Jerry Moran: “there is an occurrence and an occasion in Kansas that occurs each and every year. It is a very special time in our…”

“there is an occurrence and an occasion in Kansas that occurs each and every year. It is a very special time in our State. It is the harvest time for wheat. Of course, Kansas is known as the Wheat State. It is a time in which families, sons and daughters, return home to the family farm. There is a lot of work to be done, but there is a history, a culture, a tradition, a family time each and every year in which harvest is a special moment. But, Mr. Speaker, this year unfortunately is one of those times in which it appears that the Kansas wheat harvest and, in fact, the harvest across the Midwest is going to be less than what we would hope. In fact, the 2006 crop is expected to be the worst in the last 10 years, and many yields are expected to be less than 50 percent of normal. This is a huge consequence to the economy of our State, to the Midwest, and really to the country. Rainfall has been about 28 percent of normal this year. In fact, 84 of Kansas' 105 counties received no precipitation during the month of February when that wheat crop is attempting to grow. Of those remaining counties, the greatest amount of rainfall in those other counties was thirty one-hundredths of an inch for the month. This is the fifth and sixth years across many portions of our State and in Nebraska and eastern Colorado and Oklahoma and Texas and South Dakota and Wyoming in which drought has had serious consequences.…”