Political Quotes

“Building on what the Senator from Kansas said, plus the fact we protect the integrity and improve insurance again, we add some more dollars to it so the farmer can deal with the risk of losing a crop. On the point made by the Senator from Kansas, should nothing be cut, nothing is gotten from the committee bill. That was not a correct approach. I am someone who wants to change the CRP, the Conservation Reserve Program, to make it work as it was set up to work. I have a couple of amendments on file now that I think would do that. Conservation reserve was to accomplish a couple of things. It was to set aside the undesirable land and the highly erodable land that should never have been broken by the plow in the history of the land. It should have never been broken up, but it was because we had high prices and farmers had the freedom to plant from fence row to fence row. Of course, with the downturn of the economy, of foreign economies, and the high dollar, the timing could not have been worse. Nonetheless, if I hear my farmers right, they still want the flexibility. They want to still make the decision and plant and sow for the market to make those decisions, especially new crops. When we try to write a farm bill that pertains to all of America, in the northern tier of States our flexibility is limited to very few crops because of a short growing season. In some areas, we cannot grow winter wheat; we must grow spring wheat.”