WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry delivered opening remarks at the hearing “Perspectives from the Field: Farmer and Rancher Views on the Agricultural Economy, Part 1.”
The following is Boozman’s opening statement, as prepared for delivery:
Good morning. I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today. Thank you for leaving your farms and your families to travel to Washington to share your experiences with us. As a proud Arkansan, I am delighted to have Nathan Reed and Jennifer James on today’s second panel.
This hearing is the first in a series our committee will be holding on the current state of America’s rural economy from the perspective of our farmers, ranchers, and rural leaders. These hearings are intended to help inform our decisions as we draft a new farm bill and to ensure we are putting forward policies that will help current and future generations of farm families survive and ultimately thrive in an unpredictable world.
Every member of this committee has heard directly from farmers in their states about the current difficult conditions they face. I’ve been blessed to join members of the committee to be a part of some of those conversations and I look forward to continuing this dialogue.
High interest rates, elevated production costs, and depressed commodity prices, coupled with a frayed safety net worn out over time, have left many producers exposed to financial ruin. Since 2022 producers have lost more than $50 billion and net farm income is forecast to decline.
Farmers are experiencing a scenario where there is no room for error. Farm families are looking at the next generation and trying to determine if this career, that requires more sacrifice than many others, is viable. I fear that across the country, we are at risk of losing untold numbers of farm families.
Recently, the Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University stated that “in the 42 years that AFPC has been projecting farm financial performance, the most recent crop outlook for the representative farms is the worst in terms of the number of farms in each of the four commodity types (feed grains, cotton, rice and wheat) that are not currently expected to have a positive cash flow over the next 5 years.”
My highest priority for the next farm bill is to improve the farm safety net, whereby every farmer in every region of the country will have access to modernized risk management tools regardless of the commodity they grow. If we fail to modernize the safety net, agriculture will see further consolidation as farm families leave the business, and the ripple effects to our country will be profound.
The task before us is great. I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses.