[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 109 (Monday, July 20, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H8367-H8369]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1445
                    SUPPORTING NATIONAL DAIRY MONTH

  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution (H. Res. 507) supporting the goals of National 
Dairy Month, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

                              H. Res. 507

       Whereas, since 1939, June has been celebrated as National 
     Dairy Month;
       Whereas there are nearly 70,000 dairy farms throughout the 
     United States, and approximately 99 percent of these farms 
     are family owned;
       Whereas the dairy industry in the United States produces 
     more than 170 billion pounds of milk annually and contributes 
     tens of billions of dollars to the economy;
       Whereas dairy products are an important source of calcium 
     and have been long recognized as an integral part of a 
     healthy diet for both children and adults;
       Whereas dairy farmers are significant contributors to 
     efforts to preserve farmland and the rural character of 
     communities across the country; and
       Whereas the dairy industry has been challenged in recent 
     months due to high production costs and low retail prices, 
     which has forced many farms to close: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
       (1) supports the goals of National Dairy Month;
       (2) encourages States and local governments to observe 
     National Dairy Month with appropriate activities and events 
     that promote the dairy industry;
       (3) recognizes the important role that the dairy industry 
     has played in the economic and nutritional well being of 
     Americans;
       (4) commends dairy farmers for their continued hard work 
     and commitment to the United States economy and to the 
     preservation of open space; and
       (5) encourages all Americans to show their continued 
     support for the dairy industry and dairy farmers.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Scott) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, it is timely that the House considers this resolution, 
this very important resolution, in support of the goals of National 
Dairy Month today because our Nation's dairy farmers are providing 
healthy, nutritious milk and dairy products to millions of American 
families, even as the families of dairy farmers are facing very tough 
economic times, very challenging times, Mr. Speaker.
  The U.S. dairy industry is an important contributor to our Nation's 
agriculture economy. The United States leads the world in cows' milk 
production, accounting for more than $284 million in farm receipts in 
2007. Dairy farmers across the country are producing the milk and dairy 
products that we give to our children and to our grandchildren, knowing 
that they are getting the nutrients that they need for strong bones and 
for growing bodies.
  Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, our Nation's dairy farmers are feeling 
the severe pain of very difficult and trying economic times that 
they're experiencing right now. We are committed to doing everything we 
possibly can to help our dairy farmers through this very challenging 
time as quickly as we can. Dairy prices remain at historically low 
levels, and many farmers cannot even get the credit that they need to 
stay in business. We must help our dairy farmers.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry and 
food security, I have scheduled the second in a series of three 
hearings this week to take a very thorough look at the difficult 
economic conditions facing the dairy industry and to look at the 
options that we have to help our Nation's dairy farmers. Help them we 
must, and help them we will to weather these financial difficulties 
until the economy can recover. We must get our dairy farmers back on 
their feet where they rightfully belong.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge the passage of this resolution that will, in some 
small way, give due recognition to the hard work and to the sacrifices 
of our Nation's dairy farmers. It will also highlight the importance of 
dairy products and healthy and balanced diets for the American people 
and for the people of the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I rise in support of H. Res. 507, a 
resolution supporting the goals of National Dairy Month, and I yield 
myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, for the past 70 years, we have celebrated the month of 
June as National Dairy Month. While there have been some years during 
this time where dairymen have had cause for celebration, I think we 
would be hard pressed this year to find a dairyman who is in much of a 
mood for celebration.
  As dairy prices started to rise in 2007, reaching record levels by 
June of last year, prices started to decline this past September and 
October, ultimately reaching a devastatingly low price by February. 
While there has been some slight rebounding in prices, dairymen across 
the country are still suffering from extremely low prices received in 
the marketplace and from extremely high prices for inputs, such as feed 
and fuel. In fact, while the average uniform price in the Northeast 
Federal milk marketing order for June of 2009 is $11.93 per 
hundredweight of milk, the USDA estimates that it costs dairymen in my 
home State of Pennsylvania $27.15 per hundredweight of milk just to 
produce it.
  Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the adoption of this resolution is a 
bit late this year, but as we honor National Dairy Month for the 70th 
consecutive year, I ask all of my colleagues to consider the actions we 
take here in this Capitol Building and how these actions reflect on the 
small family farming businesses around the country.
  Farmers do their best in keeping us well fed and in keeping us 
clothed and in keeping us housed, and we can, at the very least, 
consider the financial burdens that we place on these men and women 
when we contemplate legislation that would dramatically increase their 
costs of production.
  I want to thank my good friend from Georgia for the hearing that he 
held last week and for the two hearings that we are going to conduct on 
behalf of the dairy industry. I really appreciate that. I know the 
dairy farmers of Pennsylvania's Fifth Congressional District appreciate 
that as well, and I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

[[Page H8368]]

  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I now yield as much time as he may 
need to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).
  Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Scott for 
bringing this resolution, which I sponsored along with 70 other 
Members, and for bringing it to the floor. His leadership with the farm 
bill last year that extended the milk subsidy program, which was 
probably the number one priority of dairy farmers, was critical in 
terms of trying to keep farms afloat that are hanging on by a thread.
  Also, he changed the system of the milk subsidy program to include 
input costs into the formula for the first time, which, again, is a 
critical benefit for folks going through a very challenging and 
difficult time, as the chairman described it and as Mr. Thompson 
described it.
  Usually, Mr. Speaker, these types of resolutions--let's face it--are 
kind of fluffy. They're here to kind of put the spotlight on a product 
or on a segment of the economy. Everybody kind of gets up and does a 
little boosterism for, maybe, their regions of the country; a voice 
vote is taken, and it's probably forgotten pretty quickly. This year, 
there is an urgency surrounding the crisis that exists in dairy all 
across America that, I think, makes this resolution, which is an 
opportunity to put the spotlight on the challenges that dairy farmers 
are facing, important for all of us in the Congress and certainly for 
all of us in the country.
  As has been said earlier, we have seen a collapse of dairy prices 
over the last year. Back in June 2008 when the farm bill passed, the 
price per hundredweight across America was, roughly, $20. Today, that 
has literally fallen in half. Exports have fallen by 57 percent, which 
many experts believe is one of the reasons prices have reached a level 
where sustainable economics exists for dairy farmers across the 
country. That export market, along with the world recession, has made 
it impossible for the normal market forces to keep prices at a level at 
which farms can sustain their overhead and their input costs.
  In the Northeast, particularly in New England, we are seeing the 
effects of this drastic, dramatic collapse. Ten percent of farms in 
Connecticut, particularly in eastern Connecticut, which I represent, 
have gone out of business, and that number has been reflected in other 
parts of New England. The one thing about a dairy farm going out of 
business is it's not like an up-and-down cycle. When they go out, they 
go out for good, and you lose a characteristic of a State's look and 
its economy that you can never recover again.
  That is why it is so important for Chairman Scott to be holding the 
hearings that he is holding with the Agriculture Committee, to make 
sure that we do everything we possibly can in this emergency right now 
to provide immediate support and relief. The ideas are out there in 
terms of whether or not we need an emergency boost to the milk subsidy 
program and in terms of whether or not we need to have the Department 
of Agriculture use its administrative powers to raise the base price 
for dairy.
  It is imperative, again, that we pass this resolution, but that we 
also do everything we can as a Congress to keep the pressure on. 
Recently, I was home in Connecticut, and I and Congresswoman DeLauro, 
the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture in Appropriations, 
met with a number of farms, Greenbacker Farms, Cushman Farms. These are 
farms that go back literally to the colonial days of our country which 
are now facing a death spiral in terms of having to borrow to pay 
operating costs just to keep the bills paid and their workforces going 
to work every day and with paychecks.
  If we do not intervene, we are going to lose a part of our economy 
that we can really never recover again. There is a bumper sticker out 
there that some of you may have seen and that some of you may have on 
your cars, like I do on my car, which says, ``No farms, no food.''
  At some point, we, as a Nation, have to recognize that if we do not 
come up with agriculture policies that allow for sustainable farms in 
our country, then we are going to lose, not just those wonderful 
families and parts of our economy, but also critical parts of our food 
supply. You only have to look at recent events, in terms of the damage 
that has been done to American citizens from unsafe food imported into 
this country, to know the stakes could not be higher.
  So I applaud the chairman for bringing out this committee. I 
appreciate the bipartisan support for this resolution. Obviously, it's 
a resolution which deserves our support, but we need to follow up on it 
with real acts and with real action by the Congress to make sure that 
we deal with this emergency crisis that exists here today. I hope the 
strong support that we're going to see around this resolution will be 
reflected in those efforts.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Connecticut 
just spoke. He has been putting in a tremendous amount of energy in 
coming before our committee and in giving us expert testimony as he did 
last week.
  I just want to commend you, Mr. Courtney, on what you are doing. Your 
constituents are certainly prouder than ever. I join with you in making 
sure that we adequately respond to the pressing needs.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to another distinguished 
gentleman, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch) as much time as he 
may consume. He is one of my colleagues who also came before our 
committee and who has been putting in tireless hours on this great, 
great crisis in our dairy industry that we are facing.
  Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. It is a 
pleasure to work with you on this important legislation, on this 
important resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, as my friend and colleague from Connecticut (Mr. 
Courtney) said, our dairy farms face a crisis they've never ever seen. 
The crisis they face is not of their own making. Farmers have to live 
with the uncertainty of nature. They have to live with the uncertainty 
of a collapse of an export market. That's what happened when there was 
the melamine scare in China. They have to live with the uncertainty of 
an economy where prices in the purchasing of cheese in secondary, non-
fluid milk products have come down with the recession. Yet the 
importance of our having local agricultural activities in all of our 
districts has never been more important.
  People want and need local agriculture. In my State, it's dairy. 
That's the backbone of our agricultural industry. In your State, it may 
be wheat; it may be potatoes. In States across the country where there 
is local agriculture, it serves not just the needs of our farmers who 
make a very good, a very decent and a very honest living from working 
the land; it serves the health needs of our citizens.
  It serves the environmental needs of our countryside. The farmers are 
the custodians of our landscape. That's certainly true in Vermont, 
which is to the benefit of all of us. It is certainly to the benefit of 
our tourism industry.
  Mr. Speaker, the crisis that the farmers face right now, particularly 
in dairy, where there's that disparity between what it costs them to 
produce milk and what they're being paid, is not survivable unless we 
do two things:
  One, provide short-term relief. We must find a way to increase the 
milk support payments on a temporary basis to help them get through the 
fall. If we fail to do that, they will fail themselves, and that would 
be a tragedy, because these farms, once gone, are gone forever and, 
with it, the environmental values, the land values, and the benefit to 
all of us to have local food production.
  The average distance of farm to table for food products that we eat 
is about 1,500 miles. Think about the energy consumption that we're 
wasting and what we can preserve if we keep production local.
  The second thing we have to do is what we have known since the era of 
the Depression, and that is we have to have stable pricing and 
adjustments so that farmers can weather the ups and downs in the cycle 
over which they have no control.
  Now, I want to remind folks of something Mr. Courtney said when we 
were before Mr. Scott's committee. We bailed out the financial industry 
with

[[Page H8369]]

billions and billions of dollars, and the reason was that they were too 
big to fail. It was not because they had been responsible and had done 
everything within their power to avoid the catastrophe. In fact, they 
caused the catastrophe.

                              {time}  1500

  Yet because they were too big to fail, in order to mitigate the 
impact on innocent people, the taxpayers came to the rescue.
  Now, is it the case that with our farmers, they are too small to 
matter? What kind of Congress is it if that's the verdict that we come 
to when it comes to our farmers who, through no fault of their own--
unlike Wall Street--who through no fault of their own find themselves 
in a real jam.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to take extraordinary action because this is an 
extraordinary time, and it's deserved because these are extraordinary 
people. This resolution is allowing us to focus attention where it 
needs to be on some of the best people among us in this country--and 
that's our dairy farmers, the folks would work the land, day in and day 
out, year in and year out, generation to generation.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, as we close out on this bill, I 
just cannot think of more appropriate words at this time than those 
words that were said by one of our great Founders. It might be very 
appropriate now as we look at the crisis facing the dairy industry. 
That Founder was Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Speaker. And Alexander 
Hamilton said these words: that the greatness of our Nation and the 
Federal Government of our Nation shines at its brightest at our moment 
of crisis.
  Well, this is a crisis, Mr. Speaker. It is a very special, unique 
crisis that is facing a very special and beloved industry--ice cream, 
milk, our cheeses, our butters--our dairy farmers. All across this 
country from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Ocean, from Texas to 
Vermont and Connecticut, there is no industry that represents the 
grandeur and the greatness of America as our dairy industry. And it is 
time for this Federal Government to do precisely what Alexander 
Hamilton spoke of when he said, At the time of crisis is when our 
Nation shines at its most brilliant. Let this Nation, let this Federal 
Government shine on the dairy industry now.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) that the House suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution, H. Res. 507, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and 
nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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