{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://figures.house.gov/media/in-the-news/figures-holds-town-meeting-agriculture", "Figures Holds Town Meeting on Agriculture", "2026-08-02", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "House", "AL", "Shomari Figures", "F000481", "figures.house.gov", "figures", "https://figures.house.gov/media", "scraper", "\u201cOne of the big issues we have right now, and we've been having for some time now, is how much it is costing you to produce things that you can no longer sell at the rates that you need to be able to sell them for either domestically or internationally,\u201d Figures said. \u201cSome of that is market driven, but some of the hurdles that we have right now, some of the significant ones, they are, they have nothing to do with the market factors. They have nothing to do with supply. They have nothing to do with demand. They have nothing to do with environmental factors of a bad year or a drought. It's self-inflicted. And that is, that's the Straight of Hormuz. That is something that we have made a conscious decision to be engaged in as a nation. And it is artificially driving up fuel costs.\u201d\n\nFigures also said about 60 percent of the raw materials needed to make fertilizer also must travel through the Strait of Hormuz. He said interruptions to shipping in the Middle East were also affecting the price of fertilizer as well.\n\nFigures said one of the most disruptive federal policies to farming have been tariffs.\n\n\u201cNobody voted for [tarrifs], nobody,\u201d Figures said. \u201c[Tariffs] are not good local economics because at the end of the day when farmers here can sell fewer of their products for a lower price that has an impact that they feel in the county commission's budget; that is an impact that they feel in the City of Troy's budget; that is an impact that you feel obviously in your personal wallets.\n\n\u201cSo that's one of the reasons that I've supported a number of the things that we've done because I feel that we are in a position now where there are decisions that are being made that are affecting people in Alabama directly in their pockets directly and some of it is government induced and it is self-inflicted.\n\n\u201cI feel this is one of the reasons I voted against the Farm Bill, or what was left of the Farm Bill after they split it up this year was because it did not do enough to compensate for that harm to Alabama farmers. It threw pennies at the farmers who've been taking it on the chin with these raised fuel prices with these raised fertilizer prices with these dried up export markets where they're able to sell less to fewer countries. It didn't do enough for them and that is something that I will never sit by and accept as a member of Congress.\u201d", 1, "2026-08-10T06:13:07Z", "2026-08-10T06:14:46Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://figures.house.gov/media/in-the-news/figures-holds-town-meeting-agriculture"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6932250689715147, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}