Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - December 11, 2007)

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Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I come today to speak in general about the farm bill, which we are debating, more correctly called the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, and also to speak about some of the amendments proposed to it.

This is an essential piece of legislation. I am proud to have been part of both committees that have brought separate parts of this legislation forward and to have been able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to craft a bill in the Senate I believe very effectively addresses the food and fiber needs of our Nation as we move forward.

This legislation impacts the lives of families across this Nation and around the world through providing food security, enabling global competitiveness, and ensuring a better environment. I have been pleased to work with my colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and others in Congress to craft a bill that builds upon previous farm bills for a stronger Federal farm policy.

The legislation includes essential provisions, such as the new specialty crops subtitle that strengthens the specialty crop block grant and other important programs. I thank Senator Stabenow, Senator Craig, and others for working with me on this effort. I also thank the committee for its commitment to helping us be sure that these new specialty crop provisions have been included in the legislation. There has been confusion because, although we have included specialty crops in the legislation this year, they have not been included as a commodity crop, in those crops that are covered by the commodity programs. Instead, they are included in ways that will help them to obtain better technical assistance and grant programs so they can facilitate and enhance their development, the growing of these crops, and the marketing of them; but they don't technically, under this bill or in any way, participate in the commodity programs.

I also thank Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley on the Finance Committee for helping to craft a tax title for the farm bill that, in addition to its many other strong provisions, includes improvements to the Endangered Species Act, through tax incentives for landowners, to help them with species recovery. This is a piece of legislation Senators Baucus and Grassley have agreed to cosponsor with me, as well as many other Senators, both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. It is one we have worked on for years to try to find a bipartisan path forward, where those who are concerned about the preservation and recovery of species, as well as those who are concerned about the impacts of our efforts on private property owners, can come together with a proposal that will help us to facilitate the recovery of endangered species.

One little-known fact is approximately 80 percent of the threatened or endangered species in the United States are located on private property. It is critical we bring forward the assistance of private property owners and incentivize their involvement in the recovery of these threatened and endangered species. That is what this legislation will do.

I wish to take some time to talk more about other important aspects of the farm bill and some changes being proposed. In order to do so, I wish to explain what many people don't understand when we talk about the farm bill. We discuss the farm bill as though it were a bill that focused on production agriculture, and certainly it does.

The commodity title I referenced and the conservation title I will reference in a minute both focus closely on production agriculture but not solely on it. What goes unnoticed in these debates is the farm bill is a very broad bill that deals with a multitude of critical issues in our Nation relating to the production of food and fiber. It has 11 titles--titles on commodities and conservation, as I have indicated; titles on trade, nutrition, rural development, credit, research, forestry, energy, livestock, and other miscellaneous provisions.

One other little known or little focused on fact relating to the farm bill is the commodity title, which we most often talk about, represents only 14 percent of the funding allocated in the bill. The conservation title, which is another one of those we talk about a lot, only represents about 9 percent of the funding in the bill. The nutrition portion of the farm bill includes almost two-thirds--in fact, a little over two-thirds of the funding in the bill, 67.2 percent, is allocated to the nutrition program. I will talk about those as well as I go forward.

My point is this is a very broad-based bill. It is one

that impacts rural and urban areas. It deals with the importance of food and fiber in many different contexts, from feeding a nation and clothing a nation to engaging in international trade, to our security as a nation, and to many other aspects of our lives. As I said earlier, it literally impacts people not only throughout this country but throughout the world.

Let me move on and talk about a couple of those titles. The first one I will go to is the commodity program and the commodity title.

I am concerned with efforts that have been introduced in some amendments to the bill on the floor that would lower selected loan rates, including the rates for barley, wheat, oats, wool, and honey loan rates--reduce them back down to the 2002 farm bill levels and then divert the funding saved by that reduction into the nutrition title and other titles of the bill.

I certainly understand and don't question the importance of our nutrition programs and other programs being targeted for this diverted funding. But it is important to note that under this farm bill, nutrition funding already accounts for over two-thirds of the funding in the bill, with only 14 percent allocated to commodities.

Much work has been done in this bill to try to provide adequate support for farm families across our Nation, while carefully balancing the limited funding available to each title of the bill.

Additionally, adjustments or corrections have been made to loan rates to better ensure the loan rates don't distort planting decisions. That is very critical in our World Trade Organization negotiations. Under the 2007 farm bill, we have the rates established in a way that will assist us in our global trade negotiations. Specifically, the adjustments in the Senate bill increase the loan rates for wheat, barley, oats, and minor oilseeds to 85 percent of the Olympic average for prices between 2002 and 2006. For those who don't pay attention to what all that means, the bottom line is it is important, as we move forward in the commodity program, that we not establish programs that distort planting decisions by farmers; otherwise, we will be accused of improper subsidy or improper trade-impacting decisions and policies that will be challenged in world trade negotiation arenas.

Loan rates for crops that compete for acres must be set at similar percentages of recent market prices or they can affect production decisions when prices are expected to be near or below loan levels.

Farmers and their lenders take price support from the loan program into consideration in making planting decisions. Current loan rates under the 2002 farm bill were heavily skewed in favor of and against different crops, ranging from 69 percent to 111 percent of the Olympic average during the years 2002 through 2006. It is these variations that create planting decision distortions we need to avoid.

Efforts to strike the changes we have made and divert the funding will prolong the existing disparity in the current farm bill, a policy which has been a factor of loss of wheat, barley, oats, and minor oilseeds to increased production in other commodities.

Our producers work to feed our country and people of nations across the world, while also dealing with high levels of regulation and taxation, labor shortages, droughts, and other natural disasters and ever-increasing input costs, substantial foreign market barriers, and other factors that put them at a disadvantage in a very competitive world market.

We have to ensure our farm families have the necessary support as they continue to work to remain successful, while factoring in and facing these increased challenges.

I ask other Senators in the Chamber to stand with me in supporting this careful balance we have reached in the bill and to vote against amendments or other efforts to eliminate the loan rate rebalancing and other commodity program support.

I also wish to talk about, in the commodity title, the importance of pulse crop support.

As amendments are being considered to strike portions of the farm bill, I wish to discuss the history and importance of support for pulse crops in this farm bill.

Pulse crops are cool season legumes that can withstand the cool temperatures of the northern tier of the United States. Pulse crops are such things as dry peas, lentils, small chickpeas, and large chickpeas. These cool season, nitrogen-fixing legumes are grown across the northern tier of the United States in rotation with wheat, barley, and other minor oilseeds.

In the late 1990s, when agriculture prices for commodities struggled, bankers steered growers away from raising pulse crops because they did not have the farm program safety net provided to other crops in their rotation.

In 1999, dry pea acres dropped by 55 percent. The pulse industry responded by requesting full program crop status for pulse crops as a way to keep the nitrogen-fixing legumes in the crop rotation with other program crops. Again, as we worked with issues in the previous farm bill, this was an area that needed adjustment and attention.

In 2002, I worked with the industry and other Members of Congress to include dry peas, lentils, and small chickpeas in the 2002 farm bill. Specifically, the industry was granted a marketing assistance loan program for dry peas, lentils, and small chickpeas.

Pulse crops are very good for the environment and for the overall soil health. The citizens of our country demand that our farm programs protect the long-term sustainability of our agricultural production. These legumes generate their own nitrogen and require no processed fertilizer to produce a crop.

Pulses fix nitrogen in the soil, which supplies a 40-pound-per-acre nitrogen credit to the following crop in the rotation, such as wheat, barley, and other minor oilseeds. Pulse crops and soybeans are the only farm program crops that do not require nitrogen fertilizer.

The carbon footprint of pulses and soybeans is lower than any other farm program crop because of their ability to generate their own nitrogen.

The farm bill provides us with the opportunity to encourage our Nation's farmers to protect the long-term sustainability of our soils. Including pulse crops in farm programs provides a safety net to other program crops and, therefore, encourages crop diversity and sustainability. Once again, it is an issue of favoring one crop over another with the unintended impact on the soils of our Nation.

Stripping pulse crops out of the farm programs, as some are proposing, would encourage farmers in the northern tier to shift production to those crops with a safety net in periods of low prices. This shift in production would upset the delicate environmental balance that pulse crops provide to overall soil health and sustainability and would result in acreage loss.

I encourage my fellow Senators to oppose amendments that would strip pulse crops and support for them from the farm bill.

Let me shift for a moment to the conservation title. As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Rural Revitalization, Conservation, and Forestry, I wish to take a few minutes to evaluate and discuss the critical importance of the conservation title.

The programs authorized through the conservation title of the farm bill provide landowners with both financial and technical assistance necessary to bring real environmental results. In fact, I have said many times that of all the legislation we consider in these Chambers year in and year out, it is the farm bill that provides the most significant protection and support of our environment than any other legislation we consider. Conservation programs are the backbone of the Federal conservation and environmental policy.

The farm bill before us provides $4.4 billion in new conservation spending. The legislation builds on current successful conservation programs and needed enhancements to make them work better for our producers. It provides $1.28 billion in new spending for a program named the Conservation Stewardship Program. Funding is provided for continuation of the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program.

The Wetlands Reserve Program would be provided with funds to enroll 250,000 new acres per year through 2012, and the Grasslands Reserve Program would have sufficient resources to work in a similar fashion from 2008 through 2012.

As of fiscal year 2006, more than 9,000 wetland reserve sites have been enrolled and improved on more than 1 million acres of land in the United States. There are more than 900,000 acres enrolled in the Grasslands Reserve Program, providing habitat for more than 300 migratory birds species that rely on this prairie habitat.

The Conservation Reserve Program would be maintained at its 39.2 million acres. This program has reduced cropland soil loss by about 450 million tons. It has restored 2 million acres of wetlands, protected 170,000 miles of streams, and sequestered 48 million tons of carbon dioxide through 2006.

The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program would be continued with $85 million per year through the year 2012.

The Farmland and Ranchlands Protection Program would also be authorized at $97 million per year. Easements on nearly 2,000 farms and ranches have been enabled through this program. It is estimated that almost 384,000 acres of prime, unique, and important farmland soil on the urban fringe have been or will be permanently protected from conversion to nonagricultural uses with these easements.

These are just some of the programs that are included in the conservation title of the farm bill. I understand and share the interest of many who want to increase funding for conservation programs, and as a strong supporter and proponent of these programs, I believe we will all benefit from these investments in conservation. However, I think we should be very careful where we look to obtain these funding increases. A strong farm bill is one that carefully balances each of the items, as I have indicated before.

I have indicated that the nutrition title represents almost or little more than two-thirds of the funding in the bill. Nutrition in our schools remains an issue of critical importance for all Americans. As a father, I understand the positive effects that good nutrition has in helping a child develop and learn throughout the course of a schoolday.

In addition, I am troubled by the fact that the percentage of overweight young Americans has more than doubled in the past 30 years. I have been a strong proponent of programs that increase access to healthy foods for our children in schools. One example is the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The farm bill would expand this existing limited program to every State in the United States and the District of Columbia and would require that at least 100 of the chosen participating schools be located on Indian reservations.

I applaud the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee for working toward these commonsense solutions and programs to support positive steps in nutrition for our children and others across our Nation. But as I said earlier, I also must express my concerns with proposals that seek to regulate food and beverage choices in schools from the Federal level.

I am wary of Federal policies that interfere with the local autonomy of State and local schools in this matter. In addition, studies have shown that parents and educators need to work with our youth to educate them about the right choices they can make for dietary health. The best way to get a child to do something different is to tell them they cannot do it sometimes. Instead of dictating to our children, we have a responsibility to teach them about their choices and encourage them to make the right choices for themselves.

The rural development title also has much assistance for America. Throughout the farm bill debate, there has been much discussion regarding investing in rural communities across our Nation, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity today to highlight just a few of the ways in which this farm bill helps us to further invest in rural America.

One of the things we have noticed, as we have seen economic decline in rural America, is that we must build the infrastructure in our rural communities so they can have access to the increasing markets overseas and nationally. It has become apparent to me that the effect of our Federal environmental rules and regulations is also felt most heavily in small and rural communities. These communities do not have the economies of scale because of the small population for very expensive updating required for their water and wastewater systems that they must do in order to comply with Federal law. Something a large urban community could handle can literally bankrupt a smaller community seeking to comply with our clean water and safe drinking water standards. Because of that, I have fought for years to promote a program called Project Search which we established in the 2002 farm bill to provide small rural communities with financial assistance to help them comply with these regulations.

Through the changes made to Project Search's model, small, financially distressed communities in Idaho and across the Nation will now have increased and more streamlined access to Federal assistance in the early stages of water, wastewater, and waste disposal projects. This will help them keep their water clean and help them do so in a way that allows the community to avoid financial ruin.

This farm bill has also made critical reforms to the Rural Broadband Loan Program ensuring that broadband access is provided to those communities with the greatest need.

The Connect the Nation matching grant program will be added to benchmark current broadband access programs and build GIS service maps to promote greater accuracy and understanding of our Nation's broadband networks.

I am also pleased that this farm bill will reauthorize the National Rural Development Partnership.

There are many other important programs included within the rural development title that will have a major impact on our rural communities. Again, I thank my colleagues for working with us to make this part of the title effective.

There are only two more titles about which I want to talk. One is the energy title. The largest energy reserves in our Nation reside in the farmland and forests across this country. Let me say that again. The largest energy reserves in our Nation reside in our farmland and forests across this country.

In order to provide for national energy security, it has become clear that agriculture is a part of the solution. For far too long we have been dependent almost entirely on petroleum as our major source of energy in this Nation. We are far too dependent not only on petroleum but on foreign sources of petroleum. And as anyone working with a portfolio would say, we must diversify. That is why I have supported many of the provisions in this farm bill to move our Nation into more diverse forms of alternative and renewable fuels.

Let's take, for example, biomass. The stored energy in biomass worldwide amounts to approximately 50 billion tons of crude oil equivalent units every year, over five times our current energy needs.

Using 17 million tons of biomass a year for energy could produce up to 7,000 new primary jobs, displace 6.8 million tons of CO2 from natural gas-fired powerplants, and generate renewable carbon credits that might eventually be worth more than $200 million.

Through research, we can expand and harness a good part of that astronomical potential, and that is why we included biomass provisions in this bill, provisions such as the Crop Transition Program, that will stimulate production and ease transition toward perennial biomass crops. Mr. President, $172 million would be provided over 5 years for this program.

There would be competitive research grants of $75 million for biomass to bioenergy programs, focusing on increasing process efficiency and utilization of byproducts, and providing for a regional bioenergy program that is awarded competitively to land grant universities.

I also support a strong focus in this bill on biofuels. We have long recognized the value in providing homegrown fuel in the form of ethanol. It is cleaner, it is renewable, and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

As we move forward, it is also clear that as we approach the maximum production limits of our starch ethanol, we also need to move into cellulosic ethanol which must be a primary component of our Nation's ethanol portfolio. America's energy demand will increase 30 percent over the next 22 years, and biofuels are critical to that increase.

Finally, I wish to talk about the trade portion of our bill. As Congress moves forward in a farm bill debate, we often wonder what is the future of American agriculture. I wish to discuss one very important piece of it because it is very clear to all of us that a major part of our future in American agriculture lies beyond our borders. Agriculture production in the State of Idaho is a great example.

According to statistics from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, if Idahoans had to consume all the farm products produced within the State, every day each resident would have to eat 52 potatoes, 240 slices of bread, 38 glasses of milk or 1.9 pounds of cheese, two quarter-pound hamburgers, two onions, and the list goes on and on. The point being, we depend on other markets for our successful agricultural programs, and trade support must be a critical part of our agricultural programs in this farm bill.

This farm bill contains a number of programs such as the Market Access Program, the Foreign Market Development Program, and the Technical Assistance Program for Specialty Crops, which I talked about earlier, to name a few.

One final point. Senator Baucus and I have offered an amendment with regard to trade with Cuba. The future success of our agricultural programs and the ability of this Nation to remain globally competitive depend on our ability to have access to markets beyond our borders. There is a huge debate in this country about whether we should continue to refuse or to limit our trade with Cuba or whether to open trade with Cuba, and I am one of those who believes we should open it.

I recognize we face in Cuba and in the Castro Government a brutal dictatorship, one in which human rights and civil rights are not recognized or honored in any way realistically. But for us to refuse to trade with them, in my opinion, does nothing to solve that problem and does everything to reduce the opportunities of the United States to influence Cuba, both on economic levels, as well as political levels.

If we look at the economic impact on the United States, our refusal to sell our agricultural products to Cuba does not mean that Cubans cannot eat or they cannot gain these agricultural products. They simply buy them from somewhere else--Canada, Europe, or other places.

Yet if we were to open our trade with Cuba and allow more aggressive U.S. marketing of agricultural products there, a recent study by the trade commission says that exports of fresh fruits and vegetables would likely increase by $37 million to $68 million in exports; milk powder exports would more than double; processed food exports would see a $26 million increase; wheat exports would be doubled to $34 million; and exports of dry beans would increase by $9 million, up to $22 million, to give a few examples.

The point is, there are markets in Cuba for our goods which our producers need to be able to take advantage of, and we will do nothing but increase our ability to work with the people of Cuba to address the political issues they face by doing so.

If we want to have a positive impact on the people of Cuba and the pressures they face under the regime in which they live, then we should open trade, open travel, and open communication so we can take to them an opportunity to see the freedom we experience here and to experience the power of open and free markets.

That is why Senator Baucus and I have introduced this legislation, and I hope the Senators here will support this amendment to this critical bill to help the United States in this one area move forward.

When we have significant trade with a nation such as China across the Pacific Ocean, yet we will not open significant trade with a neighbor such as Cuba, 90 miles off our shore, we need to reevaluate the effectiveness of our foreign policy, not only in terms of its impact on U.S. producers but in terms of its impact on our ability to truly reach out and cause the kind of positive change in Cuba that will help them achieve the kind of political freedom and avoid the kinds of oppression and human rights pressures they now face.

I have talked about a number of the portions of the farm bill. There are other very critical portions as well. The bottom line is we have an opportunity in the Senate this month, if we will deal with the amendments that are pending, to move forward on a very critical piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that, as I indicated, deals with the food and fiber of our Nation and the ability of our people and of people globally to have a better diet, to have a better opportunity to participate in global markets, and a stronger and cleaner environment.

I hope that as we move through this process, we will not make changes to the bill that will make it worse, that instead we will simply adopt those improving proposals and then hopefully soon send on to the House this very significant and important piece of legislation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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