Marcy Kaptur: “The answer for increasing income to America's farmers does not lie in the export market. Rather, it lies in recapturing…”

“The answer for increasing income to America's farmers does not lie in the export market. Rather, it lies in recapturing the market that we have lost here at home and moving our production to higher value-added products, including the production of new fuels. If one looks at what is going on in Minnesota, with the corn growers in Minnesota, they have raised the price they are getting per bushel by the production of ethanol in southeastern, southwestern Minnesota by one dollar. They have actually added a dollar, not through exports, but through producing for the people in their own State; and we have to look toward new uses of agricultural product by our consumers here in this country; and we here at the Federal level, including our Department of Agriculture, our Department of Energy, have to help our farmer reposition in an international marketplace in which they have been forced to become the low-price producers, and they are not able to make ends meet. We ought to be helping our farmers here at home invest here in order to recapture new markets in value-added markets here at home.”