Al Franken: “I am very pleased that we were able to vote on and pass a badly needed and long-overdue 5-year farm bill today and that…”

“I am very pleased that we were able to vote on and pass a badly needed and long-overdue 5-year farm bill today and that we are finally on the verge of enacting the legislation into law with the President's signature. With one in five jobs in Minnesota connected to agriculture, passing this bill has been a top priority of mine. I have been working on it for over 2\1/2\ years, along with a large number of my colleagues, and I have gone all around Minnesota talking to farmers and businesses. They tell me not only did they want a 5-year farm bill, but they needed a 5-year farm bill so they could plan for the future. Well, we finally have gotten it done. There are so many important pieces to this bill, and I want to speak about a few of them today. When I meet with farm leaders and visit farms all across Minnesota, I hear over and over about the importance of providing farmers with a strong safety net. There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to farming. Once a farmer puts his crop into the ground, the crops are vulnerable to drought, to too much rain, to disease, and different kinds of pests and to other natural disasters. In 2012, for example, we witnessed a terrible drought that devastated the Nation's corn and soybean crops and forced ranchers to cull their livestock.…”