Sam Farr: “The gentlewoman and I are both on the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the Committee on Appropriations, and I cannot think…”

“The gentlewoman and I are both on the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the Committee on Appropriations, and I cannot think of two people that fight more for small farms and the ability of rural America to have a successful economic development. I am wondering if the gentlewoman is finding in Ohio, in the people the gentlewoman has run across, most of the agricultural trade associations are supporting CAFTA. As I run into the members of those associations, they are not so keen on it. They are very concerned. They think that these are agrarian countries, and so what is going to happen is the products that they grow and can get into the school lunch program, can get into the organic program, can get into essentially the multi-billion dollars that America spends on food for the military and food for food stamps and things like that, that these products will be produced not at the local farmers market and additional farmers markets; but these products will come from Central America, at the expense of small farmers in our country, particularly of speciality crops.”