Christopher Shays: “The Kind-Flake Fairness in Farm and Food Policy amendment is one of the most remarkable developments in this Congress in…”

“The Kind-Flake Fairness in Farm and Food Policy amendment is one of the most remarkable developments in this Congress in years. This is real bipartisan reform in a major area of our government, agriculture. As a Republican I have been astonished with the absolute fixation my own party has had on the Depression-era price-guarantee program. As an observer of Democrats, I have been astonished with their willingness to support a big-business-favored program. The Kind-Flake substitute brings us into the modern age. It helps farmers, it helps consumers, it helps taxpayers. I am so proud to have the opportunity to speak in favor of it. This bipartisan amendment would replace depression-era price guarantees with a modern revenue-based safety net developed by Department of Agriculture (USDA) experts that better protects family farmers from declines in crop prices and crop yields. The bill also reforms our government-subsidized crop insurance program to fairly share the costs and risks of this program with crop insurance agents and companies, and gradually reduce direct payments. The amendment invests some of these savings in new conservation, nutrition and specialty crop and minority farmer priorities. The remaining savings are dedicated to deficit reduction of $2 billion over five years, and at least $10 billion over 10 years.”