Kent Conrad: “how about the failed policies of the Freedom to Farm bill, which has been such a disaster that each and every year for…”

“how about the failed policies of the Freedom to Farm bill, which has been such a disaster that each and every year for the last 4 years we have had to come to the Congress and pass an economic disaster assistance package for our farmers or see literally tens of thousands of them forced off the land. Even the authors of the House-passed bill labeled Freedom to Farm a failure. After 18 months of hearings, they concluded that one major change was needed in current policy. The change that the House agricultural leadership agreed upon was the addition of a countercyclical form of payments--payments that would increase if prices fell. That one feature sets the House bill apart from current policy. Yet the Cochran-Roberts bill and the Bush administration reject this fundamental feature. After 18 months of hearings, the House concluded there was one critical missing element. They put it in their bill. It is in the underlying bill, but it is not in this amendment. It is a countercyclical form of income support. Compared to the committee-approved bill, this amendment is particularly unfriendly to the so-called minor crops--commodities such as sugar, barley, sunflowers, and canola, which are crops that are critically important in my home State--and not just in my home State but in dozens of other States as well. For example, the Cochran-Roberts amendment fails to repeal the loan forfeiture penalty for sugar.”