On the recordJune 15, 2011
I wasn't going to rise on this amendment--and I probably shouldn't--but this discussion just bugs me. I represent more productive agriculture in my district than anyone in this room--$4 billion in just one county--and I represent a bunch of counties. What we grow are specialty crops. We grow 85 crops in Monterey County. As we were talking about earlier, 58 percent of all the lettuce in the United States is grown in that county. We grow 35 different varieties of wine grapes, and we are the leading counties in strawberry production and in a bunch of berry productions. In fact, our motto there is that we're the ``salad bowl capital of the world,'' which includes all of the ingredients in salad--celery, lettuce. All those things, we grow. Do you know what? They don't get a dime of support from the Federal Government. If the market falls, they eat it. If a disaster comes in, they eat it. So the reason these amendments are brought up by Mr. Kind and Mr. Blumenauer year after year is that, frankly--do you know what?--the farm bill doesn't address this issue. It really doesn't. It's too tough--it's too politically tough--and there are too many vested interests in this town. You have a whole bunch of agriculture out there, and some people would suggest that more than all of the money created in commodity supports is in what they call ``specialty crops,'' and that's the stuff you eat all the time.…
