Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk a little bit about the farm bill which is before the Senate. Notwithstanding all the rhetoric we have had around the budget over the last 4 years or so around here, last year the Senate Agriculture Committee was the only committee, to my knowledge in either House, the Senate or the House, that passed a bipartisan deficit reduction plan. We did it together, Democrats and Republicans, working together on the committee with the various constituencies around the United States of America. That bill ultimately passed the Senate in a broad bipartisan vote right here on this floor.

The House of Representatives was unable, for whatever reason, to enact a version of the farm bill over there, which was an incredible disservice to rural America. Farmers in my State, ranchers in my State, the State of Colorado, faced an unprecedented drought throughout this entire period. Throughout the summer of 2012, when I was traveling the State, no one was talking about the Presidential election--particularly in these rural areas, which was on the mind of everybody in Washington. What they wanted to know was why a farm bill had not been passed and for good reason--because the Senate had passed a bill that was supported by both Republicans and Democrats, by producers of all types across the country, and it was a good piece of legislation.

Fast forward to this week, when the Senate Agriculture Committee has once again passed a bipartisan bill with meaningful deficit reduction. I thank Chairwoman Stabenow from Michigan and the ranking member Senator Thad Cochran for their leadership on this bill. This bill now has gone through two different ranking members on the Republican side and has been supported in a bipartisan way, as I said earlier. This farm bill, similar to the last version we passed, reflects the values and the process we want to see in other areas of our budget. We identify priorities in this bill. We streamline duplication in this bill. We break away from old, inefficient ways of doing business in this farm bill.

We eliminate direct payments in one of the most significant reforms we have seen in a farm bill in a very long time. These payments are issued to farmers regardless of economic need or market signals. We do away with that abuse. This bill prioritizes what is working for producers and it strengthens crop insurance as a result, which is what my farmers have said is most important to them.

I have spoken on this floor before about Colorado's battle against historic drought conditions. Some farmers lost over half their corn yields in 2012 alone. It is hard to imagine, when you think about it, any business losing half of its production in 1 year, but that is what happened to Colorado's corn growers. Crop insurance is what is keeping farmers and rural economies in business and that is why this should be a priority. That is why this bill should have been passed 2 years ago when it first came to the floor of the Senate. It is why we should pass it next month.

Beyond crop insurance, another key highlight of this bill for those of us from Colorado is conservation. The title carries over the reforms from last year's bill, and this year's bill includes a provision to ensure that recipients of government-supported crop insurance comply with basic conservation requirements. This measure is the result of a historic agreement between the commodity groups and the conservation groups in this country. It is supported by a wide variety of stakeholders--from the Farm Bureau to the National Wildlife Federation.

This revamped conservation title is huge for rural America and for my State. It is critical for farming and ranching families looking to keep their land in agriculture generation to generation. It is incredibly important for our hunters and sportsmen. It is important for anybody--which is most of us--who cares about the long-term health of our soil, our air, and our water. These conservation measures help us improve the efficiency of production agriculture and improve the quality of the environment in farm country. We recognize that keeping these landscapes in their historical, undeveloped state is an economic driver for our entire State and for our entire region--for tourism, for wildlife habitat.

As I have traveled Colorado over the last several years, farmers and ranchers constantly were talking to me about the importance of conservation. They highlighted, in particular, conservation easements which provide Department of Agriculture assistance to help landowners who are interested in voluntarily conserving the farming and ranching heritage of their land.

I wish to spend a few minutes sharing stories that Coloradans have shared with me. This is a photo--you don't have this as much in Delaware. I know you have other things. Here is a photo of a ranch in Colorado, the Music Meadows Ranch. It is outside of Westcliffe, CO, elevation 9,000 feet.

I have a version of this picture in my office here in Washington. It is 4,000 acres. The rancher's name is Elin Ganschow. It is some of the finest grass-fed beef in the country, raised by Elin and her family at this ranch. Thanks to the Grassland Reserve Program, Elin's ranch now has a permanent conservation easement. It provides wildlife habitat for elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, black bear, and mountain lions, species prized by Colorado sportsmen. They contribute millions of dollars to our State's economy, and she has been able to continue having her family ranch.

Thanks to an amendment adopted by the Agriculture Committee this year, we will see even more of these easements happen on high-priority landscapes such as the Music Meadows Ranch. I thank Chairwoman Stabenow and Senator Cochran for working so hard with me to get that amendment approved.

Private lands conservation such as this, the type aided by the farm bill, is absolutely critical for so many reasons. It is poorly understood in the East, but it is an incredibly important tool for those of us in the West to keep our family farms and ranches family farms and ranches and provide the habitat needed for our sportsmen and for tourism.

Here is another example of why this bill is so crucial for our sportsmen and outdoor recreation economy. This is a photo taken of a friend, John Gale, hunting pheasants in Yuma County, CO. The Conservation Reserve Program, CRP, provides important habitat for pheasants and other upland birds all across the country. The land surrounding this is all CRP land--everything you can see and far beyond that--and it has enabled this pheasant hunting to happen in our State.

The CRP program protects habitats in addition to holding in place highly erodable soil--something we have a lot of history with in Colorado. For instance, the soil in Baca County, CO, has over 250,000 acres enrolled in CRP. Baca County was absolutely devastated by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, as chronicled in Tim Egan's ``The Worst Hard Time,'' and other books. Thanks to CRP, Baca County has weathered recent droughts much better than it otherwise would have.

Healthy grasslands, open landscapes, and abundant wildlife are a fundamental part of what it is to be in the West. We need to preserve those grasslands, those open spaces, and those species, and that is what the conservation title of the farm bill does.

I strongly support this new conservation title as reported out of the committee in a bipartisan vote. I know some are going to try to amend this bipartisan consensus.

One of the great things about serving on the Agriculture Committee is there is so little partisanship. The differences we have are not Republican versus Democrat. We have some differences, but they tend to be regional and understandable. We have a way, a process, and the leadership to actually work through issues together. It would be nice if we did more of that around here.

I am worried there will be some amendments that will come forward, among other things, in the name of deficit reduction, which, as I mentioned earlier, is already reflected by this committee's work, unlike every other committee in the Congress.

As far as Lee amendment No. 1017 and No. 1018, I appreciate my neighbor's effort on deficit reduction. These programs repeal the important programs I talked about here on which our farmers and ranchers rely, and they keep our soil on the ground, not in our wind and air.

Lee amendment No. 1017 repeals the CRP program I spoke about earlier. I have been on this floor many times to talk about cutting our deficit. I am glad we have been part of a process which has actually led to deficit reduction. We need to put the entire budget under a microscope, including agriculture, to cut waste and eliminate redundancies.

Let me say again, including agriculture, the bill we have on this floor makes those cuts--$24 billion in all. Some $6 billion of these cuts come from conservation. Not all of those cuts are cuts I like, but I agreed to them in the package we were moving forward. We made difficult compromises at the committee level, and now we have a more efficient conservation title as a result that won support from both sides of the aisle. Over 650 conservation groups support the conservation title before us, and I urge my colleagues to support it and oppose amendments which would weaken the title and undermine the good work of Republicans and Democrats on the committee.

With that, I yield the floor.

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