Ron Kind: “I am one of the named sponsors of this amendment today. I am also a proud member of the Committee on Agriculture. Just…”

“I am one of the named sponsors of this amendment today. I am also a proud member of the Committee on Agriculture. Just to set the record straight, the amendment that we are offering today is not something that is new. In fact, it is based on legislation that I, along with 56 other Members of this body, introduced last June, the Working Lands Stewardship Act. It was an amendment that we had discussed during the markup of this farm bill in committee at the end of July, with the hopes of being able to discuss with the leadership further about working out some arrangement in regard to what we would like to accomplish. So with all due respect to the chairman, to claim that this is new or something just thrown upon them in the last 36 hours is not accurate. Mr. Chairman, I commend the chairman and the ranking member and the other members on the committee and the staff for the hard work that they have done in this farm bill. It is not an easy task to try to craft farm policy to help all our family farmers throughout the country. We can stipulate today that all of us have the intent to try to help our family farmers and the producers in this country under very difficult and challenging times. I represent a district in Wisconsin. The dairy industry is still the number one industry in the State of Wisconsin.”