Byron Dorgan: “I hear very little discussion about the need to respond to the farm crisis in the rural parts of our country. I have, on…”

“I hear very little discussion about the need to respond to the farm crisis in the rural parts of our country. I have, on half dozen occasions now, brought to the floor of the Senate a chart that shows our entire country with those counties blocked out in red that are losing population. What it shows is a large part of the middle of our country is being depopulated. We have a serious and abiding farm crisis. That depopulation in the middle part of America stems in large part from a farm economy that means family farmers are not making a living and all too often are having to leave the farm. We keep hearing that it is a global economy. If it is a global economy, then why on earth do we have so many people hungry in the rest of the world? We are told 500 to 600 million people go to bed with an ache in their belly every night because they did not have enough to eat. Then in the same global economy, with so many hungry people, a farmer somewhere in Cando, ND, or Regent, ND, today loads up a truckload of wheat and takes it to the county elevator and is told that the food has no value. That is not a global economy that seems to work, in my judgment.”