Carolina are blocked from vital disaster assistance.

The Fair Access to Agriculture Disaster Programs Act adopts flexibility used in the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program to waive the AGI limitation for producers that derive 75 percent of their AGI from farming, ranching, or related farming practices.

What are referred to as specialty crops are just that--special. Specialty crops, which include fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery crops that are cultivated for food and medicine, require overall higher input costs and specialized processes for planting, growing, and harvesting.

Did you know that it costs more than $30,000 to produce an acre of strawberries? The cost of production for specialty crops is typically thousands of dollars per acre.

As a result, both large and small producers of specialty crops end up exceeding the AGI limitations put in place to means-test critical disaster assistance.

That is why we need to pass the Fair Access to Agriculture Disaster Programs Act to ensure farmers and ranchers can access agricultural safety net programs in the wake of increasingly more frequent and catastrophic disasters.

I would like to thank Senator Tillis for joining me to introduce this bill, and I forward to working with my colleagues to pass the Fair Access to Agriculture Disaster Programs Act as quickly as possible. ______

By Mr. DURBIN (for himself, Ms. Warren, and Mr. Merkley):

S. 994. A bill to provide for accountability in higher education; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

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