Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Chairman, this has been a tough one for me because I am the only dairy farmer in this room, and it has been a tough issue because I've lived it for the last 15 years. I have seen how programs created by this body have hurt dairy farmers. There have been a lot of programs eliminated in this current farm bill, and that's a good thing. It takes us in a more market-oriented direction.

But what I see here is we're continuing that same path in a small way. This margin insurance, by definition, is an insurance when you lose money. You lose money because you're producing a product consumers aren't buying. If government is going to continue to push money in that direction, we have to make sure that they don't continue to produce that product consumers don't want.

The argument that we're going to miss out on an opportunity to export, if there's an export market and they're producing for that, they will sell that product. But you can't have a subsidized product coming into the marketplace and want to grow that export market again on a subsidized product because you can't continue to produce that product for that price. If we can't compete, we shouldn't be producing it. If it's going to require that margin insurance to make sure it's produced, it's not a long-term market. It's not a stable market. It's not something that we should spend billions of dollars investing in infrastructure that will not compete.

So I think, at the end of the day, that this is probably the best program. We've gotten rid of MILC. We got rid of the price support. We've gotten rid of a lot of programs that continued production when consumers weren't buying that product.

And with this one, there's a choice. If they choose to take an opportunity to protect their margins so they can stay afloat--because we have to protect American products and make sure that consumers are buying the safest and the greatest product in the world, which I believe is American dairy product--you can't have them continue to produce that product in the name of exports or in the name of whatever. At the end of the day, consumers pay for it because consumers are taxpayers. If you're going to give them money on the backside out of their back pocket through taxes, you're again paying for that product. The product still has to be paid for.

Dairy farmers have to make a profit, but it has to be the right way. And if they're going to get that dollar to continue to produce that product that consumers aren't buying, there has to be somewhere along the line where they cut back and contract in the market.

So I rise in opposition. Mr. Goodlatte has been a friend of mine and I have watched from afar. I appreciate everything he has done for the industry over the years, but I rise in strong opposition to this amendment.

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