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Sen. Sessions' Opposition to the Dorgran-Grassley Amendment to the Farm Bill
There are a lot of reasons for that. I cannot say for sure what it is like in other areas of the country. Apparently, the amendment would not have the same effect in every area, at least in the same percentage of farmers. But since the 2002 bill, input costs to produce agricultural products have increased, particularly in the Southeast and particularly for cotton, one of our most significant cash crops.
The cost of nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, and diesel fuel have risen dramatically. I do not mean a little bit; some of them have doubled during this time. However, support payments have remained level.
As a result, the safety net already has, in effect, been cut in half. The committee-passed bill essentially continues the 2002 structure of having a safety net that is half of what it was a few years ago.
Producer groups in the Southeast understand the Federal budget reality is not something they want to deny. And the lack of availability of new funding impacts our ability to provide increases in the safety net as we would normally expect to occur. But they are united in their concern and opposition to any effort to further reduce the safety net. The Grassley-Dorgan amendment would not impact producers in the Midwest, it appears. Crops such as corn and wheat are not expensive commodities to produce. As a result, payments do not have to be as high to support farmers in those areas when prices fall.
Crops grown in the Southeast, such as cotton and peanuts, are high-value commodities that cost a great deal to produce. For example, cotton currently costs approximately $450 to $500 to plant and harvest per acre. That is a lot of money. In Alabama, the average Statewide yield is approximately 700 pounds per acre from year to year. However, with current market conditions, producers are barely able to break even with the safety net currently in place. Any further attempt to limit payments will practically destroy agricultural production of high-value commodities in the Southeast.
I suggest our colleagues take note of what the farm bill did. Before, when you actually compute the support payment levels, they were $360,000. Now, with the changes in amendments and loophole closings that have occurred, it has dropped to $100,000. Multiple payments are no longer effective, and a decreased limit has the potential to be very harmful.
Let me share this thought with my colleagues. My family on my mother's and father's sides are farmers. They have been in rural Alabama for 150 years. I know something about farming, but there is more to farming than just the farmer. My father, who had a country store when I was in junior high school, purchased a farm equipment dealership. There are a lot of other people who support agriculture than just the farmers. To be effective, make a living, and farm in agriculture in Alabama and throughout the Nation, you have to be engaged in a large-scale operation with expensive equipment. You have to invest a tremendous amount of money in bringing in a crop. If crop prices fall, you can be devastated. As Senator Lincoln said, who is going to fill the gap? It is not going to be somebody here. It is going to be somebody else around the world who is receiving far more subsidies than our people.
There is the farm equipment dealer. There is the fertilizer dealer. There are the seed people. There are the people who labor at harvesting and the people who process the cotton, the soybeans, the peanuts and convert them to marketable products. That whole infrastructure, the bankers who loan the money, the businessman in town, the hardware store that supplies their needs, is dependent on the farmer. In Alabama, as in most areas of the country, farmers are larger. They have far more at risk. If they go under, not only do they go under, but entire industries go under. We have cut this to effectively reduce the abuses in the system. I thank the committee for doing so, and I oppose the Dorgan-Grassley amendment.
I yield the floor.
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