Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, American agriculture is in a very serious situation right now. While the rest of the economy is experiencing strong profits and strong employment and good income, farmers are at the lowest level of net profits that they have been in many years. That comes from two consequences: One is the natural disaster of the weather that for a lot of farmers has substantially reduced their yields all the way to almost zero in some cases; and the other problem is the commodity prices. The commodity prices are the lowest, record low commodity prices. For example, in soybeans, lower price than there has been in soybeans in 30 years, corn, rice, cotton, livestock production especially in the area of hog production, the kind of commodity prices that are devastating farmers. I spoke last week to a fourth-generation hog producer in my area of Michigan, where his great grandfather and his grandfather and his father all were successful in running that operation. Now he is threatened with bankruptcy, a very serious situation. But it is not just the farmers. It is not just the 1.5 percent of our population in this country that are out there on the farm working their 16 hours a day or 18 hours a day. It is also the consumers.…”