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Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013

Floor Speech

By: Jim Costa
By: Jim Costa
Date: June 18, 2013
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Business and Consumers Agriculture and Food

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Mr. COSTA. Madam Chairman, I rise today to highlight the important and positive reforms in this year's FARRM Bill, that includes the Dairy subtitle, as we try to improve and save money for the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act, otherwise known as the 2013 FARRM Bill.

I first want to thank Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member Peterson for the terrific work that they've done in cobbling together this bipartisan effort. It's never easy.

I can tell you as a grandson of two generations of dairy farmers in California that what American farmers do every day is work as hard as they possibly can to provide the highest value food quality at the most cost-effective level to American consumers, and they've been doing it for generations.

The Dairy Security Act of this bill is the result of 4 years of hard work and compromise by dairy producers and other members of the dairy industry across the country. This program is intended to provide a strong, market-based safety net that will keep dairy producers afloat while providing stable consumer prices.

The dairy industry--and producers especially--has been a victim in recent years because of dramatic price volatility, and so have the consumers. At the same time, producers have been forced to deal with feed costs that have skyrocketed from $2 a bushel to $7 a bushel, and that has had a dramatic impact.

Dairy producers across the country have seen their overhead increase as their profits have remained stagnant. Current Federal dairy policy continues to foster outdated support programs which no longer provide a meaningful safety net or ensure any stability for our dairy farmers or our consumers.

In California, my home State, the leading dairy State in the Nation, we have lost 100 dairies as a result of bankruptcy in the last 18 months. Something needs to be done. We need to fix this broken system.

This title provides stability to the producers and benefits the consumers as well. It is time to bring meaningful reform, and this measure does this.

I ask my colleagues to support this effort as we move along this bipartisan compromise.

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