Agricultural Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Madam President, before he leaves the floor, I wish to thank the Senator from Georgia through the Chair for all of his extraordinary leadership on the agriculture committee for so many years. As a new member of that committee, I saw firsthand how important he was to our getting to a compromise.

So through the Chair, I say thank you to the Senator for his great service, and particularly his great service to farmers and ranchers all across his home State and also across the great State of Colorado.

I too wish to speak today on this compromise bill, this bipartisan bill, this farm bill which has such a long history. In 2012 the Senate agriculture committee was the only committee in the entire Congress with a bipartisan deficit plan. It passed the Senate. The House didn't take it up. I think it was an enormous disservice to rural Americans that we didn't pass this bill 2 years ago, particularly when farmers and ranchers in my region are facing an unprecedented drought.

I distinctly remember being out during the summer of 2012 on the eastern plains and the western slope of Colorado right before the Presidential election. While this town was completely consumed with who was going to win that election, people in Colorado weren't talking about it at all. They were asking: Why in the world can't we pass the farm bill through the Congress and get it to the President's desk?

Now finally, after a series of extensions and half measures, we actually got to a conference committee. I think it may be the only conference committee in this Congress. This is how we used to do business around here, I am told. I was glad to be a member of the one conference committee in this Congress. We got to committee on a long-term bill.

I have stood on this floor before talking about the land of flickering lights. This town has become a place where the standard of success is keeping the lights on for 2 more weeks or 2 more months. Here we have an honest-to-goodness 5-year farm bill.

Agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats, it has now been passed by the House of Representatives, and next week we will have a chance to pass it here. Thanks to the tireless work of Chairwoman Stabenow, Ranking Member Cochran, and the other conferees, we now will have the chance to vote.

Our rural communities are demanding the certainty that comes with a long-term bill. Under the last farm bill--and history ought to be our guide here--our farmers and ranchers were remarkably productive. They delivered the strongest 5-year stretch of farm exports in the history of the United States of America. Now it is time to make some reforms to farm policy and to once again give rural America the stability it needs to provide food, fuel, and fiber to the Nation.

This bill reflects the values and process we want to see in other areas of the budget. We came together as Republicans and Democrats to identify priorities, to streamline duplication, to get rid of things we didn't need to do anymore, and to focus in the areas that were important--to break away from old, inefficient habits, to eliminate for the first time direct payments issued to farmers regardless of economic needs or market signals. That is a significant reform.

This bill prioritizes what is working for producers instead; namely, crop insurance, which is a large part of what keeps farmers and rural economies in business in this country, and that is why it is a priority.

Beyond crop insurance, another key highlight of this bill is the great tools it includes for livestock. It includes resources for much-needed livestock disaster programs that are critical to southeast Colorado, where ranchers are battling dry conditions we haven't seen since the dust bowl.

When I visited last August, producers who are facing stubbornly persistent drought and feed shortages told me that nearly 70 percent of their livestock had been liquidated or relocated from the region in just 2 years. That is part of a boom and bust cycle that comes with our livestock industry which makes it difficult to build for the future. This farm bill couldn't come sooner for Colorado's ranchers.

Beyond livestock disaster, there is a lot to support our ranching community in this bill. We have included a revamped conservation title--and I chair that subcommittee--which will keep our ranching lands in the West in their current state, rather than being divided for development.

The conference report also carries over important conservation title reforms from the Senate bill. Notably, it carries forward a Senate provision to ensure that recipients of government-supported crop insurance comply with basic conservation requirements. That measure was the result of a historic agreement between the commodity groups and our conservation groups. It is supported by a wide variety of people, from the Farm Bureau to the National Wildlife Federation.

This revamped conservation title is huge for rural America. It is huge for farming and ranching families looking to keep their land and agriculture. It is huge for sportsmen. It is huge for anyone who cares about the long-term health of our soil, our air, and our water. I thank again the groups who traditionally represent producers and the groups who traditionally represent the environmental community and conservationists and sportsmen for coming together on commonsense reforms. These conservation measures will help us improve the efficiency and production of 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 State, anyway, and I suspect for many States--for tourism and for wildlife habitat.

As I have traveled the State of Colorado, farmers and ranchers are constantly talking to me about the importance of conservation and their commitment to be stewards of the land for the next generation. They highlighted in particular conservation easements which provide the Department of Agriculture assistance to help landowners voluntarily conserve the farming and ranching heritage of their land. I will spend a couple of minutes sharing a story I have told on this floor before about one of the many Coloradans who have benefited from the easement program.

This is a picture of the Music Meadows Ranch. I actually liked this photo so much when I was on the floor the last time with it that I now have a copy of it hanging in my office here in Washington. It is outside of Westcliffe, CO, which is at an elevation of 9,000 feet. There are 4,000 acres in the ranch. Elin Ganschow raises some of the finest grass-fed beef in the country on this family ranch. Thanks to the grassland reserve program, Elin's ranch now has a permanent conservation easement, providing critical wildlife habitat for elk, mule deer, black bear, and mountain lions--species prized by Colorado's sportsmen--that contribute millions to our State's economy. Thanks to an amendment included in the conference report, we will see even more of these easements happen on high-priority landscapes such as the Music Meadows Ranch.

It is critical to our legacy and to the next generation of Coloradans to make sure we can find a way, when the land prices are rising the way they are, to keep farms and ranches in the hands of our family farmers and our family ranches. That is what this bill will help us do.

I thank Chairwoman Stabenow and Senator Cochran for working with me to get that amendment approved and carried into the final bill. I thank all the Colorado ranchers, sportsmen, and advocates of the outdoors for their support in drafting this legislation.

Also important to the West, this legislation makes great strides on forest help. This is a huge issue for Colorado and all Western States as we deal with terrible droughts, overgrown forests, and massive wildfires--a number of which have occurred in Colorado.

This conference report gives the Forest Service new tools to treat areas in need of restoration, like acreage suffering from the bark beetle epidemic that has ravaged Colorado.

The forestry title also reauthorizes important programs such as stewardship contracting and so-called good neighbor authority for our national forests.

So all in all, I again say thank you to my colleagues on the committee for working so hard together, for acknowledging regional interests that we have in the West which may not be shared with everybody. Although anybody who is downstream from Colorado--and that is basically the entire country--ought to care about forest health in Colorado and ought to care about water quality in Colorado. I think we were heard in this bill, and I deeply appreciate that.

The final point I would make is something which just came up in the last 2 weeks and we were able to resolve. We had an appropriations bill which passed a couple of weeks ago that failed to include a very important provision to States that have a high percentage of their land occupied with Federal land, and that is the so-called PILT payments, payment in lieu of taxes.

The program helps rural counties containing Federal land within their boundaries offset the revenue they lose because they can't derive property taxes from their land. Dozens of Colorado counties derive significant portions of their operating budget from PILT. By the way, they use those operating budgets to help maintain a lot of these Federal assets out there by, for example, providing search and rescue missions. I can say, most of the people they are rescuing are not even from Colorado.

So I am very grateful to Chairwoman Stabenow for working with me and other Senators from the West to include a PILT extension in the conference report. It is only 1 year, however. Unlike the 5-year farm bill, this is not going to give us the predictability that we need. I will continue to work with my senior Senator, Mr. Udall, and others to make sure people hear the voice of the West in this Chamber.

Finally, this bill reduces the deficit by $23 billion. As I said, it is going to bring certainty and continued prosperity to rural America. From our forests, to our farms, to our ranches and rural communities, it is long overdue.

This bill has been supported across my home State of Colorado, from the orchards of the Grand Valley, to the wheat fields of Washington County, and on the editorial pages of the Greeley Tribune and the Denver Post.

This is a good bill. It passed the House with strong bipartisan support, and I urge a yes vote when we take up the farm bill conference report next week.

Madam President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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