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Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, first day of spring, National Ag Day, a perfect time--a fitting time--to address the Senate on something that I think is really important and something that is frustrating to me and to the people I represent. American agriculture is at a crossroads, a pressure point. Things are really challenging for those who provide our food, fuel, and fiber. There is record-level volatility in the farm economy, and farm income is falling by the most significant amount of all time.

We ought to be providing certainty to those who provide our food. I was troubled to read a report that the Senate Committee on Agriculture--its chair--indicated that there is a level of comfort with scrapping negotiations for a new farm bill and continuing with the outdated, now at least 5-years-old, policies from the past. In that same article, surprisingly, disappointingly, Secretary Vilsack expressed his support for that decision.

Our farmers deserve and, even more importantly, they need better. Agriculture is an incredibly difficult industry, as farmers and ranchers face challenges from weather events, economic shocks, and supply chain shortages. Added to these challenges are the inflationary policies that have raised the prices on farmland and, ultimately, at the grocery store. This includes soaring input costs, which are up nearly $100 billion since the last farm bill, which covers interest on loans, livestock feed, fertilizer, labor, fuel--to name just a few of the things that farmers need to produce that food.

Looking back at 2023, USDA, or the Department of Agriculture, forecasted that America's farmers and ranchers would see farm profitability fall by $42 billion nationwide, nearly a 25-percent drop compared to 2022.

So during the life of the farm bill, USDA is estimating that profitability will decline by $42 billion. This is just unsustainable. Farmers can't manage these circumstances. These challenges don't just impact farmers, but, ultimately, they impact American consumers trying to feed their families.

For Kansas, agriculture is our State's largest economic driver, with a total output contribution of $81 billion into the State's economy and supporting more than 250,000 jobs, which is about 13 percent of our entire State's workforce.

Beyond crops and animal husbandry, Kansas agriculture is at the forefront--forefront--of producing renewable energy, critical research and education, and furthering sustainability and conservation practices throughout Kansas and worldwide.

Kansas is also a leader in animal health science. As part of the animal health corridor, Kansas has the largest concentration of animal health interests in the world. Last year, Manhattan, KS, welcomed the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF. This is a state-of- the-art facility that protects and will defend our Nation's farmers and citizens from potentially severe zoonotic and biological diseases.

In addition, Kansas and many places of the country continue to experience weather challenges. In Kansas, there is a wide array of those challenges, but most oppressing is the drought. We need to address drought through mitigation and resiliency.

On Monday of this week, yesterday, I was in Liberal, KS, for the 2024 Ogallala Summit. Ogallala is an aquifer that, in about the western third or western fourth of our State--along with five other States, six other States--is a huge component of the agricultural economy. This event, this conference I attended in Kansas, brought stakeholders from across the High Plains region and beyond to discuss and learn about water management practices. How do we do better in preserving our assets? And how do we conserve and utilize more efficiently that great asset?

Key conservation research and education programs are authorized in the farm bill, including USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, which provides technical assistance and conservation programs, like the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.

In previous farm bill years, I have led the effort to maximize that program, called CREP, on the Upper Arkansas River Basin to reduce the amount of groundwater used for irrigation, improve groundwater levels, increase stream flows in the Arkansas River, and protect water quality in our region. The program is working, but we need additional tweaks, changes in the law, which is why I introduced the CREP Improvement Act, which would provide additional flexibility for family farms to better utilize the program.

In Kansas, landowners view access to the Ogallala as their lifeblood and the core of their rural communities and are committed to conserving and replenishing the Ogallala.

These are just a few sections. In fact, throughout the last year or more, we have been working with both Republican and Democrat Members of the Senate, particularly Senator Bennet of Colorado, to figure out what more we do. And we have introduced several pieces of legislation, all with the anticipation that that legislation would be considered at the same time the farm bill was considered and potentially be included in the farm bill.

But the recent announcement by the chair of the committee indicates that we are going to abide by the status quo--no conversations, no additional efforts.

I have been an aggie since I came to Congress, including my days in the House, where I chaired the subcommittee on farm commodity programs, and I have been through numerous farm bills. And they are always hard, and they are always late, and we never get them done easily. But this seems different to me, for the first time saying: What we have is what we get.

There are many provisions that affect agriculture that need to be addressed in a new farm bill, and it is important. I underscore how valuable, how important it is to pass a farm bill in the House and Senate and send it to the President.

We must deliver a farm bill that provides certainty of risk management programs to help farmers and ranchers weather the storm, and we must rework revenue protection programs to provide a critical safety net that works with market challenges and allows farmers, particularly young farmers, to borrow the money to stay in business.

If we fail to pass a farm bill, we are passing up opportunities to grow alternative fuel production through policies that encourage investments in biofuels for aviation, for example. Our global competitors are outspending the United States year after year by billions in agriculture research.

The Senator from Illinois and I have legislation designed to increase the support for agricultural research, which we hope--at least I hoped--would be a part of the farm bill. And we will be left behind in your investments for research if we don't meet the needs of the day.

A farm bill would include investments in education for our land grants and our Agricultural Research Service, which provides cutting- edge science and tools to allow farmers and ranchers to do more with less and contribute to our national and food security.

A good point, the farm bill is a component of our national security. The farm bill maintains critical authorizations, as well, for reauthorization of global food aid programs. Through these programs, America's farmers and ranchers proudly provide U.S. grown commodities throughout the world as a lifeline to many who are in war-torn regions or recovering from economic or natural disasters. Global hunger, unfortunately, is real and threatens the future of millions of people every day.

I join three others of my Senate colleagues, another Republican and two Democrats, in cochairing the Senate Hunger Caucus. And you just look around the world at Russia's invasion of Ukraine, around the Middle East, Africa, and Haiti, and we see starving people. From a young age, most of us--each of us--were taught that it is our duty to help those in need. So many in Kansas have answered that call time and time again.

A Kansan, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, created Food for Peace. Senator Bob Dole worked to expand our Nation's efforts to provide food for the most vulnerable populations through the Dole-McGovern--or McGovern-Dole--Food for Education Program, and Senator Pat Roberts prioritized these programs in previous farm bills.

Kansans have taken this moral responsibility to heart, and we must do our part by reauthorizing these programs in a farm bill considered this year. The time is now to show leadership--to show leadership for America's farmers and ranchers. Tough decisions are ahead of us. The farm bill is always difficult, but we have always been able to come together and accomplish our goals. We should not walk away from the process. It is a dereliction of duty to the farmers and ranchers of America. I hope that we, as leaders, can get back to the table and produce a farm bill that provides meaningful and real relief for Kansas producers and protects our country from the challenges that we face around the globe.

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