{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.tuberville.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/tuberville-demands-biden-administration-protect-farmers-amid-historic-inflation-rising-input-costs/", "Tuberville\u00a0Demands Biden Administration Protect Farmers Amid Historic Inflation, Rising Input Costs", "2024-09-24", "2024", "2024-09", "Republican", "Senate", "AL", "Tommy Tuberville", "T000278", "www.tuberville.senate.gov", "tuberville", "https://www.tuberville.senate.gov/press-releases/", "scraper", "\u201cThe issues plaguing American producers are directly linked to the harmful policies.\u201d\n\nWASHINGTON \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke on the Senate floor about the how the Biden administration\u2019s inflationary policies are hurting American farmers. He stressed the importance of passing a Farm Bill that puts American farmers first.\n\nRead Senator Tuberville\u2019s remarks below or on YouTube or Rumble.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I rise today to talk about the dire state of our American farm economy and our farmers. American farmers and producers are the backbone of our nation\u2019s agriculture economy and food security.\n\nDespite their critical role in our lives to feed, clothe, and fuel not only the United States, but the entire world, our farmers are struggling to survive\u2014and that\u2019s an understatement. The current state of the agriculture economy is bleak and on the verge of collapse. We have problems all over the world. We have problems in our country. There\u2019s nothing more important. Nothing more important that we should be addressing than our food supply here in this country.\n\nCosts for farmers are rising. Commodity prices are falling. Our farmers cannot break even\u2014much less, make a profit. According to the USDA, net farm income this year is projected to decline 4.4% from 2023 [\u2026]. That is a disaster. This follows a shocking\u2014listen to this\u2014a shocking 19.5% decline in 2022.\n\nNot one business in this country can survive with this kind of decline. And our farmers and our farms are no different. This means producer\u2019s income has plummeted 23% in just two years. 23%. These figures represent over $40 billion in lost revenue for America\u2019s hardworking producers. This is the largest two-year decline ever in our farm income, ever in the history of this country.\n\nRight now, our row croppers, especially, are facing considerable financial hardship. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, row croppers had a $27.7 billion decline in cash receipts since last year. In Alabama, my state, our producers are yielding bumper crops of cotton, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and yet they can\u2019t profit due to [the] rising cost of production. Our catfish producers are in the same boat. Rising input costs and falling fish prices are threatening to put them out of business. A multitude of factors that producers have no control over are impacting their bottom lines.\n\nAnd I wanna talk about one of them. This miraculous, this \u2018world saving\u2019 Inflation Reduction Act that we passed a few years ago, was supposed to \u2018save our economy.\u2019 It was supposed to save a lot of workers. You know what it\u2019s done to our farmers? It\u2019s almost put us out of business. The Inflation Reduction Act started a tax credit for imports and exports.\n\nUnfortunately, all the tax credits are going to people, and countries, and farmers from overseas\u2014Brazil and China. [The tax credit] is supposed to go to our farmers, [but] no it\u2019s not gonna do that. For some reason, this Administration [has] given all the tax credits to the farmers from other countries, and our farmers are struggling.\n\nThe Biden administration has control, has total control, over our farm economy, but you hadn\u2019t heard a peep out of them, not one peep about our farmers. And this is a disastrous year coming up. And right now, we are harvesting our crops and they\u2019re bumper crops. The issues plaguing American producers are directly linked to the harmful policies, as I just said, from the Biden-Harris administration.\n\nThis includes the lack of domestic energy production, skyrocketing inflation, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, and endless environmental hurdles. Let me say something about conservation and all the things that happen in our environment. There\u2019s nobody, and I mean nobody on the face of the earth, that takes care and is more conscious of environmental problems than our farmers, because they make a living off our land. But we\u2019re putting so many regulations on them. We\u2019re closing our farms down and running them overseas, and we\u2019re gonna have a national security threat because all of our food is gonna come from foreign countries.\n\nFarmers are experiencing rising high costs of labor [and an] increase [in the] price of feeds, fertilizer, and pesticides. And I\u2019m not going to sugarcoat it. America\u2019s agriculture producers are facing a very tough road ahead. And it\u2019s something nobody, the media, this building, [\u2026] The House of Representatives\u2014nobody\u2019s even talking about. Folks, if we can\u2019t eat. If we don\u2019t have food to eat, we\u2019re done.\n\nMany farmers fear that their farm loans this year will not be renewed. They have to have farm loans to put a crop in the ground. They fear cash flow is drying up and interest rates continuing to rise create an uncertain future for farming operations. Although Congress only has a few legislative days left to act, we must stop adding fuel to the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s fire. We\u2019ve got to quit adding fuel. We\u2019ve got to help the farmers.\n\nWe need to pass a Farm Bill that helps our farmers. Democrats are [in] control of that. [\u2026] A farm bill is for five years. [\u2026] Five years ago, the Farm Bill was $870 billion for [a] five-year period. It runs in a five-year period. So, this past year, we\u2019re supposed to be working on a Farm Bill. I\u2019m on the Ag Committee. We go by the control of the Democratic Party. Our Democratic Chairwoman has decided we won\u2019t do a Farm Bill this year.\n\nWe\u2019re just throwing farmers underneath the bus. They need help. You would think by looking at everything going on, that my colleagues on the Left would rather our food come from other countries, take over our farmland, control it, and do something else with it.\n\nProducers need a strong safety net\u2014we\u2019ve got to have a safety net for our farmers. Considering no farmer\u2019s risks are the same, we cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach. Remember, we have a Farm Bill that covers livestock, hogs, row croppers, forest, fish. There\u2019s a lot of things involved.\n\nFarmers across the country have fluctuating levels of risk impacted by land and equipment costs, access to irrigation, and variable input requirements. Southern row croppers rely heavily, heavily upon Title I Commodity Programs in the Farm Bill, particularly the Price Loss [Coverage] program and the Agricultural Risk [Coverage] program. Yet Midwest producers heavily utilize crop insurance.\n\nWhere there may be an overlap across regions among these programs, we must fix the entire farm safety net, not just parts of it. Take the reference prices and commodity programs, for example. Reference prices are how much prices are in their commodity sells for. Our farmers [\u2026] are today operating on 2012 reference prices, 2012. Fourteen years later, the costs of production are 22-31% higher today than they were at that time a decade ago\u2014making current reference prices completely inadequate for our farmers.\n\nWe don\u2019t have time to waste. Our farmers are facing an uphill battle to remain in business. [\u2026] The American people going to the grocery store are gonna find out pretty quick what it is to be hungry if we don\u2019t wake up and smell the roses.\n\nEven if a Farm Bill is passed today, producers wouldn\u2019t receive any commodity program support from this Farm Bill until 2026. Game, set, match before 2026 for our farmers in this country.\n\nThat\u2019s help our farmers need now to survive, not two years late. Senate Republicans stand ready to act on a solid bipartisan bill the House Agriculture Committee passed earlier this year. Yet, Senate Democrats and the Biden administration refused, they refused, to come to the table to find practical, bipartisan solutions to the many problems our farmers are facing today.\n\n\u2018Let\u2019s don\u2019t worry about our farmers. Let\u2019s worry about Ukraine. Let\u2019s worry about people overseas. Eight hundred bases we have around the world. Let\u2019s don\u2019t worry about eating. We can without eating.\u2019 That\u2019s what this Administration\u2019s saying.\n\nThis forces us to look to supplemental appropriation packages to help our producers, if we\u2019re not gonna do a Farm Bill, to renew their farm loans and plan for next year\u2019s crops. If they don\u2019t get help this year, we\u2019re gonna have huge problems. They won\u2019t be pocketing this money. If we come up with some money to help the farmers get along, they\u2019ll just be planting another crop.\n\nWithout immediate action to assist producers, our nation\u2019s agriculture industry may never, ever, make it back from the damage that we\u2019re doing to them today. America has lost\u2014listen to this\u2014America has lost 150,000 farms and 25,000 farmers in our country over the last few years. What? 150,000 farms closed up. Why? They can\u2019t make a profit. You\u2019ve owned a farm for 100 years, you and your family. But you get to the point where you say, \u2018you know, I\u2019m not passing something down to our kids that really wanna farm, we\u2019re not gonna put them in harm\u2019s way. We\u2019re gonna sell. We\u2019re gonna get out of the business. And we\u2019re gonna let somebody else worry about it. Let\u2019s let the Federal Government worry about it.\u2019 [\u2026]\n\nWe can\u2019t afford any more losses to our farms. Our farmers are hurting. They\u2019re hurting real bad. But have you heard anybody talk about it, no.\n\nYou\u2019re gonna hear a lot of people complaining about it and there\u2019s gonna be an uproar in the next few years when prices double and triple as what they are today because we\u2019re not gonna have any food. And it\u2019s gonna come from Brazil, it\u2019s gonna come from China, it\u2019s gonna come from Vietnam.\n\nWe are doing severe damage to the farmers across this country and nobody cares. I\u2019ll continue to be the voice of our Southern agriculture producers in the Senate and ensure that we have a seat at the table on this Farm Bill upcoming. But as I just said a while ago, [even] if we do a Farm Bill today, we\u2019re gonna lose at least half of our farmers in this country this year, this year if they don\u2019t get some help.\n\nMr. President, I yield the floor.\u201d\n\nSenator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans\u2019 Affairs, and HELP Committees.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:46:43Z"]], "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://www.tuberville.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/tuberville-demands-biden-administration-protect-farmers-amid-historic-inflation-rising-input-costs/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.016130067408085, "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"}