The Farm Bill, which the Senate Agriculture Committee is just about to re-write, is one of the pivotal pieces of legislation that will affect our state and economy for the next five years. During my tour of the western part of the state in August, farmers and ranchers were at every one of my 33 town hall meetings to give me their views. This feedback is greatly shaping my efforts to draft the new legislation, and I want to report to you on where we are.

My number one priority for this Farm Bill is clear - protect the programs that work for Kansans.

First off, that means Direct Payments. Of the supposed “three legged stool” in current law, Direct Payments are the only leg that have provided any assistance to most Kansas producers.

Secondly, protecting Kansas’ interests means keeping money hungry folks looking to pay for other programs away from crop insurance. Many view the crop insurance program as a bank and want to rob the program to pay for non-agriculture policies. When Farm Bill programs do not provide an adequate safety net, producers have one option - and that is to turn to crop insurance for protection. I can’t support cutting a larger whole in the only safety net we have here on the high plains.

Now there certainly are other issues of importance in this Farm Bill discussion, but Direct Payments and Crop Insurance are where I’m starting.

You’ll recall that I voted against the current Farm Bill because it failed to help producers when they needed it most. At the time, we ran the numbers and found out that Kansas wheat producers would not have received payments under the then proposed counter cyclical program for 9 out of the previous 17 years.

And those were some of the toughest years we had ever seen.

Well, that program went into effect and guess what?  It didn’t work.  The past five years under this program, Kansas wheat producers haven’t received help. That bumps those numbers to 14 out of 22 years with no assistance. And, most other Kansas crops haven’t seen much in payments either.

Furthermore, the other leg of that stool, Loan Rates, don’t help when you have no crop to sell.
        
Take this year for example. In early spring we thought we would finally have a decent crop. Well, mother nature had different ideas for a large section of the state. The Easter freeze hit, then tornados, then excessive flooding in parts of the state, nearly wiping out whole farms. This is exactly why Direct Payments and Crop Insurance must be protected.

Unfortunately, many view these two programs as a bank for policies that either don’t help Kansans or aren’t targeted for producers. That was the case with the House bill by the time it hit the House floor.

I think First District Congressman Jerry Moran (R-KS) said it best when he said this was the first Farm Bill where non-agriculture interests took control. The House bill cut about $5 billion from crop insurance to pay for increases to everything from specialty crops to energy to conservation and nutrition programs.

Now I’m not saying these aren’t valid programs or that they don’t deserve funding. If you look at my record, you’ll find I’ve been a leader on conservation, nutrition and world food aid policies when I served as Chairman of the House Ag Committee and now as a senator.

What I’m saying, is we shouldn’t sacrifice the few commodity programs that benefit producers in order to pay for non-production initiatives. We have to recognize the value of production agriculture, especially in Washington, D.C. where some of our elected officials think food comes from a grocery store.

Unfortunately, some in the media, including a few right here in Kansas, have chosen to ignore the impacts of production agriculture and attack farm programs. These critics believe farmers should be small, and only sell their crops at a local Farmers’ Market.

Well that isn’t reality and we can’t write a Farm Bill for Walden Pond agriculture. These folks are not producers, and are not the ones providing a safe and secure supply of food, fiber, and now energy for our nation and others. In my mind we don’t have small farmers or big farmers and we certainly don’t classify them according to how many acres they work. In Kansas, we have producers. Producers who go to work everyday to feed and clothe a rapidly growing population throughout the world.

Fortunately, there are a few still willing to stand up for production agriculture, and I am certainly one of them. Thankfully there are a couple more of us on the Ag Committee and rest assured, we’ll stick together as debate over the Farm Bill moves forward so that Kansas’ views are represented.

If you would like to know more about issues before the Senate, please visit my Web site at https://www.roberts.senate.gov . For regular updates, be sure to sign up on my home page for a monthly e-newsletter, The Roberts Report.