Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Madam President.

I know the Presiding Officer is a cattle farmer, as I think they are referred to in Mississippi. It is an honor to be here on the floor with you to talk about important work for Mississippi.

Colorado is an incredibly diverse State. When it comes to our economy, we are the--if you look at jobs per capita, we have more aerospace jobs per capita than any other State in the country. We have the second highest number of jobs outright, second only to California. Our tourism industry is world renowned--our first-class ski resorts, our gold medal trout fishing streams. It is incredible, all that we have. We are also one of the country's biggest agricultural producers. In fact, the ag economy in Colorado remains the fundamental foundational building block of our economy.

I grew up in a part of Colorado that looks more like Kansas. Most people think it is in Kansas instead of Colorado. This is my backyard. This is where I live. I live in town. This is a farm, a pivot irrigation system that I grew up with. In fact, our family sells farm equipment. I have told stories about that to everybody here--everybody who will listen--so many times that they have probably stopped listening. I grew up selling farm equipment.

I can remember, when I first ran for office, going around eastern Colorado and introducing myself to farmers. I would introduce myself. I would say: Hi, I am Cory Gardner, and I am running for the State legislature. I have met most of you at the implement dealership. I have sold half of you the wrong parts. I quit using that line when everybody would shake their head--yes, you have. So I grew up knowing a lot of great people in agriculture through that business.

Water is the lifeblood of our area. Agriculture is the lifeblood of our area. There is an old saying that sometimes if there is a downturn in agriculture, then our community will feel it next week. Well, that is not true anymore. If we have a downturn in agriculture, our community feels it that day. That is how connected we are to global commodity prices and what it means for us.

I am fifth-generation Coloradoan. Our entire family has been all agriculture. It is the heart and soul of who we are as a country, and that is why this farm bill debate is so important.

In Colorado, we have tremendous crop opportunities, livestock opportunities. We have some of the best hay operations in America. In fact, several of our counties--Yuma County, which is the county I am from, over the years has been ranked and rated one of the top corn- producing counties in the Nation. We are a leading wheat exporter. Eighty-seven percent of the wheat that is produced in the 4th Congressional District--my old 4th Congressional District in Colorado-- gets exported overseas.

The research we are doing out in eastern Colorado on dryland cropping systems is pretty remarkable--the Akron research station there.

The San Luis Valley is known nationally and around the world for our high-quality San Luis Valley potatoes, purple potatoes that you can get from the San Luis Valley. We have sorghum and barley. A lot of people are familiar with our Banquet beer in Colorado. We have great beef. We have pintos and potatoes. We have it all. And, of course, who could forget our world-renowned Palisade peaches? It is that time of year now when we are starting to see peaches in the farmers markets and in the stands all around. I challenge anybody from South Carolina or Georgia to compare their peaches to our peaches because we know we have the best. We are coming up on the Peach Festival, as well, in the Western Slope of Colorado. We certainly have sugar beets.

We have an incredibly diverse economy. We have a diverse economy that represents a lot of export opportunities. Some of our best exports and some of our largest exports are beef. Frozen beef, fresh beef--you name it; we have a lot of beef. That is why trade is so critically important to our economy. We are going to get our ag economy growing.

By the way, ag is kind of facing a tough time right now. Farm receipts are down about 35 percent from what they were in 2013. If you look at some of the golden years of agriculture not too long ago, we are probably down even further than that. When commodity prices drop, when exports drop, these communities that I grew up in--these agricultural communities in the Western Slope of Colorado and in the Eastern Plains--they feel that impact not next week, not the week after, they feel it immediately. That is why trade is so important.

Let me give an example of this field right here. If you had an irrigated cornfield in Colorado--let's say that you had a good year. Let's say that you raised 225 bushels an acre of corn. Let's say that in May the price of corn was $4.05. I looked it up yesterday, and it was about $3.55. That 50-cent drop in commodity price on 160 acres--if you take 160 acres a quarter, if you look at the farmable land, the irrigated land, that is probably around 120, 140 acres, somewhere in between that. If you just raise that corn crop on 120 acres of land, 225 bushels an acre, and that price drops 50 cents per bushel, that is about a $12,000 or $13,000 impact--loss of income--per quarter.

The average farm size in Colorado is--let's say a corn farmer--let's just say they have 1,000 acres of corn, irrigated corn. If that price drops 50 cents, that is a $100,000-plus loss of income. If we start seeing the impacts of a trade war that lowers the price of these commodities, we will see that impact not tomorrow but today. These low commodity prices have already affected the health of our rural communities. We don't need any more downward pressure.

Beef alone accounts for $675 million worth of these exports. We should be pursuing free-trade opportunities. Colorado-grown potatoes account for over 50 percent of all U.S. potato exports to Mexico. NAFTA is incredibly important for this country, what we are doing with all of our agriculture products and how we are getting them to market.

We know rural development is key, and agriculture is key and trade is key to that rural development. So the farm bill represents a great opportunity for us to focus on rural development--what we can do to help start young farmers, help them get a start and help them afford the operation, because it is incredibly expensive. A quarter of irrigated ground in Colorado at one point was approaching $1 million a quarter. A tractor could cost around $250,000 if you had to buy a new one, a big one.

All of this means that we have an obligation to provide certainty in policy. That is what this debate is doing with the farm bill--providing our farmers, folks involved in agriculture, with the certainty they need to plan, to be able to go to the bank to talk about next year's operation loan, this year's operation loan, how they are going to get the receipts to allow them to continue that generational business of agriculture in Colorado and beyond.

We know economic times have also resulted in significant economic stress and significant mental stress. I am very pleased to have worked with a number of my colleagues to introduce the FARMERS FIRST Act earlier this year. This is a bill that helps address some of the mental health concerns we have seen in agriculture.

In agriculture, per 100,000 population--we have about 5 times the number of suicides in agriculture than the broader group of Americans-- 5 times higher suicide rate. This bill starts to address that.

In Colorado, Don Brown, our agriculture commissioner--I grew up with him. He is from the same town I am from. They have restarted the suicide hotline in Colorado to address the mental health needs because of the challenges we face in agriculture today. I thank Commissioner Brown for that work.

I thank my colleagues for the work we have been able to do together on the FARMERS FIRST Act to make sure we can help provide some of that relief.

In this farm bill, we have also made great strides on conservation. I was able to get the EQIP amendment included in the farm bill. That addresses agricultural drought concerns to make sure that the farm bill more adequately addresses the critically important conservation title work as it relates to drought.

I thank Senators Feinstein, Wyden, Udall, Moran, Bennet, and Harris for their support in allowing me to work with them on this amendment and to have it included in the substitute. If you look at the drought that is gripping the Western United States in particular, you have Arizona, 100 percent drought; California, 69 percent of the land in a drought; Colorado, 79 percent of the State in a drought; Kansas, 79 percent in a drought; Oklahoma, 80 percent; Utah, 100 percent; North Dakota, 81 percent. These are areas that this EQIP language that was included will help address as we work toward solving this ongoing drought condition.

Water is the lifeblood of the West. Colorado is the only State in the country where all water flows out of it and none flows into it, so we have to make sure we get this right. As you can see, this is a picture of the Colorado River. That is an example of a bloodline of water that goes from Colorado down to California and all the States in between that rely on this river. As we see, as that water in the river decreases, it puts more pressure on the upstream States. If we ever have a problem in the river, that is going to be a significant challenge between the upper basin States and the lower basin States. That is why the tools that we have helped provide in the farm bill will help us manage this river, will help us manage the land, will help us address conservation needs to use less water so that we can keep more water in the systems, keep more water on the land, and prevent the dry- up of agriculture.

We were able to streamline EQIP contracting, increase cost share for nutrient reduction practices, and increase the authority of USDA to enter into drought-related Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program agreements. This will help areas like the Republican River in Colorado and beyond.

These are important inclusions in the farm bill. We have other things that should be highlighted, though, that will also address some of our water concerns.

We know that forest fires are a significant challenge to Colorado. If there is a massive forest fire, all those watersheds that those forests are in result in debris flows and contamination of those water systems, those waterways, and that hurts our ability to have access to that water.

In the omnibus that we passed earlier this year, we were able to include certain language addressing categorical exclusions, building upon insect and disease--efforts to combat them in certain areas of the forest. The challenge we have in Colorado is that the categorical exclusions only apply to fire regime groups 1, 2, and 3, but in Colorado, we have about 24 percent of our zones of concern in Colorado that are in a different category, not in 1, 2, or 3, which means we can't use the categorical exclusion to address insect and disease concerns under that provision. Yet we know a significant area of these forests have insects. This is where a lot of the insect infestation has occurred.

Insects have devastated our forests. It results in dead trees, and then the drought doubles the pressure on that, creating historic fire conditions, and then you end up imperiling the watersheds.

We have offered an amendment to try to address that, to extend the categorical exclusion so that we can have better management opportunities to prevent the next disaster from occurring and to make sure that we can help manage our forests in a more responsible way.

I am also excited that we were able to include work addressing the Akron research station in Akron, CO, in eastern Colorado, a dry land facility. We have an amendment that is incorporated in the substitute that authorizes research and extension grants to study the utilization of big data for more precise management of dryland farming agriculture systems. This goes into how much water we need and how we could better manage dryland cropping alternatives. If we have a drought that continues, we are going to have to have more tools and data to help manage farming practices so that we can do a better job of creating high yields in a low-moisture environment.

These are all important issues that we worked on.

Crop insurance is incredibly vital to our Main Streets in rural Colorado and across this country. That is why we have to continue to strengthen the Crop Insurance Program. That is why I am glad the farm bill makes sure that it does just that. The conservation title is important to Colorado as well.

There are a lot of issues this farm bills addresses. I thank Chairman Roberts for his work on this legislation. He is our neighbor in Kansas. I don't think he included a provision in the farm bill to thank Colorado for the water that we send to Kansas, but they have better lawyers than us, so I will not push that too far when it comes to some of the water conflicts that we have had. I say that jokingly, of course.

What I don't say jokingly, of course, though, is what agriculture means to all of us. It is that bond that we share in our communities. It is the foundation of Colorado's economy and this country's economy. There are so few people today in agriculture, that those of us who are involved in agriculture, who are in agricultural communities, have to be strong advocates. I hope the work this Senate is doing when it comes to agriculture will be that ambassadorial effort that we need to be good stewards of our land, to continue to promote small farms, new farmers, and young farmers to make sure that we keep generations of farmers and ranchers on the land and that we don't have a buy-out and dry-out history because we mismanaged our water resources.

This farm bill helps address some of our biggest challenges. Let's get our other policies like trade right, continue to work together in a bipartisan fashion, and we can make our farmers and ranchers proud of the work we do every day.

Thank you.

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