David Funderburk: “the Bureau of the Census, in its infinite wisdom, has recently proposed to change the definition of a farm. This is a…”

“the Bureau of the Census, in its infinite wisdom, has recently proposed to change the definition of a farm. This is a bad idea for America. America's most basic industry is agriculture and the family farm. In North Carolina, under the current definition of a farm, we have over 50,000 farms, but under one of the new proposed definitions, we would magically be reduced to only 25,000 farms. Mr. Speaker, changing the farm definition will affect the allocation of Federal funding since it also changes the distribution of the farm population among States. The Cooperative Extension and many other agriculture agencies use farm population to allocate funds. Small farms in my State represent a significant share of total production of commodities such as tobacco. Over 65 percent of minority farms would no longer be defined as farms. Mr. Speaker, now is the time for Congress to take action to stop this proposal before it economically destroys the small family farms in the Second District of North Carolina and throughout the Southeast.”