[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FARM POLICY

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, earlier this afternoon, an hour or so 
ago on this floor, we adopted a new farm policy for our country. In 
Delaware, in Michigan, even in Connecticut and Kansas, farmers are 
struggling to try to make a go of it.
  Some of the woes that our agricultural communities face are laid at 
the foot of the agricultural policy which was adopted by the Congress, 
I believe, in 1996. I would just observe that some of the problems our 
farmers face may be fairly attributable to that national farm policy. 
But not all of the woes of agricultural communities can be traced back 
to the legislation adopted some 6 years ago.
  In my own view, the bigger problem is overproduction. In my own view, 
the bigger problem is we have too much commodity and not enough demand 
for that commodity, whether the commodity is corn or soybeans, the 
commodity is milk or rice or cotton or beef--even chicken. We have too 
much commodity and not enough demand, too much commodity produced in 
this country and around the world.
  The bill we have just passed provides subsidies to support those who 
are raising major crops, including corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. 
Those supports--loan prices--are important. But the answer to what ails 
our farms and our agricultural communities is not merely more subsidies 
or greater subsidies. The answer, I believe, ultimately is better 
alignment of supply and demand.
  Let me mention a few ways we can do that. One is through biomass. At 
a time when our country is importing about 60 percent of the oil we 
use, we also live in an age where you can take soybean oil and mix it 
with diesel fuel and provide a perfectly good fuel for diesel vehicles. 
We can do a similar thing with corn for ethanol vehicles.
  We are learning how to transform plants into factories. We can now 
raise plants that will create an enzyme that is otherwise created in a 
chemical factory. The plants literally enable you to produce the same 
enzyme 40 percent cheaper than might be produced with a chemical 
factory, with fewer negative environmental consequences.
  We learned how to infect or inject a virus into a product or crop 
such as soybeans or even tobacco, and the plant then creates a vaccine 
which can be used, among other things, to fight cancer.
  The folks at DuPont have recently perfected a soybean seed that grows 
a soybean that produces soy milk that is almost impossible to 
distinguish from regular milk with respect to its taste.
  Those are just some of the things we can do to create more demand, 
untraditional demand for the enormous amount of commodities, farm 
commodities we are producing in this country and in other places.
  I add to those, we found out in Delaware, as we clean out our chicken 
houses, we can take some of the chicken litter and, instead of 
spreading it on our farm fields, we can burn it and derive a Btu value 
for electricity, and do so in an environmentally clean way. We can take 
the chicken litter out of chicken houses and treat it under high 
temperature and make a high nitrogen/high phosphorus fertilizer and 
ship it across the country and across the world and provide a source of 
cash revenue for farmers from what was previously a waste product of 
which we had too much.
  One of the aspects I especially like about the bill we passed is it 
supplements and supports the efforts of States such as Delaware and 
perhaps others here to preserve agricultural land through conservation. 
In my State, we have invested tens of millions of dollars, State 
dollars in recent years, to purchase agricultural development rights, 
providing money for farmers for farm equipment, irrigation systems, and 
other ways to support their farming operation by agreeing to put their 
farms in perpetuity in farmland. It is going to continue to be a farm 
forever. This legislation we passed here today provides Federal support 
for what many of us have done at the State level.

  The last thing is companies such as DuPont and Syngenta and others in 
our country have developed ways to create seeds and to grow plants that 
are more drought resistant than otherwise would be, plants and seeds 
that are resistant to a particular kind of inspect, plants that need 
fewer fertilizers, less fertilizer, less insecticides, less pesticides. 
We have the ability, through that kind of research and the application 
of that research, to build a better mousetrap--if not a better 
mousetrap, a better soybean plant, and to enable us to have a leg up on 
the competition in other parts of the world. Those are some of the 
things, some of the factors that will enable us to help revive our 
agricultural industry in this country.
  There are a lot of good things in that farm bill that we passed. Part 
of the solution, part of the way out of the duress in which farmers 
find themselves, is in that legislation. But a good deal is not. I 
wanted to share some of my thoughts today, and I thank the Chair for 
indulging me.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Madam President, before we move to the business which has 
been agreed to, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 1 minute as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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