[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 159 (Friday, November 16, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11988-S11990]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FARM BILL
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, before we adjourn for the week, I want to
comment about the Agriculture Committee's action yesterday here in the
Senate. I'm very pleased that they passed the farm bill out of the
committee, which will, I hope very soon, come to the floor of the
Senate. I want to make a few comments about it, about the importance of
it to family farmers.
We deal with a lot of issues in the Senate. I know everyone has a
favorite issue or a most important issue from their State or from their
perspective. I come from a farm State. The subject of family farming is
very important to me.
I know some say: But the family farm in America is largely gone. In
any event, the notion of family farms is just old nostalgia. It is not
relevant to today. Today we need big, mechanized corporate
agrifactories. The family farm is like the little old diner that got
left behind when the interstate came through. It is kind of nice to
look back at what it was and think about it, but it is really not
relevant in today's terms.
Those who believe that are just dead wrong. Family farming remains a
critically important part of this country's economy.
Will Rogers said, many years ago:
You know, if one day all the lawyers and accountants in
America failed to show up for work, it really wouldn't mean
very much. But if one day all the cows in the United States
failed to show up to get milked, now that would be a problem.
He was in his own, simple, interesting way describing the importance
of agriculture. It is the case, it seems to me, that our country has
been blessed by not being hungry as a nation. We have had some pockets
of hunger to be sure, but we have not been hungry as a nation for many
decades. So we forget from time to time the contribution made by family
farms.
I think most people in a highly urban setting just think of butter as
coming from a little box that you pick up at the grocery store. Cereal?
Why that comes from a box as well. Pasta? That comes from a box with a
cellophane window so you can see the size of the pasta you are buying.
But, in fact, it all comes from a field somewhere, a
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barn somewhere. It comes from the sweat of the brow of a family farmer,
often a man and woman who decided to latch their dreams to running a
family farm, to being independent, and to producing from the land.
It is true they have had a pretty difficult time in recent years. I
have had calls from farmers over the years, especially in recent years.
A woman called me. She said: My husband and I got married shortly after
high school, and for 18 years we have run a dairy farm. We milk 80
cows, milk them every morning and every night. If you know anything
about milking cows it is a tough job.
She began to weep on the phone as she described the financial
hardship they were facing and the fact they were going to have to sell
their farm because they couldn't make their payments because the price
of milk had collapsed.
She said: It's not our fault. We don't go to town on Saturday night.
We don't spend money in a way that is extravagant. When my children say
they need a new pair of jeans for school, I have to say we have to wait
because we don't have the money to buy jeans right now.
She said: The fact is, we have done everything we possibly can. We
have worked as hard as we can to make this dream come true and we are
losing our farm. And through tears she described the death of this
dream that she and her husband had.
That is happening across our country these days as the price of
commodities collapse and families, one by one, confront this terrible
dilemma. One fellow wrote to me and he said he was sitting at his
dinner table at 1:30 in the morning. He said: I am writing this letter
to you at 1:30 in the morning, telling you about where I live and where
I farm. It is spooky quiet around here. Most of my neighbors are gone.
They left family farming because they couldn't make it. I go to town, a
small town, and the Main Street is spooky quiet. There aren't any
vehicles on Main Street anymore.
He described in a passionate way his belief about wanting to pursue
his dream, of continuing to farm the land and raise America's food, but
not being able to when the price of their commodities is below the cost
of production when they take them to the elevator.
We have passed a farm bill through the Agriculture Committee and we
need to get it to the floor of the Senate. We need to get it to the
President and he needs to sign it. Why? Because we need a farm bill
that says to family farmers: During tough times, when you run into
price valleys, we have a bridge that takes you across those price
valleys. Why? Because this country believes you are an important part
of our economy and because we believe both economic and national
security rests on our having a network of people who produce our food
across this country.
It is true that we could probably have a country without family
farmers and giant agrifactories would produce our food. From California
to Maine, the largest agrifactories in our country would produce food.
They would milk 3,500 cows three times a day, as some dairy operations
do in California. They would drive tractors in one direction until they
are out of gas and then gas up and drive back. We all understand about
giant agrifactories It is just that family farms produce more than just
food, and that is what people forget. The agrifactories produce just
food. Family farms produce communities. They produce a culture. They
produce family values. Those family values move from the family farm to
small towns to big cities, nourishing and refreshing family values in
America. It has always been the case, and it is not old-fashioned to
think that should be part of our future as well.
How do we make that a part of our future? We as a Congress and we as
a country say to family farmers: You matter. You are an important part
of our future. We are going to pass farm legislation that reflects the
urgency, reflects our desire to address this problem of collapsed
prices, this problem of tough times for America's economic All Stars.
We produce the best quality food for the lowest percent of disposable
income of anyone in the world. In the spring, family farms in North
Dakota or elsewhere in the Farm Belt, they borrow money to buy the
seed, the fuel and the fertilizer; fix up the tractor; and then plow
the ground and plant the seed. Then they hope, hope above hope, that it
won't hail, that it will rain enough, that it won't rain too much, that
the bugs won't come, or disease won't hit. Finally in the fall, they
grease up the combine and go out and take that crop off the field, put
it in the back of a 2-ton truck and haul it to the country elevator.
After all this, if everything falls into place and works, they are told
by the grain trader: By the way, that food you have produced doesn't
have value. And that family farmer scratches his or her head and says:
Doesn't have value? A half billion people go to bed at night with an
ache in their belly and the food we produce in such great abundance has
no value?
The farmer is told what they do is not valuable to this country. And
the farmer wonders--in a country where the saying goes, two-thirds of
the people are on a diet and a substantial portion of the world is
hungry, and those who are producing America's food are told that their
food has no value--farmers rightly wonder whether there is a connection
missing someplace, whether there are some wires hooked up wrong.
Clearly, if you look at this world and evaluate what this world needs
to produce peace and stability, and to help people live a better life,
the first item would be to say we need to alleviate hunger.
Just as a note, One of my friends many years ago was a singer named
Harry Chapin. Harry was a wonderful man. When I announced I was going
to run for Congress, he flew to North Dakota and did a concert;
wouldn't even allow me to pay for his airline ticket. He showed up,
borrowed a Martin guitar from the local music store, and did a 3-hour
concert to 2,400 people who filled the Chester Fritz Auditorium in
Grand Forks, ND. What a wonderful guy he was.
The reason I talk about Harry Chapin is that he donated one-half of
the proceeds of his concerts every year to fight world hunger. He used
to say that hunger is not headlines. It just isn't, because people die
every single day. Every single day, 45,000 children die from hunger and
hunger-related causes around the world, and you won't read a thing
about it in tomorrow's paper. He said if 45,000 people died in New
Jersey tomorrow from one terrible calamity or another, it would be
headlines. But every day, the winds of hunger sweep across this globe,
and children die, people die, and somehow it is not headlines.
Then our farmers in North Dakota go to the elevator with a load of
grain that they prayed they would be able to raise against all the odds
to be told that grain has no value, that food has no value. They have a
right to wonder whether the wires are not connected somewhere with
respect to our priorities.
In the midst of all that background, we wrote a farm bill. This
Congress wrote a farm bill a while back called Freedom to Farm. It
should have been titled ``freedom to fail.'' It was a terrible piece of
legislation. It didn't work.
We have done an emergency bill every year to try to fill the vacuum
that was created by this piece of legislation that didn't work, and
this law has one more year to go.
Next year, the Freedom to Farm bill expires. We believe that this is
the time to write a bill so that when farmers go into the field next
year, they will know there is a better farm program.
Congressman Combest in the House, against the advice of the White
House and the President, wrote a bill. They said: Don't do it this
year. He said: It doesn't matter what anybody says; I am going to do
it; it needs to be done. Good for him.
Senator Harkin yesterday in the Agriculture Committee said we are
going to write a bill. It was reported out of the Senate Agriculture
Committee, and now our challenge is to bring it to the floor of the
Senate immediately when we return. I understand there are some here
talking about blocking it. As we know, it takes 60 votes to overcome
those who want to block legislation. I think we can do that, if we
must, but I hope they will not try to block it.
We have a responsibility. In my judgment, we ought to write this farm
bill this year. Even if you do not care much about family farmers--I
can't conceive
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of people who do not--you ought to care about food security in this
country.
How do you best provide food security in America? You do that by
having a broad network of dispersed producers producing America's food.
If you are concerned about bioterrorism harming America's food supply,
you should be concerned about feedlots with 200,000 animals run by the
big agrifactories. In contrast, widely dispersed family farms that dot
the Nation and which represent the network of producers across the
prairie, they are much less at risk, when it comes to bioterrorism.
If this country wants to do something for its economic future, for
economic recovery, for food security, for national security, then it
ought to decide it will stand up for family farmers and pass a decent
farm bill.
Let me make a comment about the legislation that passed the House and
the Senate Agriculture Committee. That legislation is not perfect. It
is not what I would write were I to write it myself. However, it is
better than the than Freedom to Farm. Each hurdle is a hurdle that we
have to get past. We got past a hurdle yesterday by getting this out of
the Senate Agriculture Committee. The next hurdle is to get it on the
floor of the Senate.
I urge my Colleagues to bring this farm bill up as soon as we return
from the Thanksgiving break. I hope to offer an amendment that will
improve the safety net in this bill. I hope we pass this farm bill
after some improvements on the floor. Then we can have a conference
with the House, and then send the bill to the President.
We cannot fail in this job. We have a responsibility to pass a farm
bill, and to do it now and do it right.
As I said, I know a lot of people have a lot of different interests.
I come from a farm State. Yet I stand on the floor of the Senate and I
say to people, I support Amtrak. I am a strong believer in Amtrak. Why?
Because I think this country needs a rail passenger system. Amtrak
comes to North Dakota, and it is important to us. But it is not the
biggest issue in the world. To me, the national issue of having rail
passenger service in this country is a very important issue. I support
mass transit in the cities. We don't have mass transit in my home
county. My home county has 3,000 people.
I support mass transit because, as a national matter, this country
needs it. I hope my colleagues will understand as well that when I
support those issues for the major urban centers of America, they will
do themselves and this country a favor by supporting the rural
interests which also contribute to America's security and which
contribute to America's enterprise and economic health.
I thank the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Harkin and others
who led the way to get a bill out of that committee yesterday, and
their staff who worked so hard to get this done. Next week we will not
be in session because of Thanksgiving. But the week following, it is
the desire of Senator Daschle, myself and many others, including
Senator Harkin, that we will bring that bill to the floor of the
Senate.
We very much want to put a farm bill on the President's desk and get
that legislation signed. We want our farmers in this country to go into
the fields next spring and plant next year's crops under a farm bill
that has a better support level than the current bill, one that gives
them the hope that if they do the right thing and things work well for
them, they will be able to make a living on the family farm next year.
Mr. President, I see colleagues waiting to speak. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
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