Nick Smith: “first let me say that I am a farmer. I have been involved in farm programs since the 1960s, and never has there been…”

“first let me say that I am a farmer. I have been involved in farm programs since the 1960s, and never has there been such a complete effort to get the input of American producers and those associated with agriculture into this final result, into this piece of legislation. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Combest) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) held 47 field hearings across the United States, 10 of those were full committee hearings, in addition to the dozens of hearings held in Washington. We tried to come up with legislation that faces a predicament which is now confronting American agriculture. That predicament is: Do we let other countries subsidize their farmers to the extent that it puts our farmers out of business? Right now we are in competition, if you will, with countries like Europe, who subsidize their farmers five times as much as we subsidize our farmers. To project what happens with that kind of subsidy, their additional production goes into what would otherwise be our markets. It is not a good way to do business. The taxpayer, one way or the other, is going to end up paying more for their food supplies to keep farmers producing agricultural products. One way is through farm subsidies. That is what is happening in the United States. I mentioned Europe, five times the subsidies as the U.S. Members can compare that to countries like Japan, which goes up to almost 12 times in subsidies as we pay our farmers.”