[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 117 (Thursday, August 2, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5966-S5967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             DROUGHT IMPACT

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the 
devastating impact the drought gripping nearly 80 percent of the 
country is having on food producers.
  Fewer natural occurrences are more devastating to agricultural 
production than extreme drought. The drought conditions the United 
States is facing today are considered the worst the country has seen in 
more than 50 years.
  Data computed in the Palmer Drought Severity Index indicate that the 
severity of the current drought is on par with the Dust Bowl of the 
1930s.
  USDA has determined that more than 1,000 counties in 26 States, 
encompassing more than two thirds of the lower 48, are experiencing 
drought conditions. Drought conditions stretch from coast to coast and 
encompass nearly every State south of 42nd parallel west of the 
Mississippi River while also including nearly all of Florida, Alabama, 
Georgia and South Carolina. It is also worth noting that farmers on 
Delmarva peninsula are coping with a drought of their own as well as 
record high temperatures.
  While these conditions undoubtedly present challenges for commodity 
growers, agricultural science, modern farming techniques and a series 
of financial support programs help commodity growers cope with 
increasingly difficult growing conditions.
  These advances in farming, combined with robust grower supports like 
commodity direct payments and federally subsidized crop insurance 
premiums, along with a high market price for corn, driven by increased 
demand for corn from a variety of sectors, including ethanol producers 
who must meet government mandates to produce 15.2 billion gallons of 
ethanol this year, all help U.S. grain growers survive this difficult 
growing season.
  Our national farm support programs are centered on assuring the 
financial security of commodity growers. However, there is little to no 
assurances on the availability and affordability of corn feed for 
livestock and poultry and for food production broadly.
  This issue hits very close to home for me as Maryland's poultry 
industry continues to struggle tremendously during this drought because 
there is so little corn feed available. What feed is available is 
extremely expensive.
  Feed accounts for more than 75 percent of the cost of raising 
poultry. Corn futures project the price of corn hitting $9 dollars a 
bushel by the end of the summer. As the price of feed continues to 
rise, feed costs will make up an even greater percentage of the cost to 
grow birds to market weight.
  And unlike raising hogs and cattle, which ruminant species that can 
eat other types of feed like soybeans or hay, chickens can only eat 
grains--in other words corn.
  To understand how important the availability of affordable corn is 
let's take a look at chicken by the numbers:
  As of today, the price per bushel of corn is $8.20.
  One bushel of corn equals 56 pounds of shelled corn.
  On average, it takes 7 weeks and 13\1/2\ pounds of corn to raise a 
single chicken to market weight.
  Market weight for a single chicken is approximately six pounds, 
although the weight of the bird that is actually meat is probably 
somewhere closer to three or four pounds.
  Approximately four birds can be raised, from egg to slaughter, on a 
bushel of shelled corn--or, a little more than $2 worth of corn.
  The retail price for a whole three pound chicken at a popular 
Maryland supermarket chain is $6 (at $2 per lb).
  That means that the retail price of a pound of chicken is equal to 
the price of corn feed. And corn is just one input cost to raising 
poultry.
  Clearly market conditions like this are not sustainable for 
maintaining a viable domestic poultry industry.
  Domestic poultry, beef, and pork producers operate without the safety 
nets commodity growers have. Those domestic producers that are still 
owned by U.S.-based companies are at an even greater disadvantage, 
because many of the foreign owned meat and poultry companies in the 
U.S. can afford to operate at a loss for extended periods of time 
because they have financial backing from state-run banks overseas.
  Our meat and poultry producers are in dire need of relief if they are 
going to survive into the future. One way to provide some relief for 
poultry and livestock growers would be to modify the Renewable Fuel 
Standard's ethanol production mandate for corn ethanol so as to provide 
our farmers better access to the corn stocks they need.
  Food producers--including livestock and poultry producers, who use 
tremendous amounts of corn to raise their livestock and produce food--
do not have the luxury of a mandated market for their products.
  I understand the important role domestic ethanol production will play 
in helping our Nation achieve greater energy security. However, the 
nurturing and growth of our domestic biofuels industry must not come at 
the expense of our domestic food supply. In other words, we cannot 
sacrifice U.S. food security for energy security. That is why I do not 
support the use of food based feedstocks like sugar and corn to be 
commercially produced into ethanol.
  Domestic food production is reaching a state of crisis driven by the 
increasing cost of inputs, like corn, that the food producers have to 
unfairly compete with industries that are operating with under 
government production mandates.
  That is why Senators Boozman, Mikulski and I introduced legislation 
making a simple change to the Renewable Fuel Standard to help provide 
domestic food producers access to corn.
  This legislation will link the amount of corn ethanol required for 
the RFS to the amount of U.S. corn supplies. This legislation sets up a 
process so that when the USDA reports on U.S. corn supplies towards the 
end of each year, based upon the ratio of corn stocks to expected use, 
there could be a reduction made to the RFS mandate for corn ethanol. 
This is a commonsense solution to make sure that we have enough corn 
supplies to meet all of our corn demands.
  Once a year, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency 
will review the current corn crop year's ratio of U.S. corn stocks-to-
use ratio in making a determination of the RFS.
  Another way to deliver some of this needed relief would be for the 
House to immediately pass the Senate Farm Bill

[[Page S5967]]

that passed with bipartisan support in the Senate in June.
  The livestock disaster provisions originally enacted in the 2008 Farm 
bill expired in 2011, leaving producers without disaster assistance for 
the current crop year. The Senate bill strengthens these programs and 
makes them retroactive to address the current drought of 2012.
  As of July 17, approximately 73 percent of cattle producing areas 
were affected by moderate or more intense drought.
  As I mentioned earlier, the Delmarva peninsula, where a fair amount 
of the corn is raised for feed for Delmarva poultry, is in a state of 
drought, as are the regions of the country where the rest of the corn 
Delmarva poultry uses is shipped in from.
  Livestock disaster programs are critical as farmers and ranchers 
experience losses in livestock and grazing land due to extreme heat, 
drought, and fire. The 2012 Farm Bill provides permanent funding and 
authority for the Livestock Disaster Programs.
  Beyond helping livestock and poultry growers, the 2012 Farm Bill also 
provides much needed assistance to fruit and vegetable growers, too, by 
expanding crop insurance coverage to these farmers. The bill also 
allows the Risk Management Agency to conduct research and development 
on new crop insurance products to expand access to index-based weather 
insurance products for fruit and vegetable growers.
  The House appears poised to just kick the can for a year. The House 
is likely to consider a measure to merely extend the 2008 Farm Bill for 
a year, while also offering some drought assistance--paid for from cuts 
to conservation programs.
  This is a plan that the American Farm Bureau opposes, and 
demonstrates both the dysfunction of the House--in that they won't 
simply do what's easiest and best for farmers by taking up and passing 
the Senate bill--while also ignoring how vital farm conservation is to 
preventing agricultural disasters.
  The Senate Farm Bill preserves USDA conservation programs. The 
Natural Resource Conservation Service, formerly known as the Soil 
Conservation Service, was born out of the tragedy of the Dust Bowl.
  The disastrous droughts of the 1930s taught us the lesson that we 
need to do more to protect water and soil resources so that we do not 
repeat the mistakes of the past.
  The 2012 Senate Farm bill conservation programs are critical for 
keeping America's farmers and ranchers doing what they do best--growing 
and producing a safe and stable food supply. Crops need healthy soil 
and plentiful water to grow, and natural disasters like drought have a 
long-term impact on soil and water quality.
  The Farm bill's conservation title provides farmers and ranchers 
access to the tools they need to conserve and keep our Nation's natural 
resources as resilient as possible, even in the face of drought and 
other natural disasters.
  For the good of American agriculture and the American consumer, I 
urge the House leadership to take advantage of this last opportunity 
before the August recess to do what is right and pass the Senate Farm 
bill. My hope is that House leadership will realize that it behooves 
us, when we go home to our districts during the summer recess and 
attend State and county fairs, to be able to tell our farming 
communities that we sent a Farm bill to the President with meaningful 
reforms and essential disaster relief to help them through these 
difficult times.
  Personally, I want to be able to tell my poultry growers that 
Washington hears their plight. That is why, in addition to urging House 
passage of the Senate Farm bill, I would also like to see further 
relief for poultry growers in the form of improved access to corn feed.
  For decades, America's corn growers were outproducing demand for corn 
from food producers. While consumers may have benefitted from 
relatively low corn prices, American corn and grain growers were 
hurting badly.
  Since 2007, the tides have been turning significantly. National 
demand for corn is at an all-time high and corn is likely to reach $9 a 
bushel in the near future. A growing and hungry Nation, combined with 
new demands for corn that are the result of technological innovations, 
have created new uses for corn in the form of ethanol as both a motor 
fuel additive and in plastics. These new uses, combined with expanded 
traditional uses, have fueled the upward spike in corn prices.
  The effects of the 2012 drought are obviously a catastrophe that we 
cannot legislate away. However, there are actions that the USDA and EPA 
could take to help improve market access to the corn stocks food 
producers need to keep feeding America.
  Senators Hagan, Chambliss, Pryor, Boozman, and I have authored a 
letter to the EPA administrator calling for the waiver of the Renewable 
Fuel Standard's conventional ethanol production mandate for this year. 
Doing so would allow food producers to compete fairly with ethanol 
producers for corn.
  While ethanol production is down, due to high corn prices ethanol 
producers are sitting on roughly 2.5 billion production credits, known 
as RINs (Renewable Identification Numbers), that they could cash in and 
further reduce the perceived demand for corn and increase the supply 
available to food producers.
  I understand the important role domestic ethanol production will play 
in helping our Nation achieve greater energy security. However, the 
growth of our domestic biofuels industry must not come at the expense 
of our domestic food supply. We cannot sacrifice U.S. food security for 
energy security. That is why I do not support the use of food based 
feedstocks like sugar and corn to be commercially produced into 
ethanol.
  I believe the future of biofuels must be in the development and 
production of cellulosic and advanced biofuels that are not derived 
from feedstocks that are part of essential food sources.
  Because of corn's many uses, it has become a commodity that is in 
high demand. Assuring our domestic food producers' access to this 
valuable and increasingly scarce crop is so important to controlling 
the cost of food in America and maintaining the economic viability of 
our U.S. food companies.
  I urge my colleagues to join Senators Hagan, Boozman, Pryor, 
Chambliss and I in calling on EPA to waive the RFS corn ethanol 
production mandate and call on the House to pass the Senate's Farm 
bill.

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