[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 162 (Tuesday, October 3, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4959-H4960]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE STATE OF FOOD PRODUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, we are in perilous times as a Nation due to 
the

[[Page H4960]]

weakness we have been projecting in the last 2\1/2\ years from our 
leadership.
  What do we see? When you have a vacuum like that--we know the 
terminology ``nature abhors a vacuum''--China is all too eager to step 
in and move in and replace us in that regard. We are seeing that with 
the undermining of our currency around the world. We see it with the 
BRICS group trying to go on its own where the American currency for 
many, many years has been the standard.
  Now, we don't have a birthright to that. We don't have a birthright 
as the United States for being number one in anything, but I think we 
can agree that we would be stronger as a country, as well as with our 
good intentions as a people, that the United States is well positioned 
to continue to be the light of the world that it is capable of being.
  With bad leadership, with poor leadership, we allow others to come in 
and replace us in that role. China is seeking to do so on so many 
things, like manufacturing and food. That is what I would like to talk 
about today: food production.
  At the same time as western countries are saying we need to blame 
agriculture for climate change, which basically means CO2 
production, I would remind you once again, carbon dioxide is only .04 
percent of our atmosphere. All the hysteria over that is that it is 
somehow going to be the end of us as a people, the end of the Earth; it 
has only grown a minute amount.
  They would have us cut one-third of agriculture in this country. John 
Kerry, the so-called czar, as he flies in his private jet to yet 
another fancy event in Davos to talk about climate change, along with 
hundreds of other private jets, would have us cut one-third of our 
agriculture in this country.
  You see that happening in Europe. You see the Dutch farmers valiantly 
fighting back against their oppressive government where they are 
wanting to put a bunch of their land out of business. Holland reclaimed 
a bunch of land from the ocean via those polders, via those levees they 
used to push back the ocean and made prime farmland out of that. You 
have extremists trying to push them out. You see Ireland a while back 
deciding they need to cull about 30 percent, maybe a third of their 
dairy herd because dairies make CO2 and methane gas and 
such.
  There was a time in this country where we had way, way more buffalo 
on the plains than we do have currently with beef and dairy cattle. 
That is an interesting stat. It isn't about the animals burping or 
whatever.
  As we see the U.S., due to bad policy, to poor leadership, being 
displaced in that area, do we really want to become dependent even more 
so on China and a cartel they might be in with Russia and other 
alliances they have with Iran, to be more and more dependent on them? 
We are already dependent on them for 90 percent of our pharmaceuticals, 
and so much of our manufactured products. Do you want to do that to 
agriculture, too? It makes no sense.
  You see what is happening in my home State of California, where 
California produces so many of these great crops here. Ninety-plus 
percent that Americans rely on comes from California. We saw just last 
year, in 2022, that due to the decisions made by the Bureau of 
Reclamation and others, and the environmental groups, the water got cut 
off from Shasta Dam and other Federal project water to much of 
agriculture.
  We saw just an example of rice, for example. Normally, about half a 
million acres of rice are grown in California. They cut that number in 
half to 250,000. Do you know how devastating that is to communities 
when you have that and other crops just wiped away because of 
mismanagement of our water supply during a drought period?
  There is still plenty of water that hits California, plenty of 
snowpack. We were certainly blessed with a lot this year that made 
things good for the 2023 crops. We are still having a decent carryover, 
it looks like. As we watch, they are going to fritter the water away at 
this time of year, as they have to lower the lakes to have a flood 
control level, conservation level. Indeed, the water that could be used 
for other things is just now going out to the ocean as so much of it 
is. It is a water-management issue. It is a leadership issue.
  Where is this food going to come from? They want to continue to take 
dams out. I heard a colleague here yesterday say, well, these dams 
haven't been maintained over the years. Well, that is purposeful. If 
the government doesn't put forward the dollars and the effort and the 
permitting process to maintain and keep dams upgraded, yeah, after 40 
years they can deteriorate. Then someone decides, well, it is going to 
be too expensive to revamp the dam, to bring it up to spec, so let's go 
ahead and tear it out. That is what they want to begin with.
  Where is our food going to come from if we don't have the dams, the 
water storage, our hydroelectric power, all of those things? It makes 
no sense what we are doing.

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