I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would like to use this time to engage in a colloquy with my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart). Instead of moving forward with my amendment, as I had intended, that would enable our…

I thank our witnesses today. One of the things that I always want to encourage our witnesses is that you come up here and give us almost an hour and a half of your time.

We want to make sure that our producers have all the tools that they need to be as competitive as they can, and more importantly, to be economically viable.

19 students from Valley View High School in my hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas, have been studying our Nation's constitutional democracy for several months in an intensive course. The course called We the People is taught to students…

I hope our colleagues who are less directly involved in agriculture or farm policy will reflect on just how critically important farm policy is in responding to a crisis that can happen overnight.

I believe it is time to look beyond the farm safety net for budget savings and deficit reduction, as our farmers have already been asked to shoulder their fair share of the burden.

We know the answer already in the case of STAX for cotton. Crop insurance is not designed to withstand the pressures caused by the predatory trading practices of China and India.

During the farm bill debate, we committed to the principle that farm policy should not be written to make the good times even better.

You have to go back to the start of the Great Depression to find a comparable collapse in net farm income.

Crop insurance is not designed to withstand the pressures caused by the predatory trading practices of China and India.

While some safety net features of the farm bill may meet the current economic test, other features have yet to prove their mettle.

In just 3 years, net farm income has fallen by 56 percent.