[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 96 (Wednesday, July 11, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H3873]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FEDERAL FARM POLICY

  (Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, today, in a few minutes, we will 
take up the agricultural bill. In agricultural appropriations we do 
several things: we have a program in this country with our Federal 
agricultural policy that guaranties a farmer a minimum price that they 
can receive from the program commodity crops that they grow.
  The problem we are dealing with in an amendment I will offer today 
says there should be a limitation on how much money goes to any 
particular producer. The limitation under current law is $75,000. In 
the bill that was debated under suspension, unavailable for any 
amendments 2 weeks ago, we increased that to $150,000.
  I think when we consider that the giant farm operations are taking a 
lot of that price support money and realistically taking away from the 
small family farmer, we need to decide what Federal farm policy should 
be. I would ask my colleagues to consider an amendment of $75,000 per 
producer.
  We have producers in this country that are now getting $1.2 million. 
The average size of farm in this country is 420 acres. We have farms up 
to 80,000 acres. We should be looking at helping family farmers with 
Federal farm policy.

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