[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 95 (Wednesday, May 20, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2535-S2537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Agriculture

  Madam President, in this time, it is interesting to note that, with 
all that is going on, America is still eating, and America is still 
moving because there are essential workers who are still serving. They 
are healthcare workers. They are grocery store workers. They are 
truckers. They are folks at convenience stores, gas stations, 
sanitation workers, and in power generation. They are farmers and 
ranchers. They are the refineries. Yes, they are even in government--
public safety and law enforcement.
  While the news every day covers folks who are at home waiting to 
return to work, at times we forget the people who are working twice as 
hard right now to be able to make sure that is even possible. And we 
are grateful for what they are doing. We are grateful for the 
sacrifices of their families and of the hours they are putting in.
  But I want to highlight a couple of different groups that are unique 
in this mix--some of the folks who are really and truly behind the 
scenes and whom we really don't see a lot, but we see the end result of 
their products.
  Let me start with farmers and ranchers. They are folks who are on the 
farm and the ranch, and they are taking care of our food because, as we 
know well, food does not grow in a grocery store. It actually has to 
happen somewhere by folks putting in the workout in the Sun and getting 
the chance to be able to bring that crop in.
  We are watching it happen across my State and across the country 
right now. In Oklahoma, wheat is coming in, and it looks beautiful. It 
is green still, but in the days ahead, as it comes in, it will be very 
important to us. But it will be interesting to see this crop, if it

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is not taken out by the hail that is coming in this weekend. As it 
comes in, this crop will be very important to us. But this year the 
challenge will be that the H2A workers who typically come in literally 
from all over the world to do custom cutting are not able to come 
because of the coronavirus. And the challenge will be this: Will 
Americans step up when, literally, the harvest is plentiful, but the 
workers are few? Will Americans step up and say: I will not let that 
harvest go to waste; I will engage and bring the harvest in.
  Folks who are in forestry--yes, forestry and logging is a crop in 
Oklahoma. For those of you who haven't been there, it is the eastern 
side of our State. It is incredibly important to us. We are seeing a 
boom in that area, thanks to things like a great need for boxes, for 
everyone who is getting all of their materials shipped to their house 
right now and this small commodity we call toilet paper, for which 
there seems to be a run on going on right now.
  Cotton, corn, sorghum, beans--there are so many things that are so 
important and behind the scenes. If we lose sight of that fact, we will 
just miss it.
  One of the things that has been in the news lately is livestock and 
the processing of the livestock. There has been news about how 
coronavirus has spread in some of those facilities. I have one of those 
facilities in my State. It is Seaboard. It is a tremendous operation, 
where folks have worked for decades in a tremendous place to be able to 
harvest those hogs and to turn them into fabulous things like bacon and 
pork chops.
  In this location in Texas County, in Guymon, we have seen an 
outbreak. The folks at Seaboard Farms have stepped up to it. Ninety-
five percent of their workers have now been tested, and they are in the 
process of actually doing an entirely different test all over again 
just to be able to track and to be able to find, even for the people 
who were negative, if they will show up positive the next time and to 
make sure they are staying on top of it. But they are running at 60 
percent operation right now. That may not seem like a big deal to you, 
but that is about 7,000 hogs a day that are not being harvested. They 
are having to be--what is euphemistically called--depopulated. That is 
a tremendous loss to everybody in the entire country.
  We are seeing major issues that are also happening with our beef 
production, as we have had enormous issues on trying to harvest those 
animals.
  As we go through the process and all the challenges, it has become 
extremely personal to a lot of the folks in my State. In my State, this 
is not just a theory. In my State, this is actually happening to real 
people. It is Jim Howard, a fourth-generation rancher, who ranches in 
Jefferson County. His whole family--his brother, his wife, his 
grandson, his sons-in-law--everyone is involved in the operation. They 
are ranching cows, calves, and stockers. They have a food lot 
operation. They have it all. But at this point, they are facing between 
35 and 40 percent loss in the price of cattle. Literally, he loses 
money on every single cow.
  It is Robert Frymire, from Custer County. He is a third-generation 
wheat and cattle farmer. Using today's wheat prices, even with the crop 
that is coming in, he will lose $150,000 this year on his wheat crop, 
not to mention what is going to happen on the beef cattle.
  There is a reason we are trying to put solutions in the CARES Act. 
There is a reason we put $19 billion there to help our food supply, and 
$3 billion dollars of that has gone toward providing for our food 
pantries and nonprofits and places to be able to get food out to people 
so that food doesn't go to waste. But there is direct aid that is going 
to farmers and ranchers to make sure we keep those operations alive 
long term, because we need them to exist at the end of this. We are 
grateful to be able to come alongside of them.
  There are real challenges in the packing operations that are not new. 
They have been around for a while. We are pushing in a couple of areas 
to say: We have to solve a couple of these problems. Our small packing 
houses that are out there pay almost $80 an hour for overtime fees. 
That is $80 an hour for each inspector to do overtime. So if we have a 
location like Seaboard Farms that goes down, and they want to be able 
to go out to another location and to ramp up, they are actually 
financially punished from being able to do that, and they can't make 
the math work. We have to solve that so that we are not punishing small 
to medium-sized operations for ramping up in moments when we need them. 
And we need the small and medium-sized businesses to be able to ramp up 
and grow larger.

  And we have to solve the issue of the CIS Program, which is allowing 
folks to be able to sell over State lines. Twenty-seven States, 
including my own, have State inspection programs that are equal to the 
USDA program. They have to be equal to it, but they are still not 
allowed to sell over State lines until they get the CIS Program done, 
and only three States have been able to complete that. This should be 
logical. We should be able to solve this.
  Those two things would allow long-term fixes for the packing house 
operations. It is something we have complained about for a long time, 
and we should have solved this at this moment because it has become 
even more obvious.
  The issues about energy continue to rise for us. As a nation, we are 
finally energy independent--finally. We choose to buy energy from 
places where we want to buy energy because we can produce it ourselves, 
but we cannot go backward to a time period when we were dependent on 
the Middle East again because of what has happened with COVID-19. We 
have to pay attention to this. There are commonsense solutions, and I 
understand full well that there are some folks who don't like fossil 
fuels. I get it, but those same folks fly on planes and drive cars and 
trucks. And we like wearing clothes, and we like having paint. And as 
for all of those things that are disposable now, like PPE, guess what 
they are made of. Petroleum. There is this whole challenge about trying 
to get away from petroleum. It has been interesting to me how many 
people have suddenly gone from ``let's reuse everything'' to the last 2 
months saying: No, actually, we want to have disposable everything now. 
Well, guess what. Those disposable items are made with petroleum 
products.
  We do need this balance. We can do it clean, but we have to be able 
to keep this part of industry open and still functioning. And if the 
whole system collapses, we will not be able to do that.
  Many of you know that my State is a production State. At times, we 
will have hundreds of wells for oil and gas running. Right now, in the 
entire State of Oklahoma, there are 12 rigs working--12. That is the 
collapse of thousands and thousands of jobs, and if those jobs and 
those companies go away and do not recover, then, we are suddenly 
dependent on the Middle East again. We cannot go there. We have to 
resolve that. That is why the Paycheck Protection Program was opened up 
to small businesses--and, yes, even energy companies--to help sustain 
them for a couple of months to be able to get through this. But it is 
going to be a very big challenge for them.
  Quite frankly, there is something that is news to this body that I 
want to raise. In 2007, long before I was in Congress, Congress passed 
an act dealing with ethanol, mandating a certain number of gallons of 
ethanol to be used every year. Well, guess what. America wasn't driving 
in March and in April. That means we are not going to be close to the 
number of gallons of gasoline that we normally use, but we still have a 
requirement sitting out there for the number of gallons of ethanol that 
have to be used this year. We literally have an energy-ticking 
timebomb, based on a bad law that was written years ago dealing with 
ethanol, and if we are not careful, we are going to cause even bigger 
challenges in energy based on that ethanol law and the number of 
gallons that are required when there is literally no way, even if we 
poured it on the ground, that we can use the gallons required in that 
law.
  That is going to be an issue for us, and it is one that we need to 
work cooperatively on and in a nonpartisan way to say: Let's have some 
common sense in this moment to solve how we deal with our energy, lest 
the prices of gasoline explode at the backside of this, not because of 
undersupply but because of ethanol regulations. We

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should not allow that to occur. We should be able to not only solve 
that for this year but solve it long term.
  I am grateful for the folks who are farmers and ranchers who are 
working, and in energy, the folks who work behind the scenes, who make 
America move, because in the days ahead, we will start moving.
  My State has already reached phase 2 of reopening, and we continue to 
see a decline in the number of cases, but those folks who were working 
behind the scenes the whole time are making the difference for us.