Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. 2012
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Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS. I appreciate the gentleman yielding, and I appreciate his commitment to the future of America's agriculture.
I rise in support of this legislation because I believe that it sets the important priorities that must be made in order to rein in the runaway spending of previous Congresses while still providing funding, important funding, for agriculture's safety net, vital research, oversight, and increased opportunity.
I grew up in eastern Washington, working on my family's orchard, where the number one industry is agriculture, and I know what it's like to pick and eat what you pick and have your family's livelihood depend on the success of your annual crop.
For the last 16 years, I have actively engaged the agriculture community in eastern Washington to identify solutions to ensure farmers remain productive and competitive. The success of the farmers in eastern Washington and all across our Nation hinge on two important issues: The ability to adapt and apply cutting edge research, and the ability to access markets.
H.R. 2112, for the first time, directs ARS to prioritize its research and make the vital investments to see those top priorities implemented. We must all remember that it's the American farmer who has fed the world for the last hundred years, kept our Nation's food prices low as a percentage of our income, and has done more to combat poverty around the world than any other antipoverty program; and it's, in large part, due to scientific breakthroughs in agriculture research.
We need to be focusing on research that has the potential to affect the global population. Two such initiatives have national and international importance, and those are crop protection and production research housed within the ARS. These initiatives are on the front line of the fight against stem rust, Ug99, stripe rust, which all have the potential to eliminate our Nation's and, in turn, the world's wheat supply.
I applaud the gentleman from Georgia and his subcommittee for recognizing and including this specific language in the report to study and prevent the spread of these harmful diseases.
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