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| “Thursday’s vote is a victory for our farm families,
bringing us one step closer to having a real farm policy in place that
provides the basic safety net that our farm producers need and deserve.
For over a year, we have worked hard in the House Agriculture Committee
drafting the new Farm Bill and shepherding it through the Congress.
The Farm Bill we wrote was the result of countless hours of hearings, meetings,
and discussions with farmers all across Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional
District.
“While I had hoped the final conference report would be more like the House-passed bill, it is a fair and balanced compromise, giving our farm families the freedom to continue feeding America and much of the world. This legislation ensures the counter-cyclical payments that our farmers need in lean times, eliminating the need for additional emergency spending that has been required year after year to keep our farm families afloat. It provides for the largest increase ever in conservation as well as important economic investments in rural America, and it stays within the budget framework. “I am especially pleased that the measure includes a significant provision I was able to get included on the House floor last year, the Pickering-Ross Amendment, which protects our farm-raised catfish producers from Vietnamese basa fish being dumped into our markets and labeled and sold as so-called ‘catfish.’ “Our farm families are in desperate need of a new farm policy, and I’m glad that they will soon have the comfort of knowing that this Farm Bill is there for them. With our farmers facing record high costs of production and the lowest net cash income since the Great Depression, it cannot be enacted a day too soon.” |
