[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 130 (Tuesday, October 2, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H6103-H6104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1900
CLAYTON AMENDMENT TO FARM SECURITY ACT OF 2001 WILL HELP FARMERS, THEIR 
                       FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simmons). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, on tomorrow we will have the Farm Security 
Act of 2001. It is our farm bill. It is our farm bill for the next 10 
years.
  I want to tell the Members, food security is very important to this 
country. Indeed, we should protect the opportunities for our producers 
to produce, but also to make a decent living, so there is a vested 
interest in seeing that the farm bill is indeed enacted appropriately.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about the opportunity of making that farm 
bill even more responsive to a larger number of citizens who live in 
rural America. We have a title called Rural Development. It is a title 
that the committee itself had the foresight to include.
  It provides clean water and infrastructure for wastewater facilities. 
It provides economic development, and strategic planning so that small 
communities can come together and plan for their future. It also 
provides for additional resources in something we call value-added, 
where producers can add more profitability and add more processes right 
there at the local level, making more money for the raw commodities 
they produce.
  In order to provide more money for a larger number of people, we have 
to have something called shared sacrifice, meaning our farmers, who 
indeed need resources, must begin to see this as in their value, as 
well.
  So the amendment that I will propose does require a reduction of farm 
subsidies. It represents an addition of 2 percent overall to a 
reduction, which will give to these rural development activities $1.065 
billion over the next 10 years.
  As I said, they will go for three important areas.
  First, $45 million a year will go for clean water and wastewater 
facilities, which rural communities desperately need. There is a report 
out now by the EPA which says that communities of 3,000 or a little 
better for the next 15 years would need $37 million just to speak to 
the deficiencies as they are now, not even to anticipate the things 
they may need to plan for, or plan for contingencies, given the new 
scare regarding water resources.
  In addition, as we look at the resources coming to rural communities, 
we know rural communities do not have the advantage of planning and 
coordinating or the staff capacity of writing grants so they can 
benefit. Most of the resources that come to rural communities come in 
the form of loans or guaranteed loans, so we do not have the community 
development funds as urban communities have. So the strategic planning 
part of it will allow a community to have that opportunity.
  Finally, as I stated, the value-added portion will simply add funds 
to our farmers' capacity to have long-term profitability of their raw 
products.
  Now, there will be those who say we should not take one dollar from 
the farmers whatsoever, but I would submit that I think farmers do care 
about clean water, I think farmers do care about economic development, 
I think farmers do care about value-added. These dollars are included 
for all rural communities. They are included for farmers, for their 
families, their neighbors, and their communities.
  So when we ask for the shared sacrifice, it is not as if we were 
saying that this will not benefit farmers. We are just recognizing that 
the crisis in rural communities includes the farmers, but it does not 
stop at the field. It includes the communities that are losing, because 
there is high-tech industry leaving the area. It includes the despair 
that out of 250 poorest counties, 244 of them are in rural communities.
  It does not ignore the fact that our census data show most of the 
young people are leaving rural communities. We are creating an almost 
irreversible gulf there. It means that if we are not careful, we are 
going to have this as a

[[Page H6104]]

wasteland if we do not address these issues.
  So our attempt to put new resources in rural development is to 
acknowledge the crisis that exists in rural America. So I ask my 
colleagues as they consider the bill to understand that this resource 
will also be for farmers, it will be for their families, their 
neighbors, and their communities.
  I would think that most of the farmers that I know, when we explain 
it to them, they will say, well, we are willing to share for the 
benefit of all of us who live in rural communities, because we know in 
the long run, unless these communities are viable and sustainable, that 
they will not have the resources. Their taxes go up when they have to 
pay for water resources. They lose their most productive citizens when 
they have to go somewhere else to work, when we do not have the 
infrastructure or the digital divide being addressed.
  Those kinds of things add to the viability of the rural community, 
and farming is an essential part of it, but it is not the only part. So 
we want to make sure that our rural communities and our farmers will 
have an opportunity for a future. I just stress to my colleagues, they 
have an opportunity tomorrow, as we consider that amendment, to see the 
value of using that amendment to share with all.
  Finally, there are about 6.6 percent of our citizens who live on 
farms, and there are more than 94 percent in the rural communities that 
are non-farmworkers. So this is an opportunity to allow the farm bill, 
or an opportunity to provide some leadership on this and speak to the 
larger group of people who can be benefited.

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