Tom Harkin: “I know a lot of us were out in our States during the August recess. I was too. I had a series of meetings around the…”

“I know a lot of us were out in our States during the August recess. I was too. I had a series of meetings around the State with farm families and people in small towns and communities and rural areas. Quite frankly, what I found was more than just disturbing. What I found was that there is a looming crisis in agriculture and in our farm economy. For some time I and a number of my colleagues have been trying to call attention in this body to the very serious situation in the farm economy. The livelihood and the life savings of hundreds of thousands of farm families are in jeopardy. The economic underpinnings of many rural communities are also at stake. In mid-July, the entire Senate went on record noting the existence of the serious farm economic problems and calling for immediate action. But later on, just before we broke for the August recess, this Senate rejected an amendment that Senator Daschle and I offered to restore farming protection that was taken out in the 1996 farm bill.”