Your testimony today is invaluable for informed decision making and safeguarding the welfare of our soldiers, their families, and our Nation's security.

So maybe it ought to be a real time opportunity for service members to apply when that happens as opposed to having to wait till the next year? That seems like an easy fix for that issue.

The Marine Corps has a deferred maintenance backlog that exceeds $15.8 billion, and it requires a $1.5 billion annual expenditure for barracks and maintenance.

But I am more concerned with the general income levels that prevent service members, particularly low-ranking members, from being able to do that.

According to the February 2024 farm income forecast, government payments such as the conservation payments near a margin curve, which are the farm bill commodity payments and the supplemental disaster relief are forecast to fall $10.2 billion in 2024, which is a decrease of 15.9 percent from 2023.

I don't think that it serves us to be starving people abroad. I think that it helps Americans for us to be feeding people all over the world.

But you have sufficient tools for the producers to really--do they have sufficient information upon which to make their decision on but which one of the programs to choose?

Thank you, Chairman Scott and Ranking Member Brown, for having this important hearing for us to get an update from our commodity stakeholders on their priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill.

Thank you for thinking of how that impacts our farmers to produce the food, the flowers, the fiber, and the fuel that we use every day.

We appreciate your consideration of the immense positive impact SNAP has on the lives of millions of Americans as well as its beneficial impact on the national economy and our nation's long-term financial sustainability.

Our national security would appear to be impacted.