Washington, Oct 18 -

Bath, NY – October 18, 2008 – Today, farmers from around New York State are responding to the inaccurate portrayal of the Farm Bill by ABC’s 20/20. Last night’s episode of 20/20 failed to show the significance and importance of the Farm Bill. Farmers, farming associations, and residents of the 29th Congressional District have praised the passage of the Farm Bill and Congressman Kuhl’s role in helping millions of farmers and people living in rural America grow and sell their crops and economically develop their regions.

"The Farm Bill really helps specialty crops by providing opportunities to partner with the private sector and programs that will help us better market our products over seas, which in turn, will help all of our farmers expand their business in this country.  The private sector has to put up a 50% match to get many of the programs associated with research to better grow crops, produce the high quality products people want, and enable specialty crop growers to maintain efficiency. An important aspect of the Farm Bill is the partnership approach; that the private sector sets priorities, and, with the public sector assistance, this will lead to higher quality, efficiently produced products for the food consumers want to buy, especially the fruit and vegetables, which are good for your health." -Thomas Davenport, National Grape Cooperative, Westfield, NY

"I greatly appreciate Rep Kuhl's role on the House Agriculture Committee and in crafting the Farm Bill.  The Farm Bill is more than just support for farmers, in fact, 2/3 of the support goes to nutrition programs, which is very important for school lunch programs and low income people in New York State.  The Farm Bill does support the safety net for our farmers, like the Milk Income Loss Contract program, that helps small and medium sized dairy farms offset the affects of extremely low prices.  I am also very pleased that many of the dollars that the farmers receive go for programs that support conservation, farmland protection and keeping the open space that we enjoy in New York." – John Lincoln, Dairy Farmer in Ontario County, NY  

"Randy's effort in supporting specialty crop provisions in the Farm Bill was a great step forward to reforming the Farm Bill to be more appropriate to rewarding not just producers but consumers, especially in a time when consumers are much more aware of the health benefits of fruits and vegetables in their diets.  As a company, we supported the specialty crop provisions because we have seen how marketing types of programs have been extremely helpful for us to increase our value added business.  We are able to increase the production and sales of our value added products because of these types of programs in the Farm Bill, like our 100% fruit juices, to the point where we are on the verge of putting up a new apple juice processing facility in New York.  In a time of economic challenges, we as a company see a bright future in specialty crops and plan to expand our business and add jobs, and the Farm Bill is providing programs that help us to do that by strengthen our industry as well as focusing on improving consumer eating habits. The bottom line is, we as an industry and a company have appreciated Randy's efforts given his role on the Agriculture Committee to really take the steps to making the Farm Bill more useful to a broader agricultural producer base. But the Farm Bill also has so many other benefits to consumers in the nutrition programs."  -Mark Nicholson, Third Generation Family Farmer, Red Jacket Orchards, Geneva NY 

" New York Farm Bureau is in strong support of the recently passed 2008 Farm Bill.  This legislation contains many elements that benefit New York farmers and consumers.  The bill is a balanced approach that, while making needed reforms, maintains valuable safety nets for commodity crops, enhances the dairy MILC program, and increases funding for conservation programs important to NY farmers.  This Farm Bill, for the first time includes specialty crop programs that will greatly benefit NY's fruit, vegetable, and other specialty crop growers by providing funding for research, marketing, and enhancing locally grown and organic programs. NYFB greatly appreciates the efforts of our Congressional delegation in developing and passing legislation that greatly benefits our agriculture industry."   - Bob Hokanson, New York Farm Bureau National Affairs Coordinator

"For the first time in history of the Farm Bill, specialty crops, like apples, received sufficient attention.   They have never received subsidies, and this Farm Bill is no different.  The assistance specialty crops get is in the form of market enhancement, research for fruits and vegetables, nutrition programs and increased consumption programs.  The specialty crop industry strongly supports this Farm Bill because it is taking a complete assessment overview of American agriculture.  Coming from New York, we certainly appreciate all of the hard work of Reps. Kuhl and Gillibrand for specialty crops."    -Jim Allen, President NYApple

"Losing New York farms is not something we can afford right now.  We've been tested with hail storms in New York recently, and several local farmers have seen tremendous losses this year.  Certainly this will test the new disaster portion of the Farm Bill, which without, many farms would be unable to recover.  If farms go out of business, that means we will have to get food from outside our borders.  Locally grown food is resonating very well right now, for obvious food quality and safety reasons. Every consumer in this country is positively impacted by the Farm Bill.  Also, as energy independence continues to be of importance, farms have a wealth of ability to contribute and the Farm Bill will help us move forward with that."  -Jonathan Taylor, Dairy Farmer in Ontario County
 
"It was the best Farm Bill that we've ever had for the Northeast. This Farm Bill was one that more equally distributed the help to everyone." –Jim Doan, Honey Bee Farmer in Hamlin, NY

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