[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 149 (Tuesday, September 24, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6342-S6343]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Farm Bill

  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the dire 
state of our American farm economy and our farmers.
  American farmers and producers are the backbone of our Nation's 
agricultural economy and food security. Despite their critical role in 
our lives to feed, clothe, and fuel not only the United States but the 
entire world, our farmers are struggling to survive, and that is an 
understatement.
  The current state of the agricultural economy is bleak and on the 
verge of collapse. We have problems all over the world. We have 
problems in our country. There is nothing more important--nothing more 
important--that we should be addressing than our food supply here in 
this country.
  Costs for farmers are rising. Commodity prices are falling. Our 
farmers cannot break even, much less make a profit. According to the 
USDA, net farm income this year is projected to decline 4.4 percent 
from 2023--decline. That is a disaster.
  This follows a shocking--listen to this--a shocking 19.5-percent 
decline in 2022. Not one business in this country can survive with this 
kind of decline, and our farmers and our farms are no different.
  This means producers' income has plummeted 23 percent in just 2 
years--23 percent. These figures represent over $40 billion in lost 
revenue for America's hard-working producers. This is the largest 2-
year decline ever in our farm income--ever in the history of this 
country.
  Right now, our row croppers, especially, are facing considerable 
financial hardship. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, 
row croppers had a $27.7 billion decline in cash receipts since last 
year.
  In Alabama, my State, our producers are yielding bumper crops of 
cotton, peanuts, corn, and soybeans; and yet they can't profit due to 
rising costs of production. Our catfish producers are in the same boat. 
Rising input costs and falling fish prices are threatening to put them 
out of business.
  A multitude of factors that producers have no control over are 
impacting their bottom lines, and I want to talk about one of them. 
This miraculous, this world-saving Inflation Reduction Act that we 
passed a few years ago was supposed to save our economy--supposed to 
save a lot of workers. Do you know what it has done to our farmers? It 
has almost put us out of business.
  The Inflation Reduction Act started a tax credit for imports and 
exports. Unfortunately, all the tax credits are going to people and 
countries and farmers from overseas, Brazil and China.
  It was supposed to go to our farmers. No, it is not going to do that. 
For some reason, this administration has given all the tax credits to 
the farmers from other countries, and our farmers are struggling.
  The Biden administration has control--has total control--over our 
farm economy, but you haven't heard a peep out of them--not one peep--
about our farmers. And this is a disastrous year coming up.
  And, right now, we are harvesting our crops, and they are bumper 
crops.
  The issues plaguing American producers are directly linked to the 
harmful policies, as I just said, from the Biden-Harris administration. 
This includes the lack of domestic energy production, skyrocketing 
inflation, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, and endless--
endless--environmental hurdles.
  Let me say something about conservation and all the things that 
happen in our environment. There is nobody--and I mean nobody--on the 
face of the Earth that takes care and is more conscious of 
environmental problems than our farmers, because they make a living off 
our land. But we are putting so many regulations on them, we are 
closing our farms down and running them overseas. We are going to have 
a national security threat because all of our food is going to come 
from foreign countries.
  Farmers are experiencing rising costs of labor and increase in prices 
for feed, fertilizer, and pesticides. And I am not going to sugarcoat 
it: America's agricultural producers are facing a very tough road 
ahead. It is something nobody--the media, this building, the building 
on the other end, the House of Representatives, nobody is even talking 
about it.
  Folks, if we can't eat, if we don't have food to eat, we are done.

[[Page S6343]]

  Many farmers fear that their farm loans this year will not be 
renewed. They have to have farm loans to put a crop in the ground. They 
fear cash flows drying up and interest rates continuing to rise create 
an uncertain future for farming operations.
  Although Congress only has a few legislative days left to act, we 
must stop adding fuel to the Biden-Harris administrative fire. We have 
to quit adding fuel. We have to help the farmers.
  We need to pass the farm bill that helps our farmers. Democrats are 
in control of that. They have been in control of it for the last 8 
years.
  A farm bill is for 5 years. Four years ago or 5 years ago, the farm 
bill was $870 billion for a 5-year period. It runs in a 5-year period. 
So this past year, we were supposed to be working on the farm bill. I 
am on the Ag Committee. We go by the control of the Democratic Party. 
Our Democratic chairwoman has decided we won't do a farm bill this 
year. We are just throwing farmers underneath the bus.
  They need help. You would think by looking at everything going on 
that my colleagues on the left would rather our food come from other 
countries--take over our farmland, control it, and do something else 
with it.
  Producers need a strong safety net. We have to have a safety net for 
our farmers. Considering no farmers' risks are the same, we cannot take 
a one-size-fits-all approach. Remember, we have a farm bill that covers 
livestock, hogs, row croppers, forest, fish. There are a lot of things 
involved. Farmers across the country have fluctuating levels of risk, 
impacted by land and equipment costs, access to irrigation, and 
variable input requirements. Southern row croppers rely heavily--
heavily--upon title I commodity programs in the farm bill, particularly 
the Price Loss Program and the Agriculture Risk Program. Yet Midwest 
producers heavily utilize crop insurance. Where there may be an overlap 
across regions among these programs, we must fix the entire farm safety 
net, not just parts of it.
  Take the reference prices in commodity programs for example. 
Reference prices are how much the prices are in their commodity sales 
report. Our farmers are operating today on 2012 revenue prices--2012; 
14 years later. The costs of production are 22 to 31 percent higher 
today than they were at that time, a decade ago, making current 
reference prices completely inadequate for our farmers.
  We don't have time to waste. Our farmers are facing an uphill battle 
to remain in business, and we are going to find out pretty quick--the 
American people going to the grocery store are going to find out pretty 
quick what it is to be hungry if we don't wake up and smell the roses.
  Even if a farm bill is passed today, producers wouldn't receive any 
commodity program support from this farm bill until 2026. Game, set, 
match, before 2026 for our farmers in this country. That is help our 
farmers need now to survive, not 2 years later.
  Senate Republicans stand ready to act on the solid bipartisan bill 
that the House Agriculture Committee passed earlier this year. Yet 
Senate Democrats and the Biden administration refuse--they refuse--to 
come to the table to find practical, bipartisan solutions to the many 
problems our farmers are facing today.
  Let's don't worry about our farmers. Let's worry about Ukraine. Let's 
worry about people overseas, the 800 bases we have around the world. 
Let's don't worry about eating. We can do without eating. That is what 
this administration is saying.
  This forces us to look to supplemental appropriations packages to 
help our producers if we are not going to do a farm bill, renew their 
farm loans, and help for next year's crops. If they don't get help this 
year, we are going to have huge problems. They won't be pocketing this 
money, if we come up with some money, to help the farmers get a loan; 
they will just be planting another crop.
  Without immediate action to assist producers, our Nation's 
agriculture industry may never ever make it back from the damage we are 
doing to them today.
  America has lost--listen to this--America has lost 150,000 farms and 
25,000 farmers in our country over the last few years. What? Mr. 
President, 150,000 farms closed up. Why? They can't make a profit.
  You been on a farm for 100 years, you and your family, but you get to 
the point where you say, you know, I am not passing something down to 
our kids who really want to farm, but we are not going to put them in 
harm's way. We are going to sell. We are going to get out of the 
business, and we are going to let somebody else worry about it. Let's 
let the Federal Government worry about it.
  Well, we do such a good job here, we would do a great job raising our 
food.
  We can't afford any more losses to our farmers. Our farmers are 
hurting. They are hurting real bad. But have you heard anybody talk 
about it? No. You are going to hear a lot of people complaining about 
it, and there is going to be an uproar in the next few years when 
prices double and triple what they are today because we are not going 
to have food. It is going to come from Brazil. It is going to come from 
China. It is going to come from Vietnam.
  We are doing severe damage to the farmers across this country, and 
nobody cares.
  I will continue to be the voice of our southern agricultural 
producers in the Senate and ensure that we have a seat at table on this 
farm bill upcoming. But as I just said a while ago, if we do a farm 
bill today, we are going to lose at least half of our farmers in this 
country this year--this year--if they don't get some help.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.