John Thune: “I simply note as well that it is important in my mind that we do this farm bill this year, that we set the policy…”

“I simply note as well that it is important in my mind that we do this farm bill this year, that we set the policy parameters so that our producers know with certainty going into the next planting season. Now, there is a tendency among some in this body and some here in the Congress to say, well, let us wait and do this next year. After all, then it will be a political year. But, frankly, I think heads think a lot more clearly and judgment is a lot more focused in the absence of the political climate that we will be encountering next year. I think this is the time that we need to do this. So as the House prepares to write their farm policy, I would hope that we will be joined, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) noted, by our colleagues in the Senate, because it is important that we get it put in place this year. Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that I think ties into this whole debate is the cost of doing business in agriculture. We have all talked about prices. Farmers cannot control prices. They have to take what they get at the elevator, what they get from the packer. They do not have a whole lot of control of what they receive. But of late, it has also become true they do not have a whole lot of control of what it costs them to do business. Look at the input and cost of energy in this country and what has happened as we have seen prices go up and up and up in natural gas, so fertilizer is up 90 percent, the price for diesel fuel.”