Senator Marshall: This Farm Bill Was Written By Kansas Farmers

Senator Marshall Hosts Press Conference on Farm Bill Mark-Up Washington – On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), hosted a local virtual press conference to discuss the upcoming Farm Bill markup and the benefits it will provide to farmers and rural Americans, including permanent, year-round E-15 and childcare and broadband expansion as well as Senator Marshall’s priorities in farmer mental health, biofertilizers, SNAP nutrition, and conservation. Click HERE to download the full video. Highlights from Senator Marshall’s remarks include: On passing the Farm Bill: “Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome back to my office. It’s been a quick 18 hours or so — in Wichita last night, got back here early this morning, and proud to just get a CDC director across the finish line, by the way, as well. But today I want to talk about the magical Farm Bill.” “It’s been certainly the honor of my life to represent Kansas on the Ag Committee — first in the House for four years, and now in the Senate for six years. As a fifth-generation farm kid, it’s certainly just, again, the honor of a lifetime to get to work on this bill that’s so important — not just to our farmers — but to rural Americans, and tomorrow we’ll have the markup of this bill. And I’m so proud that Kansas farmers’ fingerprints are all over this bill. We have 22 bills that we authored that’ll be part of the bigger package here. You know, for instance, on the House side, I had maybe two pieces that were inserted in the Farm Bill, but we’re going to have 22 of those, and as we go through that markup tomorrow, maybe we can kind of highlight what you might be looking for and why this is so important to Kansans.” On the importance of the Farm Bill to all Americans: “I think one of the big misconceptions is that a Farm Bill is just important to farmers — but I can assure you it’s important to every American and certainly every Kansan. And this is why: we’re so fortunate in this country that we pay a fraction of what folks from other developed nations pay for groceries. We pay a fraction — maybe it’s a half, maybe it’s a third — and the reason is that we have a very reliable, stable supply of food. And what the Farm Bill does is creates a safety net so when farmers have a bad year — whether it’s drought or whether it’s hail — production is down, prices are down, this safety net from the Farm Bill keeps them in business. And then, of course, to rural America, there’s other important reasons, and we’ll talk about those in a second.” On the importance of the Farm Bill for farmers: “If Pat Roberts taught me one thing in writing a Farm Bill, it was to go to sit on the tongue of the wagon and listen to the farmers, and they’ll tell you what should be in it. And I think that’s exactly what we did here. To a farmer, let me talk about what’s most important in this Farm Bill to them. And I think number one, the simplest one to explain, is it’s going to include year-round E15. So year-round ethanol 15% blended is going to mean the consumption of about 500 million extra bushels of corn or milo consumed. 500 million bushels. And so what’s that mean? It’s almost like increasing our exports by 25, 30 percent, something like that. That’s what this means, and it’s a consistent market. And the farmer gets a premium — he maybe gets a 10, 20 cent kicker on this from the ethanol plants. The ethanol plants, of course, have more jobs in rural America as well. And by the way, ethanol brings down the cost of gasoline as well. The more ethanol that’s blended, the less expensive gasoline is. So year-round E15 is the big win.” “And then the second win — I’ll go back to that farmer safety net that’s so important in this bill.  And this would be why the farmers say their top priority is the crop insurance and something called an ARC and PLC program. So, if you recall, in the Working Families Tax Cuts bill we added $65 billion to crop insurance, we raised reference prices for those commodities by 10 or 20%. Now, what this bill is going to do is give those farmers at least five years of certainty. So, when they’re trying to decide which crop to plant this fall. You know, whether they’re going to go back and plant wheat, or maybe they’re going to change something to alfalfa or whatever it is. This gives them certainty again on those bad years, the lean years, that they’re at least going to get enough money to be able to plant next year’s crop. So those are the top two things I think that are in this for the American farmer as well: the crop insurance and the E15.” On the importance of the Farm Bill to rural Americans: “Then I want to talk for a second about rural America — what’s in this for rural America? You know, as agriculture goes, so goes rural America. So, number one is this provides for a stronger, steady economy, so that’s important for rural America. And then next, I would talk about infrastructure and connectivity. So, the one thing I did get accomplished in my last Farm Bill was increased funding for high-speed internet to rural America — getting that last mile connected — and this Farm Bill builds on that. So, everybody understands roads and bridges wear out, and you have to keep replacing them. Well, you can think about the same thing with high-speed internet — here’s always the next rendition. And just like in your own jobs, the American farmer is using more and more megabytes, gigabytes, whatever it is, when they’re doing their precision agriculture. And of course, there are so many people that are working remotely from home that we need more of that high-speed internet as well across rural America. So, this funds connectivity.” “And then next, I would talk about infrastructure. As you can imagine, a lot of our water structures — our clean water, our waste disposal systems — all those systems are aging out across the state, so this has funding for infrastructure. And then something else I’m really proud of — again building on the Working Families Tax Cuts bill — is childcare money. So traditionally, USDA can make loans for new hospitals, all sorts of what we would call rural development opportunities, but this is going to allow childcare centers to be eligible for more USDA monies as well. So, I think that’s at the top of the list for what’s going on with rural America.” “We also have more funding for farmers’ mental health. You all may know this, but we lose more farmers to suicide than we do from farm accidents. So, one of our big priorities up here is farmer mental health, and this will have more funding to continue those programs. So, for instance, K-State Extension has a farmer outreach program, and that would be the typical type of program that we would be looking to fund as well.” On Senator Marshall’s conservation priorities: “Okay, I want to go through some of our more specific ones here for a second as well — some things that I have made my priorities. And I think I would start off talking about conservation projects that are important to me. You know, I want to leave this world cleaner, healthier, and safer than I found it. And anything that we can do in agriculture to promote more conservation — I’m all in. And by the way, farmers and ranchers, we were the original conservationists. I remember back in the early 1960s, my grandfather building terraces, and we were learning about soil conservation and soil erosion in our grade school science classes. So, we continue these conservation programs, and a big concern of mine and Kansans is water. So, one of the things we’ve done is set up a water conservation program where we would reward farmers who don’t use all their water allotment. So, we’re going to reward people for using less water and less fertilizers. So proud of our efforts in that direction.” On Senator Marshall’s biofertilizer priorities: “And then another thing that’s a priority for me is getting biofertilizers to market. So rather than just using the traditional chemicals — nitrogens, the sulfurs of the world — there are fertilizers, microorganisms that come from nature that we can use. That’s going to leave the soil healthier. So, for instance, in Pratt, Kansas, a company takes manure from the feedlots, uses a byproduct from the ethanol plants and enriches that, and then adds certain bioorganisms, microorganisms that enrich that soil. So, trying to promote more healthy soil by using biofertilizers.” On Senator Marshall’s SNAP nutrition priorities: “On the nutrition standpoint, I’m very proud of what we’ve done on some work in that area as well. Specifically, we have reward programs within SNAP — reward programs if you make healthy choices. We’ve had fruits and vegetables on that for quite some time — that if you choose fruits and vegetables, we give you extra SNAP benefits. Well, we’re going to extend that to milk products as well as protein products. So, I understand carbohydrates are cheaper, but trying to get families to buy more proteins will be much healthier for their families as well. So proud of the work that we’ve done on this MAHA side of things, where we touch both conservation as well as nutrition.” “I think I’ll stop there again. This has been a six-year project to get here, and it’s an exciting day for me. This is one of the reasons I came to Washington, D.C. — to use that experience as a fifth-generation farm kid, growing up in the industry, continuing to be invested in the industry, and then learning the agriculture policy here, so that we can keep farmers in business, help the Kansas economy be stronger, and at the same time make Kansans healthier. And then add on the conservation piece of this, and you have a good strong Farm Bill.” On regulating fertilizer use: “I’m trying to remember what we did with this. So, on the House side, they were working on the preemption side of things, and I think in our bill we’re just going to leave it alone. We’re not going to overexercise the federal government’s job in regulating fertilizers right now. I see the American farmer, through their own volition, wanting to use less and less fertilizer. And why wouldn’t they? They’re so expensive — they’re about maybe 20% of their input costs right now. So, we’re seeing American farmers and ranchers use less and less chemical fertilizers anyway, so we’re going to stay out of that issue right now. And we’ll see if someone offers an amendment tomorrow; otherwise, I won’t be surprised if they do.” On changes to SNAP funding and decreasing error rates: “Yeah, I think that’s the critical issue. And I can’t tell you exactly what the Democrats are going to do, but all across the country, we’ve seen a rising error rate in the administration of the SNAP dollars — and we’ve seen that in Kansas as well. So, what we had suggested is if the state is not going to be efficient and is going to have more and more errors, then they should weigh a bigger portion of their share of the food stamps. So, what we’ve suggested is a one-year delay in that and allow states to improve their efficiencies and decrease the error rates. And then, if that happens, it wouldn’t change any of the funding at all. That’s a good point to talk about the other food programs in general. People want to stay focused on just SNAP dollars, but in my time here in Congress, I’ve seen increased funding for our food programs go from around maybe $70 billion a year to now $140-150 billion dollars a year.” “The SNAP program, unfortunately, is probably the most ripe with fraud and abuse. The good ones that are working great are our food banks, our Meals on Wheels, our senior centers, our school lunches. So, across the state of Kansas now, at least 50% of the kids are on free or reduced lunches. But now almost every school in Kansas offers free breakfast, and most of them are offering free dinners if you’re sticking around for after-school activities, and in many instances, we’re sending them home with food as well. So, to me, the priority here is I don’t want anyone to go to bed hungry. We’re making some increased funding for making healthy choices with the SNAP dollars as well, but we also don’t want the SNAP program to be administered frivolously. So, we’re asking states to do a better job to be more efficient as they’re administering these programs.” On the timeline of passing the Farm Bill: “Right, right. So, I expect it to get out of committee tomorrow, and determining the future, we’ll see how many — if any — Democrats vote for it. If we can win several souls over, and we have a nice, strong bipartisan support of the bill… And by the way, all these 22 things that I mentioned are all bipartisan; I have co-sponsors for them in the bill — this bill is very well represented with bipartisan support. So, depending on how many Democrats vote for it tomorrow will help determine how quickly it’s going to get to the floor for a vote. Because on the floor in the Senate, you may recall, it takes 60 votes to get it across the finish line. So, we need some type of a product that can get to those 60 votes, and then I think that’s when we have to do some more negotiating regarding this delay in the SNAP share of cost. So, we’ll see — I don’t know if we can get it done before the election, or if it’s a lame duck situation. We’ve got a jam-packed week as well — I think it’ll kind of slow down when we get back, and everyone’s attention turns towards that November election. I didn’t mean to evade the question there: the bottom line is I don’t know.” “Yeah, and when the dam breaks, it’ll break. I think that we’ll go from zero Democrats supporting it to 30 supporting it. And what is the magic piece of that puzzle that makes that dam break, I’m not sure of — but I think it’s time to get this markup done so then we can get it to the floor and figure out what amendment we need to get it across the final finish line. But certainly, we’re going to do everything we can to get it done this year.” ### Contact: Payton Fuller