Ron Kind: “In fact, under our amendment, all farmers, including commodity crop farmers, will still receive substantial increases in…”

“In fact, under our amendment, all farmers, including commodity crop farmers, will still receive substantial increases in Federal farm funding. Specifically, our amendment would leave intact a doubling of subsidy payments to commodity producers from what they received under the 1996 farm bill. How do we pay for our amendment? We find offsets from the largest, the biggest of the big, commodity producers, the 10 percent. In fact, this pie chart shows the universe of farmers in the country today. Seventy percent of our farmers do not produce the commodity crops or receive the subsidy payments that would be affected under our amendment. With the remaining 30 percent of those commodity producers, 90 percent of them are held harmless; and, therefore, the offsets would only come from 3 percent of the farmers or producers in this country. Hardly a revolutionary sea change. Of those 3 percent, they would still be receiving a doubling of the subsidy payments that they are currently receiving under the former farm bill passed in 1996. Hardly a radical change in policy proposal. What we are advocating in our amendment is simple fairness, simple equity, to recognize that there is a vast universe of farmers and producers in many regions throughout the country that are currently excluded under current farm bills and would continue to be excluded under the new farm bill. That is why we feel the Boehlert-Kind-Gilchrest-Dingell amendment is fair.”