Political Quotes

“I am going to spend some minutes talking about something that I think is very important to this country, certainly important to farmers. That is the new farm bill. In 1996, we passed farm legislation that was called Freedom to Farm. It was actually a program that phased out government farm program payments, and the challenge that we are facing in this country, almost everybody wants some of those open spaces, almost everybody in America would like the opportunity to have fresh products. In America, we appreciate the fact that we have the most healthy, the most low-cost food in terms of a percentage of our take-home dollar of any country in the world. The Freedom to Farm Act passed in 1996 gave farmers a farm payment in 1996. The total payout amounted to about $6 billion. It phased down the payment for each of the next 7 years, in a sense, telling farmers in the United States that they are going to have to start producing for the market, not for government programs.”