Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2007
Floor Speech
FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - November 05, 2007)
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Mr. President, before I make my comments on the farm bill, I want to follow up on something that the Senator from North Dakota said about the bipartisanship of this bill, and that is to remind people who might be listening that what they see on the evening news about dissension within Congress does not present a very clear picture of the way Congress operates.
We can all say there is too much partisanship, but in the final analysis, at least as far as the Senate goes, nothing is ever going to get done here unless it is bipartisan. So I compliment the Senator from North Dakota for speaking about the bipartisanship of the farm bill that is now before the Senate, but I take that opportunity to remind people when you have 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans and you have a filibuster, it takes 60 votes to move forward to stop a filibuster and to get finality on a bill. We would never get anything done in the Senate if it weren't at least somewhat bipartisan.
I say to the American people who watch television at night and get fed up because there is talk about too much partisanship going on in the Congress and too many things being done to make one party look better than the other party and vice versa, this farm bill is an example of how things get done in the Senate because parties must work together or nothing would get done. This farm bill will be passed by the Senate for the reason that it is bipartisan.
I thank my colleagues who have worked so hard on this bill, particularly the leadership of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Senator Harkin for his leadership in this area. It is a lot of hard work to bring a bill to the floor that supports rural America when you consider only about 2 percent of the people in this country are producing the food that the other 98 percent eat.
While this bill isn't perfect, it is something that will help the family farmers. The most important job the committee has to do every 5 years is to write a farm bill. It is not all we do. We operate in a lot of different areas. But one of the most important things the Agriculture Committee does is provide a safety net for farmers, and we generally review and rewrite that piece of legislation every 5 or 6 years.
I am glad that in addition to the Agriculture Committee being involved in this bill, as the Senator from North Dakota has pointed out, the Finance Committee has had a part of the action, because we were able to contribute to that process and free up over $3 billion for the Agriculture Committee to spend on priorities that are very important for the Agriculture Committee.
What is more, for the first time I am aware of, we will be merging our agricultural tax policy with the Agriculture Committee's authorization and spending policy. This bipartisan tax package frees up conservation dollars for programs that we have backlogs in, closes tax loopholes, provides support for our growing cellulosic technology for ethanol, encourages rural economic development, and helps family farmers to get started in the business of agriculture.
I have never been a big proponent for a permanent disaster program, but there are a few key items I want to point out about the bill that is before us. This program will set up a permanent system to administer disaster aid. We won't have to go through the trouble then of setting up a new way to administer a disaster program every time we do an ad hoc disaster package, as we have done from year to year as disasters might happen.
Also, what is most important to me about this part of the farm bill that comes from the Finance Committee is that it is tied directly to crop insurance. We want to promote farmers managing their own risk, and one way to do that is through the crop insurance program. Now, the crop insurance program might not cover all disasters, so that is why this program is set up. But as a precondition to participating in the disaster program that is in the Finance Committee's provisions that are going to go into this farm bill is that each farmer who wants to benefit from it has crop insurance.
In my home State of Iowa, we have a very successful crop insurance system. I like that farmers have to take risk mitigation into their own hands. Tying the two together was the only way it would work. I know this body will be looking at additional provisions that might affect the crop insurance program. I am not opposed to changes, but I urge my colleagues to be careful that we don't undermine a successful risk tool for our farmers. I believe we should give producers as many tools as possible to provide them an adequate safety net. An optional revenue protection program is a step in the right direction. Farmers should be able to make the best choices for their individual operations based upon the level of risk management that they, as their own manager, decide they need. I am glad to see that option included in the farm bill, and I look forward to anybody suggesting improvements in that program.
One of the most important titles in the Agriculture Committee bill, and it is added for the first time to a farm bill, is the livestock competition title. I am glad to see a compromise on legislation that we call COOL--an acronym for country-of-origin labeling--and I look forward to the law being implemented quickly. This COOL legislation was actually passed 5 years ago, but it has been held up by action on separate appropriations bills over the years so that this law has never been implemented. Hopefully, once and for all, it will be implemented, because it is a darned good time to let consumers know where their food comes from. The country of origin of their food is as important as their knowing the country of origin of any other product they might buy as a consumer in the United States. That is the law for every other product that consumers buy--that they know what country it comes from--so why not the same requirement for food as well?
We have also put a ban on mandatory arbitration in production contracts. This isn't to say a producer can't agree to arbitration once a dispute arises. In fact, I am very much a supporter of the process called arbitration, but I am very much opposed to mandatory arbitration. Because of this legislation, processors can no longer force these arbitration clauses on farmers who have no choice but to sign the contract for lack of competition.
I am also very pleased that my amendment to ban packer ownership for owning or feeding livestock has been accepted into this package by Senator Harkin and other leaders on the committee. This is very good news for small livestock producers who deserve to make sure the competitive marketplace is working. One of the things that brings this about is the meat processing industry has said very clearly from time to time: Why do they own livestock? They own livestock--they say, in their words--because when prices are high, they can kill their own livestock. When prices are low, they buy from the farmer. I think it is easy to see how demoralizing that is to the family farmer when he sees, working hard to produce a product, that somehow he can be undercut by the vertical integration of meat packers owning their own livestock.
While this does not accomplish all that we need in this area of enhanced competition for the family farmer, it is an important first step toward remedying the biggest problem facing farmers today, the problem of concentration in agriculture, particularly in agribusiness. Senator Harkin and I, along with other Members of this body, will be offering additional reforms that are critical to a vibrant future in the livestock industry. I call on my fellow Senators to support the livestock title and these additional reforms.
Another issue I have been working to address through the farm bill relates to the administrative rules issued by a department unrelated to agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security--well, related in the sense that they have responsibilities to make sure that products coming into our country are safe. But this regulation I am talking about is their attempt to regulate stored quantities of propane energy sources.
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security issued regulations that required registration of all propane tanks storing 7,500 pounds of propane. These regulations were unduly burdensome and disproportionately impacting rural American homeowners, farmers, and rural small businesses. Senator Harkin included a provision in the farm bill that I authored that would reduce this impact on rural Americans.
Coincidentally, after the provision was included, the Department of Homeland Security stepped up and increased the threshold quantity of propane, exempting many small homeowners, farmers, and small businesses by excluding tanks smaller than 10,000 pounds of propane and raising the threshold to 60,000 pounds per large tanks. That is a movement in the right direction. This change in regulation by the Department of Homeland Security is welcome, but the Department should have alerted everyone in advance and eliminated the need for us to include a provision in this bill at all. That said, we are currently working on some new language that would ensure that the Department of Homeland Security reports to Congress on the impact its new rule will have and ensure that rural Americans are not disproportionately impacted.
As a family farmer on the Agriculture Committee, I have made it my job to look out for small- and medium-sized family farmers. However, the position of the family farmer has become increasingly weaker as there has been consolidation in agribusiness, and it seems to have reached an alltime high. Farmers today have fewer buyers for their products and fewer suppliers to buy their inputs from. It seems this concentration is more now than ever before. The result is an increasing loss of family farms and the smallest farm share of the consumer dollar in history. It is important for us to remember that family farmers ultimately derive their income from the agricultural marketplace, not from the farm belt. Family farmers have, unfortunately, been in a position of weakness in selling their products to large processors and in buying their imports from large suppliers.
I have been fighting for real payment limitations since the last farm bill. I have, to some extent, over a period of decades in Congress, helped to pass farm bills. Senator Dorgan of North Dakota and I realize that a hard cap on payments is a most effective tool in helping our small farmers get a level playing field with the corporate megafarms. Ask a taxpayer if a quarter of a million dollars is enough for a farmer. That is what our cap is going to be. I think we would all know the answer to that question would be very positive.
The family farmer continues to struggle with land prices literally skyrocketing. Landlords know what kind of payments the farmer is getting and takes that into account in the rent they charge. We cannot sit idly by and do nothing while family farmers suffer. I certainly am not going to. That is why I pushed for reform in our laws that has an effect on family farmers and particularly in helping young farmers get started in farming.
The time for real reform is now. Our family farmers deserve it. I think we have a good start on a good package for rural America. An adequate safety net will assure us a safe and abundant food supply. It is critical to our economic and energy independence for the future. I look forward to the debate over the next few days to improve this bill, and I would like to highlight the issue of a hard cap on farm payments.
Presently, we have 10 percent of the large farmers in America getting 72 percent of all the money we put into a farm bill. There is nothing wrong with big farmers getting bigger, but there is something wrong when we have subsidies and farm programs going to big farmers who are getting bigger partly because of subsidies. What we want to do is maintain urban support for a farm safety net for farmers. It seems, in order to maintain that safety net, we are going to have to maintain credibility with urban taxpayers and urban consumers. We cannot do that very easily when big farmers--10 percent--are getting 72 percent of the benefits out of it because the taxpayers in the cities are going to start raising the question: What is this farm safety net all about if it is only helping the biggest of farmers? To get a farm bill through the House of Representatives, where urban representation is so all-powerful, it is very important for us to take that into consideration.
Another factor we need to take into consideration is the extent, as I have already alluded to, this drives up the cash rent, so it is very difficult for a generation of new farmers to start farming when they have the unfair competition of 10 percent of biggest farmers getting 72 percent of the benefits out of the farm program.
Then it seems to me we ought to take into consideration what has been the history of the safety net for family farmers. It generally has been targeted toward medium- and small-sized farmers. Why? Because these are the people, when they have an opportunity to farm and things happen that are beyond their control--that could be a natural disaster; that could be Nixon freezing beef prices, as he did; it could be, in the same administration, prohibiting the export of soybeans when they got $13 a bushel, driving it down to maybe $3 a bushel in just a matter of a few days. You can have international war. You can have energy at a high price as it is now because of OPEC. All of these are beyond the control of the family farmer. The small- and medium-sized farmer does not have the ability to withstand some of these things that are beyond his control. But there is a certain level of efficiency, a certain level of bigness in farming where you have enough staying power so that you can withstand some of that.
We, through payment limits, have tended to target the farm program toward small- and medium-sized farmers. It is quite obvious that when 10 percent of the biggest farmers get 72 percent of the benefit out of the farm program, that targeting is no longer the case. What Senator Dorgan and I are trying to do in our amendments that will come up shortly is to make sure we keep that targeting and safety net what it really is--a safety net to help people when they have problems beyond their own control, to overcome them, to survive in business, to keep producing. Why? Because we have come to the conclusion, after a century and a half, that the family farmer is the most efficient food-producing institution anywhere in the world. We ought to maintain it. We ought to keep it strong. This legislation will do that. Some improvements we can make in that legislation in the areas of payment caps will help even more so.
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