Kent Conrad: “My colleague is precisely right. It will be a tragedy for this country if we let this circumstance unfold. The hard…”

“My colleague is precisely right. It will be a tragedy for this country if we let this circumstance unfold. The hard reality is if we fail to act and act decisively, literally thousands of family farmers are going to be pushed out of business. And they are not coming back. I just went to a meeting in my State--one of the major farm organizations--and I stood at the back of the room. It was so striking because so many of the heads sitting in the chairs in front of me were white haired. The farmers of this country are aging and aging dramatically. There were hardly any young people in the room. It is easy to understand why, because, as Senator Dorgan read from the letters of young people, they were saying to their parents, ``Gee, will you hold it against me if I don't go into farming?'' Well, it is pretty hard to justify going into farming. It is pretty hard to justify staying on the family farm because we, as a country, have said, as a matter of policy, ``We're not going to be there for you.'' Our competitors are going to spend $50 billion a year supporting their producers, and we are going to spend one-tenth as much. So we say, ``You go into the fight, but you go unarmed.'' Mr. President, we can do better than that. America is better than that. And the loss to this country will be incalculable if we push an entire generation of farmers off the land.”