[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4494-S4496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FARM BILL
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would like to spend a few minutes on a
major piece of business this week, our 2018 farm bill.
Unlike so much of what comes to this floor--or never comes to this
floor, never makes it to the floor--this is not a 5-month bill or a 5-
week bill or a 5-hour extension; this is an honest to goodness 5-year
farm bill. That is 5 years of certainty and predictability for our
farmers and ranchers. It is a testament to the great work of the Senate
Agriculture Committee, and I want to thank Chairman Roberts and Ranking
Member Stabenow for leading yet another bipartisan, consensus-driven
process.
When Democrats were in charge way back in 2014, we passed a
bipartisan farm bill then. Now we are doing it again, only this time
the Republicans are in charge. That is how this place should work. We
have set aside the political antics and focused on our farmers and
ranchers and rural communities, especially when they have all faced
more uncertainty than they have in years.
In Colorado we have dealt with years of persistent drought. In the
southern part of my State, waterflows in the Gunnison and Animas Rivers
are at less than half of their average levels. Feed shortages are even
forcing ranchers in Southwest Colorado to sell off their cattle.
Besides drought, our farmers and ranchers are contending with erratic
commodity prices, a broken immigration system that is actually putting
some of them out of business because they can't find workers, and
uncertainty over trade because of the administration's unusual approach
to foreign policy. All of this has made it harder for them to plan for
the next 5 months, let alone the next 5 years. This farm bill cannot
come soon enough.
The Agriculture Committee has put together an excellent piece of
legislation. For the first time in 80 years, this bill legalizes hemp.
We forget, but hemp was widely grown in the United States throughout
the mid-1800s. Americans used hemp in fabrics, wine, and paper. Our
government treated industrial hemp like any other farm commodity until
the early 20th century, when a 1937 law defined it as a narcotic drug,
dramatically limiting its growth. This became even worse in 1970 when
hemp became a schedule I controlled substance.
In Colorado, as is true across the country--I have talked to a lot of
colleagues about this--we see hemp as a great opportunity to diversify
our farms and manufacture high-margin products for the American people.
That could help drive incomes in rural parts of my State, like Montrose
County, CO.
Let me tell my colleagues about Montrose. It is a rural mountain area
on Colorado's West Slope. It flattens out to the west. I managed to win
29 percent of the vote there in 2016, and I managed to win 29 percent
the first time I ran as well. I can't seem to improve my position.
I want to show my colleagues a picture from there. This is from
Montrose. Here is their Republican State senator, my friend Don Coram,
who is standing right here, standing in front of a hemp plant. This is
his greenhouse. He was kind enough to let me visit this past March. He
told me that hemp growers operate under a shadow of uncertainty,
worried that at any moment somebody in the Justice Department is going
to wake up one morning and decide to cripple their operations by
targeting their access to water or labor.
When we passed the last farm bill in 2014, Colorado farmers harvested
around 200 acres of hemp. Last year, we harvested 9,000 acres, and that
is despite the uncertainty around hemp's legal status. Our farm bill
eliminates that uncertainty by legalizing hemp.
If this farm bill passes, our growers are going to have a much easier
time opening a bank account, buying and selling seeds, transporting
their goods, and accessing water.
This bill also gives hemp growers access to important risk management
tools, like crop insurance.
That is hemp that Don Coram, my Republican politician friend, is
standing in front of at his greenhouse. This means dollars for rural
Colorado and rural America, where the ingenuity and the creativity of
people is already being unleashed on a crop that, until this farm bill
was written, we could not grow in our country in a meaningful way and
whose byproducts--the things that will create margins for our farmers--
were imported from Canada.
Go into stores in the United States today and you will see hemp
byproducts, hemp products, but they are grown in Canada. That doesn't
make any sense. I am glad this farm bill fixes it, and I am glad the
majority leader was the one who led the way on that.
Looking ahead in the West, we know that the risks of drought and
wildfire are only going to grow worse. That calls on us to make sure
that risk management tools are using the best available data. Over the
past year, we have worked with Colorado's ranchers to make sure the
USDA has good drought and market data for livestock disaster
assistance.
In uncertain times, these programs are critical to sustaining our
farms and working lands, which are fundamental to our heritage in the
West and the legacy we hope to leave the next generation.
The same is true of our vast grasslands, healthy forests, and
abundant wildlife. They are also fundamental to what it means to be in
the West, which is why we made sure this farm bill emphasizes
conservation and responsible management of our natural resources.
In this bill, we increase funding for conservation easements. We also
make the EQIP Program easier to access for small farmers and ranchers.
That idea came directly from Mike Nolan, a vegetable grower in Mancos,
CO, who was having trouble accessing conservation tools designed more
for big farms than for his 7-acre operation.
We reward farmers in this bill for improving soil health. We
strengthen the Regional Conservation Partnership Program and reduce
redtape for projects that improve drought resilience.
We increase funding for voluntary wildlife habitat improvements on
working lands--an approach in Colorado that has helped us protect
habitat for iconic species like the Greater sage-grouse but to do it on
our own and in collaboration on the ground.
In Colorado, forests are one of our most important natural resources.
The
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health of our forests affects the strength of our outdoor economy, the
quality of our water, and the safety of our communities from wildfire.
This bill doubles funding for collaborative forest projects that
promote forest health and reduce wildfire risk. It creates a new water
source protection program to bring utilities and upstream communities
together around forest health. It also requires the Forest Service to
evaluate the health of our watersheds and monitor the effectiveness of
treatments, and it provides new authority for the Forest Service to
work with local communities on housing and infrastructure--a major
issue in our mountain communities.
Finally, this bill makes new investments in our rural communities by
expanding access to high-speed internet and encouraging projects to
improve energy efficiency, energy storage, and cyber security.
Working with Senator Daines, we also maintain funding for the
Voluntary Public Access Program to increase opportunities for hunting
and fishing, which are so important to our outdoor recreation economy.
All in all, this is a good bill. It would materially improve the
lives in communities in Colorado and across America--something I don't
get to say a lot about our work around here.
It is even more impressive because the farm bill is not some tiny
piece of inconsequential legislation. It is among the most complex
things we do as a Congress. It touches every region of our country--
urban and rural--and involves thousands of different, often competing,
interests. It affects the lives of every single American--whether they
know it or not--through its investment in our food, forests, water, and
wildlife.
We passed this bill 20 to 1 in the Agriculture Committee. I told the
majority leader the other day, when he came for our markup in the
committee, that I wish he would send everything through the Agriculture
Committee. Then we might actually get something done for the American
people around here.
We might fix our broken immigration system to make sure our farmers
have access to the labor they need. We might address the threat of
climate change and the strain it will put on our food systems. We might
address the backlog of infrastructure projects in rural Colorado and
all across the West, where some of our pipes and dams date back to the
1950s. We might push for coherent trade policies that increase market
access for our farmers and ranchers, instead of subjecting them to
retaliation and uncertainty.
There is a lot we could do if we took a page from the Senate
Agriculture Committee and approached our work not oriented toward a
political fight for the benefit of cable news but oriented toward a
solution for the benefit of the American people. We need to get back to
that kind of work around here.
We can start by passing this bill and giving our farmers and ranchers
the certainty they deserve from our government. Given all they do for
us--providing the food, fuel, and fiber we rely on every single day--
that is the least we can do for them.
I thank my colleague from Arkansas, who has joined me on the floor
and has been such a great member of the Ag Committee as we brought this
bill forward.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I also thank my colleague, the Senator
from Colorado, for his efforts in getting this done. It has been a real
bipartisan effort. We hear so much about all the infighting that goes
on here, and this is certainly one of the underpinnings of our country.
Again, we are working very hard to get it across the finish line. So I
thank him very much.
The majority leader recently announced his intention to keep the
Senate in session through the majority of August. It is the right thing
to do. We have a lot of work to complete ahead of us, and our to-do
list just got a little bit longer with today's excellent news. The 12
appropriations bills are at the top of that list. We have been busy
clearing these bills at the committee level and now on the Senate
floor. I am particularly pleased that Military Construction-VA
appropriations bill was part of the first group of appropriations bills
that received bipartisan approval here on the Senate floor.
While we work to ensure passage of bills that fund vital Federal
programs, we must also continue to pass the important bills that
authorize them. We have a chance this week to add to our list of
bipartisan achievements by passing the farm bill, which was recently
approved by the Ag Committee with overwhelming support from both sides
of the aisle.
If you have ever been to Arkansas, I don't need to tell you how
important the farm bill is to our State. You have seen it. You have
seen the cotton fields, the rice silos, the chicken farms, the cattle
ranches. We have it all in the Natural State. In fact, 95 percent of
the land resources of Arkansas are devoted to agriculture and forestry.
While there is variety in what our farmers grow or raise on their land,
the family farm is a way of life shared by thousands of Arkansans.
Agriculture is a driving force of the Natural State's economy, adding
$16 billion to our economy every year and accounting for approximately
one in every six jobs. But the farm economy is in a much different
place than the last time this Chamber debated a farm bill. That is the
case not just in my home State of Arkansas; it is an issue nationwide.
If you look at the numbers across the Nation, farm income is
approximately half of what it was then. Farm bankruptcies are up by 39
percent since 2014; financing is becoming more expensive; input costs
are rising; and the trade outlook is volatile and uncertain.
Farmers across the country, regardless of where they call home or
which crops they grow, are hurting. They are experiencing the most
fragile farm economy since the 1980s farm crisis. With the current farm
bill set to expire at the end of September, we must pass a new one in a
timely manner to provide certainty and predictability to the folks who
feed and clothe our Nation and the world.
Programs authorized by the farm bill are vital to making sure that as
a nation we do not become dependent on other countries for our food
supply. Along with providing key risk management tools for our farmers,
the farm bill also helps our rural communities by authorizing key
economic development and job creation programs. It helps rural
Arkansans with everything from home financing to internet access to
small business loans.
The Agriculture Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Roberts
and Ranking Member Stabenow, approved a fair and equitable farm bill
with overwhelming bipartisan support. I was particularly pleased to see
that the committee-passed mark maintained strong farm policy for
producers of all stripes. These programs allow our Nation's family
farms to compete in a high-risk, heavily subsidized global marketplace.
As we debate amendments on the floor, we must defeat amendments that
would harm the farm safety net for our producers.
Ensuring that producers across the Nation have options that meet
their specific needs when those needs are so varied is a delicate
balance to strive for, but the chairman and ranking member have
achieved it. I appreciate what a heavy lift it is and what it took to
get to this point, and I hope the Senate as a whole does as well.
I do have very deep concerns about provisions included in the
substitute amendment that undermine this delicate balance. One
provision in particular, aimed at bolstering small family farms, will,
in fact, hurt family farms across the country. Unfortunately, we do not
know exactly how deep this cut will be. The provision was not filed as
an amendment, and Senators were not given time to properly read it. But
I do know one thing: This will hurt farmers and the rural communities
where they live. USDA estimates that my home State of Arkansas will be
the third most impacted State, behind Texas and Illinois. Iowa will be
the fourth most impacted State.
This provision does not discriminate against regions. It
discriminates against farmers and those who feed and clothe this
Nation. I am very much opposed to this language, but I am thankful that
the House did not take this tack in crafting its farm policy.
I am committed to working to remove this provision before we enact a
final farm bill this Congress. We must provide a farm bill that gives
producers certainty and predictability without further exacerbating the
difficult farm economy they are facing.
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If we can commit to continuing to follow the fair and equitable
approach that was exhibited when we fashioned the bill in committee, we
can pass a farm bill that has a chance to become law. Let's not
squander this opportunity.
Our farmers in rural America need this bill. Let's get it passed so
that we can provide our farmers and ranchers with the certainty and
predictability they need to succeed.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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