FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - December 10, 2007)
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today we begin in earnest to debate the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, commonly referred to as the 2007 farm bill. The naming of this bill is not without meaning. It is abundantly clear that agriculture and energy production are now inherently related and together will move our Nation toward greater food and energy security. Nearly all the controversy surrounding this farm bill is focused on whether farmers and ranchers should be receiving the assistance this bill would provide, with very little discussion of the potential this bill carries to propel American agriculture into producing alternative fuels to lessen our Nation's dependence on foreign energy sources. The 2002 farm bill was the first farm bill to include an energy title. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee during the 2002 farm bill debate, I can attest that including an energy title in the farm bill was not easy, nor was it without controversy. However, Congress had the foresight to realize that renewable energy was an integral part of our agricultural economy and a comprehensive farm bill would be incomplete without including renewable energy incentives.
The energy title included in the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007 also includes an energy title that builds on the success of the 2002 farm bill. The incentives in this energy title will greatly benefit American consumers, our agricultural producers, and our Nation's energy independence. The farm bill before us was crafted in the spirit of bipartisanship in the Senate Agriculture Committee and was passed out of committee by unanimous consent. We all know the 2002 farm bill expired earlier this year on September 30. I am pleased to report that after the agreement that was reached last week, both Republicans and Democrats will be able to offer amendments to this bill. More than 120 Republican amendments have been filed on this farm bill. More than 140 Democratic amendments have been filed on this farm bill. Although not all of these amendments will receive a vote on the Senate floor, I am pleased the leadership made an agreement to allow consideration of 40 amendments so we can move a farm bill forward.
After a several-week delay, we are now on track to debating this farm bill in an open and fair manner on the floor of the Senate. America's farmers are making planning decisions for next year without knowing what type of farm programs will be available to them. Time is of the essence. We must move quickly and with purpose to finish this farm bill for not only American agriculture but also for the millions of people who receive benefits under the nutrition and other titles of this bill. This bill will give our agricultural producers the additional security they need to move forward with production decisions and will help meet our food and energy needs for the next 5 years and beyond.
I wish to share a couple of facts about the 2007 farm bill. The 2007 farm bill is 1,600 pages long, and it will cost more than $286 billion over 5 years. The very first farm bill passed 70 years ago was 24 pages long. The 2007 farm bill also includes the first farm bill tax title since 1933, adding an extra degree of difficulty and further reason for open debate. During the past 30 years, the farm bill has averaged about 2 weeks of floor time and required as many as 30 recorded votes. It is not just America's farmers and ranchers who are waiting for the 2007 farm bill. Food banks, Food Stamp, and other emergency food program recipients are all anxiously awaiting this farm bill to pass. Their share of the farm bill stake accounts for more than 66 percent of total farm bill spending, and they are pushing hard to get this farm bill passed. Rural development incentives are also on hold until we pass the 2007 farm bill.
For example, a powerplant in rural America is delayed because funding for USDA's rural utility service is tied up in this farm bill. Our farmers and ranchers and millions of other Americans are watching and waiting anxiously for the Senate to debate this farm bill and move it on to a conference committee with the House of Representatives. I look forward to engaging my colleagues this week in a fair and open debate on this monumental legislation which will govern programs affecting rural America for the next 5 years.
I appreciate my colleague from Colorado, Mr. Salazar, being here and managing this legislation on the behalf of the Democrats today, because farm bills are not political in their orientation, at least they have not been in the past. Farm bill debates don't end up being normally partisan debate. There are regional differences, differences between different commodity organizations. Everybody comes to a farm bill debate with different priorities, depending on what part of the country they represent. But farm bills have never been partisan or resulted in the kind of partisan gridlock and fights that typically accompany other legislation in the Senate.
The Senator from Colorado and I have worked closely on a number of provisions in this farm bill, particularly the
energy title. Energy production has become an integral part of the success and prosperity of rural America. In fact, this farm bill starts moving us into the next generation of energy policy and renewable energy production. We have had great success with corn-based ethanol. We will have seen by the end of this year 7.5 billion gallons of production of corn-based ethanol literally, growing in the last 10 years from ground zero to where we are today, a remarkable tribute to the good work, the initiative, and creativity of our farmers and those who are involved in ethanol production. I give them credit for where we are today. But we also have great potential as we move into the future. We have to put in place policies that will provide the necessary financial and economic incentives for those who want to invest in this next generation of ethanol production, cellulosic ethanol production made from other forms of biomass. We have to have the right kind of incentives in place in order for that to move forward and to continue the momentum that has been so good for many communities across rural America.
With regard to the issue of energy production, a lot of people look at a farm bill and look at the amount of money spent on production agriculture and say: Isn't that terrible that we are spending all this money on food and fiber. We do have in front of us a food, fiber, and energy security bill. I would argue with anyone, based on the statistics the Senator from Colorado put up earlier about the cost of food in the United States and what that means to our economy and the safety and quality of the food we have in this country, that support for production agriculture makes so much sense. If you look at this bill in its totality, the overall funding and how much is spent on production agriculture, it is only about 14 percent of total funding in the underlying bill. If you look at where the funding in this bill goes, about 9 percent of it goes into conservation programs. Those are programs that are important to America. Probably the most important conservation policy that we will put in place in terms of the environmental stewardship we have a responsibility for will be found in the conservation title of this farm bill. There is a conservation reserve program, a wetlands reserve program, a grassland reserves program, an EQIP program, all programs utilized extensively by farmers and ranchers to help address the issues of soil erosion, water quality, wind erosion--all those things that are so important not only in terms of being good stewards of the land but also in many States such as mine, where wildlife production has become an important part of our economy. This year in South Dakota we have 10,000 pheasants. That is a record going back to 1962. We have not seen that many pheasants in South Dakota, largely a result of the good practices put in place through incentives included in farm bill policies in past farm bills.
The conservation title is 9 percent of the money, and 14 percent of the
money goes into production agriculture. That leaves about 67 percent or about two-thirds of the funding in this bill going toward food assistance programs, Food Stamps, WIC Programs, those types of programs that support people who don't have access to good quality food and need that form of assistance.
So food pantries, food banks, and all of those other organizations across this country that meet those types of needs are awaiting action by the Congress to address those needs and get them a bill that will enable them to move forward with the programs that help address the very important concerns and needs that people providing food assistance have in this country.
This is a bill that is comprehensive. It is a bill that struck a balance as it came out of the Agriculture Committee. It was a bipartisan bill when it left the Ag Committee. I hope it can continue to be bipartisan as we debate it on the floor.
A lot of people have different ideas about how to address farm policy in this country. A lot of people have very different notions of what ought to be in a farm bill from those the Senator from Colorado or I might have. But that is why we have the opportunity for a fair and open debate.
A lot of the amendments that are going to be debated I will probably support, and there are many I will probably oppose depending upon how I view those amendments affecting the balance that has been struck in the bill and the way it would impact my particular State of South Dakota. But I think it is fair to say it is high time this debate got underway.
I also have to say when you look at the cost of farm bills, it is important to keep in mind, as we debate this one, that much of the cost that has been associated with the 2002 farm bill in the form of the safety net--and by that I mean your loan deficiency payments, your countercyclical payments, your direct payments--if you look at the totality of the bill and the cost over time, in the last 5 years, $22 billion in tax dollars has been saved because of higher prices, which was the way that program was designed to work. When farm prices went higher, the assistance kicked out. When prices dropped, the assistance kicked back in.
But what we have had now is a fairly substantial period of good prices for our producers in this country. That has led to savings for the taxpayers--$22 billion in savings over the past 5 years, over the period of the last farm bill. In many respects, I attribute that to the success of the ethanol industry because the demand for corn has raised the price of corn in this country. As the price of corn has gone up in this country, as is typically the case, the rising tide lifts all boats.
We have seen wheat prices go up, we have seen soybean prices go up largely because there is only so much acreage out there that can be put in production. So we have seen sustained prices that have enabled us to save, under the 2002 farm bill, payments that otherwise would have been going out to the farmers of this country, to the tune of $22 billion.
So when people criticize the effect that the renewable fuel programs have on farm programs, and the costs, I think it is important to keep that statistic in mind. In fact, in a January 2007 statement, the USDA chief economist stated that farm program payments were expected to be reduced by some $6 billion due to the higher value of a bushel of corn.
As I said, when you multiply that across other commodities--whether it is wheat, soybeans--overall savings in the last farm bill was $22 billion, attributable in my mind, in many respects at least, to the energy policies that were put in place in the 2002 farm bill, the investment that has been made by those across this country in this growing industry that has enabled us to save money in the form of farm program payments. But just as importantly, it has enabled us to lessen our dependence upon foreign sources of energy--7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by the end of this year.
What does that mean in terms of our dependence upon foreign oil? In 2006, the production and use of ethanol in the United States reduced oil imports by 170 million barrels, saving $11 billion from being sent to foreign and often hostile countries. By the end of 2009, ethanol production is expected to increase to 12.5 billion gallons, displacing even more of our Nation's petroleum use.
Promoting clean, homegrown fuels and reducing our dependence on oil imports from dangerous parts of the world is more than just good policy, it is a matter of national security. So this farm bill, with its strong energy policy, moves us in a direction that not only builds upon the gains and the success we have seen in the form of corn-based ethanol, and the 7.5 billion gallons that have already been produced in the form of corn-based ethanol, but it opens the door to a whole new generation of ethanol production in this country that is based upon other forms of biomass, whether that is corn stover or corncobs or switchgrass or wood chips or other types of biomass that we have an abundance of across this country.
It is just flat necessary and important and imperative for us to continue to diversify our energy in this country away from our dependence upon foreign petroleum so the American consumer can access the energy, the fuel they need to get to their jobs, to work, to recreate--to do all those things--in a less expensive way but, more importantly, so we are not dependent on countries around the world whose intentions toward the United States can be described as nothing less than hostile.
With that, we kick off this debate. There are amendments I think that will be offered by some of our colleagues, some of which are already pending at the desk, others of which will be offered throughout the course of the day.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. The Senator from Colorado, I think, perhaps, has someone to recognize for an amendment.
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I, too, acknowledge the good work of our colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, on this issue. It largely is a result of his good work in 2005. Senator Salazar is on the Energy Committee. I was, at the time, on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which worked to get the first ever renewable fuels standard put into law. That was a monumental breakthrough in terms of renewable energy production in this country.
If you look at the way the market has responded to that, the story has been nothing less than remarkable. In 2005, we set a goal of reaching 7 1/2 billion gallons of renewal fuel production by 2012. We will achieve that by the end of this calendar year, 2007. South Dakota will have, on its own, a billion gallons of ethanol production reached by the end of 2008.
This is a great success story not only for agriculture and for the farmers and the rural economies that benefit but for our environment because it reduces greenhouse gases. It is a great success story also in terms of lessening our reliance upon foreign sources of energy. I mentioned the statistic earlier: 170 million barrels of oil were displaced by the amount of ethanol production in this country. That saved $11 billion that we would have shipped to one of those petro economies elsewhere around the world that Senator Domenici referenced in his remarks.
So the renewable fuels standard that passed in 2005 was a breakthrough; it was a milestone piece of legislation in terms of launching this industry. But what is remarkable about that is we are up against the lid that was set in that 2005 bill of 7.5 billion gallons.
What is happening now is you have a lot of those who would invest in ethanol production in this country pulling back, not knowing what the future of the industry is. The amendment offered by the Senator from New Mexico, of which Senator Salazar and I are cosponsors, would increase the renewable fuels standard in 2008 to 8.5 billion gallons, which ramps it up in 2022 to 36 billion gallons. It is an amendment I believe is desperately needed. We hoped it would be included in the Energy bill. There is a version of it in the Energy bill. It would be better than what we have today.
We believe the amendment offered by the Senator from New Mexico is a far better solution, superior to what is proposed now in the Energy bill. I hope we could at least get the language the Senator from New Mexico has put forward included in the Energy bill, or adopted to the farm bill that is under consideration right now. It is that important to the rural economy, to agriculture, and, frankly, there isn't anything we do, next to the production title of the farm bill, that impacts agriculture more than does the renewable fuels standard, to increase it to 36 billion gallons by 2022, relying largely on advanced biofuels, cellulosic ethanol. To help us get there, those are all important things to have.
One comment regarding the Energy bill. There is a renewable fuels standard included in that. There are a couple of troublesome provisions to many who support the industry. One allows the EPA Administrator to essentially modify and grant waivers to the renewable fuels standard, dependent upon ``significant renewable feedstock disruption or other market circumstances.'' In other words, the EPA Administrator has total discretion when it comes to a waiver of this renewable fuels standard in the Energy bill that is currently pending. So the language, as proposed by the Senator from New Mexico, would be far superior in terms of what this industry needs in terms of market signals and certainty going forward. So whether that is included in the Energy bill or in this farm bill, it seems that ought to be the direction in which we move in this industry.
The other thing I will mention by way of importance, in terms of renewable energy, is not only the renewable fuels standard, which is critical to those who invest in this industry, but that Congress is going to send a message that the policy incentives put into place in 2005 are going to be extended and, in fact, expanded; second, that we begin to look at increasing the blends. Right now, about 50 percent of the gasoline in this country is 10 percent ethanol. Because of infrastructure constraints, it is difficult to see us getting further than 11 to 12 billion gallons of ethanol produced and marketed in this country at the 10-percent level.
If we were to increase the blends to 20 or 30 percent, it would dramatically increase the market for ethanol in this country. Studies are currently underway by the EPA and the Department of Energy that I believe will in time demonstrate that not only does ethanol not impact materials compatibility, drivability, and not only does it not affect in any way or disadvantage emissions, relative to 10 percent ethanol, I think a lot of studies are actually finding that, ironically, the mileage is better at E20 than even traditional gasoline. So those studies are in the works. When they are complete, I hope we can move quickly to implement higher blends. That is a critical component in the solution to the renewable fuels industry in this country and to lessening our dependence upon foreign sources of energy.
Every gallon of ethanol, every bushel of corn we are buying from an American farmer means that many fewer dollars we are sending to some petronationalistic economy somewhere else in the world whose intentions to
the United States, as I said, very well could be hostile.
This is an important amendment. I hope as the farm bill debate continues this week and these amendments that are currently pending are disposed of in one form or another, if we do not get a vote on this amendment that we can get the amendment accepted so that we have this marker in the farm bill in the event something should happen that would not permit the Energy bill to pass and, just as important, getting language in the renewable fuel standard that is better than what we see currently in the Energy bill with regard to the waiver authorities that exist for EPA in the current Energy bill and the RFS is included in that.
I do not see any other speakers at this moment, Mr. President, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I think we are almost up to our 20 amendments. I don't know of anybody else coming down on our side, although I know of a couple of amendments out there that may get offered. But we are very close to meeting the allocation we have under the agreement, and so I suspect if there are others who want to have their amendments called up, if they can get them down here, we will get them put in the queue and made pending so that when everyone is back tomorrow we can, hopefully, move to consideration based on those amendments, start getting them voted on, disposed of, and, hopefully, get to a final vote on the bill by the end of the week. That is my hope and certainly the hope of the Senator from Colorado, and I hope that is the view that is shared by our respective leaders as well.
I would say, too, again, by way of general observation on the bill, as my colleague from Colorado has talked about, many of the different titles in the bill--and we have both covered a lot of the energy provisions which he has spoken at some length about--the conservation title, the commodity title, and as we were discussing earlier today, 67 percent of the funding of the bill is in nutrition programs, food assistance, and other types of programs; about 9-plus percent in conservation, about 14 percent, actually, in the commodity title, which supports production of agriculture, and then there is a rural development title. But in any event, it is a fairly balanced bill.
I think much of the emphasis on this bill, a new emphasis at least, has to do with what the Senator from Colorado had talked about earlier, and that is the renewable energy industry. I don't know that there are a lot of differences between this bill, if we can get it through the Senate, and what has already passed the House.
There are some things that are different in the two bills, but I think these are very reconcilable bills. And I guess my hope has been all along that we would be able to get a bill to conference and on the President's desk before the end of the year. That may be a little optimistic, but I think it is important we, at least in the Senate, act on our version of the bill, get it passed, clear that hurdle, and hopefully put us on a glidepath to getting a bill signed into law if not by the end of the year, then sometime early next year so that producers can begin to make decisions about next year; that we don't have to go through the exercise of passing an extension of the 2002 bill.
I think we have a good bill before us. And now that we finally have an agreement to move forward with amendments, I hope we can get this bill through the process and perhaps passed by the Senate if not this week certainly early next week, and that will put us on a pathway to getting a bill signed into law by early next year.
As I said before, in addition to the farmers who are looking and anticipating the passage of this bill, and those who depend upon other titles in the bill, the renewable energy industry does need some action on some of the provisions not only in this bill but that are pending in the Energy bill. A renewable fuels standard needs to be enacted either as a part of the Energy bill or the farm bill.
The Senate passed earlier this year as part of its Energy bill a 36-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard by the year 2022. The House did not have a provision on a renewable fuels standard under its version of their bill. After the two sides got together, the Energy bill now contains a renewable fuels standard; although, as I mentioned earlier, one with some provisions and some conditions imposed on it that I think make it less preferable to many of us than the renewable fuels standard amendment that has been offered to the farm bill.
But to the point my colleague from Colorado made about other forms of energy, we, too, in South Dakota have enormous potential to benefit from wind energy. We have wind energy. And I have seen studies--in fact, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado suggests that South Dakota is the windiest State in the Nation. We have the best wind for wind energy development, exceeding all other States in the country. Many of our constituents would probably argue that it exceeds the amount of wind and hot air that comes out of Washington, DC, but if you look at where the end wind in this country is generated, it is in that middle section of the United States, and that, too, holds enormous potential for us to get away from depending upon foreign sources of energy.
Many of our constituents in the Midwest rely on fuel oil for their winter heating. You have, of course, a lot of energy that is generated from sources that are less environmentally friendly than wind energy. And so I would hope the provisions in this farm bill that provide incentives for small wind, and then some provisions in the Energy bill that include incentives for larger wind farms and types of projects--production tax credits, the clean renewable energy bond program--that those, too, could get enacted and we could continue to move forward toward the development of more renewable energy in this country and less dependence upon foreign sources of energy from countries that would do us harm.
I again commend to my colleagues, when we get to a final vote, that the energy title of this farm bill is critically important--not to just those who are investors in ethanol plants but, I would argue, to our energy security and to our national security as well.
I don't see anybody else here to offer amendments. If the Senator from Colorado would like to make some comments?
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, we have had a number of folks here today who have spoken to different aspects of the farm bill. All are relevant, and everybody has a unique interest in this legislation. Many people come to a farm bill representing agriculture States and, therefore, have a keen interest in the commodity title of the bill, that part of the bill that directly affects production agriculture. Many are involved in food assistance programs and, therefore, interested in that aspect.
I have spoken at some length today, as has my colleague from Colorado, about the energy title of the bill which we also believe to be critically important to the future of agriculture and rural economies. I do want to speak to one other aspect of the bill that Senator Salazar also spoke to earlier today. That is the conservation title.
One of the aspects of this bill that is as critical to production agriculture as the commodity title is the conservation title. The conservation title of the farm bill comprises only about 9 percent of its total cost, yet it potentially affects more than 350 million acres of land. This is a photo of a piece of ground in South Dakota. This picture was taken in 2007. It is a great example of the role played by the farm bill's conservation title. The best land in this photo is planted with corn, the low-lying wetland area being enrolled in a Conservation Reserve Program. We have an example of crop production and conservation working hand in hand. You have CRP in the foreground, wetland and corn ground in the background. The CRP on this farm and the million-and-a-half acres that are enrolled in CRP in South Dakota add 10 million pheasants and $153 million to South Dakota's economy every single year. This year's record corn crop in South Dakota at 556 million bushels is worth an additional $1.8 billion to South Dakota's farmers.
I wanted to contrast that and focus on another picture taken in South Dakota in 2007. This one actually, believe it or not, was taken in March of this year. If you look at this, at first glance you would believe that was a picture that was taken during the ``dirty thirties,'' the time of the Great Depression. Actually it is the result of native sod in South Dakota that was cropped because crop insurance provided an unintended incentive to convert marginal pastureland or native sod to cropland. This picture sends a stronger message than any words could about the inherent need to take care of our land. The topsoil and the fence line and ditch along this South Dakota field took literally millions of years to create and one dust storm to remove. The damage you see here simply cannot be undone.
A sod-saver provision in the farm bill we are considering will prohibit anyone from converting native sod to cropland. What this sod-saver provision will do is eliminate the incentives found in current Federal farm policy that encourage unwise farming practices which result in the consequences that are shown in this photo.
The next photo is a picture that is an example of some of the native sod that is being converted to cropland in South Dakota. For the past 100 years, millions of acres of prairie have been converted to productive farmland. Most native sod that can be productively farmed in South Dakota and other prairie States has already been converted to cropland. We faced a shortage of money to write this farm bill. I don't believe it is wise to use Federal funds to pay for crop insurance and disaster programs on this type of land. If the farmer who owns this land wants to crop it, wants to farm it, he or she is free to do so. But let's not subsidize it.
The next picture comes from South Dakota as well. This was a couple years ago in 2005. Dust storms, obviously, were not limited to the 1930s. This picture was taken in South Dakota in 2005. Once again, the consequences of unwise land stewardship practices are disturbingly evident. During the 1930s, South Dakota received billions of tons of Kansas and Oklahoma topsoil, much of it still in place in fence lines and fields. The programs we have drafted in the conservation title of this farm bill, if funded adequately, will ensure that Kansas and Oklahoma farmers no longer see their topsoil blow to South Dakota, and South Dakota farmers will keep their topsoil in their fields and not in the ditches and fence lines, as we see in this picture.
I want to emphasize this one more time: Production agriculture and conservation should not compete. Rather, they should complement each other. Every agricultural area in this country is blessed with productive land and land that needs help to keep from polluting the water we drink and the air we breathe. I ask those who are so critical of this farm bill to take a close look at the conservation title and what it does for all Americans. In spite of the budget cuts that made drafting this farm bill more difficult than writing any other farm bill has been, I am pleased that my colleagues and I have been able to come up with a farm bill with a sound conservation title.
I want to point out once more the benefits of the conservation title of the farm bill. First, it protects and enhances our soil and land. Secondly, it helps provide an economic alternative to placing costly fertilizer, seed, and chemicals on unproductive cropland. It also enhances recreation and boosts local economies, as is true in South Dakota, with a very robust recreation industry that is created by the abundance of pheasants we have had in the past few years and the $153 million that it contributes to South Dakota's economy. I believe it is important that we take a breather from some of the controversy that surrounds farm bill debates and focus on the farm bill's proven capabilities to enhance rural America and to improve our Nation's water and soil. The conservation title of this farm bill will do that. This is one of many reasons that this farm bill deserves the support of our colleagues.
I don't think there is much we do around here in terms of public policy that has as much impact as what we do in this farm bill in the conservation title when it comes to environmental stewardship. The conservation title is so important. The programs that have been enumerated, the Conservation Reserve Program, the Wetlands Reserve Program, the Grasslands Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Improvement Program, or EQIP, which is used by livestock producers, all these programs are designed to lessen the impact of soil erosion, wind erosion, and improve the quality of our water. The sod-buster provision in this farm bill also moves us toward a policy that discourages those from cropping areas that should not be cropped simply to take advantage of programs such as crop insurance.
So the conservation title in this farm bill is a critically important component of the overall farm bill and one that I hope people, as they look at the farm bill in its totality, will take a very good, hard look at.
Nationwide, without a conservation title, we would have 13.5 million fewer pheasants, 450 million tons of topsoil disappearing every single year, 2.2 million fewer ducks, an additional 170,000 miles of unprotected streams, and 40 million fewer acres of wildlife habitat.
Again, if you look at what can happen when conservation programs and production are used to complement each other--and here, as shown in this picture, is another example of a field in the background and a CRP--or grasslands--in the foreground. But that is the kind of balance we try to achieve in this farm bill.
The conservation title in this farm bill is important. It is only 9 percent of the money, but it impacts 350 million acres of land in this country and adds so much to our economy and to the concerns we have about protecting and preserving our environment.
Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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