Kent Conrad: “If you liked the Freedom to Farm policy, then this is the amendment for you. This is a Freedom to Farm policy warmed…”

“If you liked the Freedom to Farm policy, then this is the amendment for you. This is a Freedom to Farm policy warmed over. Freedom to Farm had a shelf life of about a year. We were promised under that policy permanently high farm prices. That is what we were told over and over. What we saw was something quite different. What we saw was a collapse of farm prices after that legislation was put in place. In fact, I have shown on the floor many times the chart that shows the prices that farmers pay going up continually and the prices that farmers receive dropping like a rock after Freedom to Farm was passed in 1996. The prices farmers receive have been straight down, like a one-way escalator going down, ever since Freedom to Farm passed.”