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36–103 PDF 2007

FULL COMMITTEE HEARING ON FAMILY FARMER

AND RURAL SMALL BUSINESS PRIORITIES

FOR 2007 FARM BILL

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF 

REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 7, 2007

Serial Number 110-28

Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman 

WILLIAM JEFFERSON, Louisiana 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

CHARLIE GONZA ́ LEZ, Texas 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

RAUL GRIJALVA, Arizona 

MICHAEL MICHAUD, Maine 

MELISSA BEAN, Illinois 

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas 

DAN LIPINSKI, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

BRUCE BRALEY, Iowa 

YVETTE CLARKE, New York 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Ranking Member 

ROSCOE BARTLETT, Maryland 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

TODD AKIN, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

MARILYN MUSGRAVE, Colorado 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

LYNN WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

MICHAEL DAY, Majority Staff Director 

ADAM MINEHARDT, Deputy Staff Director 

TIM SLATTERY, Chief Counsel 

KEVIN FITZPATRICK, Minority Staff Director

STANDING SUBCOMMITTEES 

Subcommittee on Finance and Tax

MELISSA BEAN, Illinois, Chairwoman 

RAUL GRIJALVA, Arizona 

MICHAEL MICHAUD, Maine 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada, Ranking 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology

BRUCE BRALEY, IOWA, Chairman 

WILLIAM JEFFERSON, Louisiana 

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

YVETTE CLARKE, New York 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee, Ranking 

ROSCOE BARTLETT, Maryland 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

TODD AKIN, Missouri 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma

(II) 

Subcommittee on Regulations, Health Care and Trade

CHARLES GONZA ́ LEZ, Texas, Chairman 

WILLIAM JEFFERSON, Louisiana 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

DAN LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MELISSA BEAN, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

LYNN WESTMORELAND, Georgia, Ranking 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

MARILYN MUSGRAVE, Colorado 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

Subcommittee on Urban and Rural Entrepreneurship

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina, Chairman 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL MICHAUD, Maine 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

YVETTE CLARKE, New York 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska, Ranking 

ROSCOE BARTLETT, Maryland 

MARILYN MUSGRAVE, Colorado 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee

Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight

JASON ALTMIRE, PENNSYLVANIA, Chairman 

CHARLIE GONZA ́ LEZ, Texas 

RAUL GRIJALVA, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas, Ranking 

LYNN WESTMORELAND, Georgia

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

Page

Vela ́zquez, Hon. Nydia M. ....................................................................................... 1

Chabot, Hon. Steve .................................................................................................. 2

WITNESSES

English, Hon. Glenn, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association ............. 3

Buis, Tom, National Farmers Union ...................................................................... 5

Noonan, Mike, National Association of Wheat Growers ...................................... 7

Schwiebert, Mark, National Corn Growers Association ....................................... 9

APPENDIX 

Prepared Statements: 

Vela ́zquez, Hon. Nydia M. ....................................................................................... 27

Chabot, Hon. Steve .................................................................................................. 29

English, Hon. Glenn, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association ............. 30

Buis, Tom, National Farmers Union ...................................................................... 46

Noonan, Mike, National Association of Wheat Growers ...................................... 55

Schwiebert, Mark, National Corn Growers Association ....................................... 64

Statements for the Record: 

American Trucking Association and Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference ................................................................................................................... 70

Agricultural Retailers Association .......................................................................... 72

National Association of State Departments of Agriculture .................................. 80

(V) 

(1)

FULL COMITTEE HEARING ON FAMILY 

FARMER AND RURAL SMALL BUSINESS 

PRIORITIES FOR THE 2007 FARM BILL 

THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2007

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2360 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Nydia Vela ́zquez 

[Chairwoman of the Committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Vela ́zquez, Cuellar, Braley, Clarke, 

Ellsworth, Sestak, Chabot, Gohmert, Davis, Fallin, Buchanan and 

Jordan. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRWOMAN VELA ́ ZQUEZ 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Good morning. I now callthis hearing to 

order to discuss the 2007 Farm Bill priorities of family farmers and 

rural small businesses. 

Given that 90 percent of rural businesses are small, the Committee has a vested interest in agricultural and rural development 

issues. Today, we will hear from key agriculture industry representatives as they outline their small business priorities for the 

upcoming Congress. 

This is a timely hearing as the House Agriculture Subcommittee 

continues marking off various titles of the 2007 Farm Bill this 

week. The Committee will look at what can be done to assist these 

farmers and related industries with competing and surviving in a 

global economy. The goal is to ensure small businesses in rural 

areas have the tools necessary to succeed. This includes an examination of the challenges facing the nearly two million family farmers, but it also goes beyond. Countless other small businesses are 

indirectly impacted by the agriculture economy including most 

rural businesses, grocery stores, food export companies, food processing plants, and restaurants. 

It is clear that small businesses in agriculture in rural America 

are facing many obstacles. Their bottom lines are affected every 

time livestock and commodity markets fluctuate. There is the lack 

of rain or energy prices rise. In spite of these barriers, the family 

farmer has been able to respond and continue to grow. Our rural 

economy has shown an ability to adapt and change with the development of new technologies. They have created opportunities by 

adding different uses for their products, from investing in renewable energy to identifying foreign markets for their products, family 

2

farmers have been resilient and local economies have benefited 

from it. 

Continued success depends not only on the existence of various 

farm support programs, but also on furthering rural development. 

Many rural areas continue to lack the basic infrastructure to market and sell their products. For example, we need to provide better 

access to broadband and ensure there are affordable transportation 

options such as rail. And if there are changes to our immigration 

policies they must address worker shortages in the agriculture industry. 

While tackling these, problems can come with a cost. Having a 

vibrant agricultural community is sound economic policy, whether 

it be creating new and improved programs or maintaining existing 

ones we must do what it takes to ensure family farms and small 

businesses in this area are thriving. 

Agriculture-related issues affect every Member’s District. While 

it may seem that there’s no connection between feed prices in Illinois and the price of beef in New York, the economics shows otherwise. American agriculture on farmers have an impact on those in 

urban districts and rural districts alike. 

The priorities presented today will be used by the Committee as 

it formulates ways to improve the economic environment for rural, 

small businesses. I look forward to hearing about what policies 

have been successful and if there are additional reforms needed to 

ensure future growth. The success of small companies in this sector 

can serve as a model for other industries. 

I appreciate the witnesses coming here today and I now yield to 

the Ranking Member Mr. Chabot for his opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF MR. CHABOT 

Mr.CHABOT. Thank you, Chairwoman Vela ́zquez, for holding this 

important hearing on one of the largest reauthorizations that Congress will undertake this year, the Farm Bill. It is appropriate that 

this Committee consider issues of the Farm Bill because the vast 

majority of farmers and businesses located in rural America are 

relatively small. The significance of the farmer reaches back across 

the misty chords of memory and the America consciousness. President Jefferson noted the importance of the yeoman or small farmer 

as the backbone of the American democracy. President Lincoln, 

when signing the legislation creating the Department of Agriculture, called it the people’s department. 

Anyone who has read the novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder or Willa 

Cather knows that life on the farm is not easy, nor can one deny 

that rural America faces significant economic challenges. 

At the same time, it’s important to remember that rural Americans are not the only ones facing economic difficulty. Urban areas 

throughout Ohio, for example, have long faced problems of the socalled rust belt. My District has lost many jobs as a result of factories closing. The need for economic development and revitalization are as important to the residents of the factory towns adjacent 

to the great Midwestern waterways such as the Ohio River and 

Great Lakes, as it is for the small towns scattered among the 

fruited plains. 

3

Today, the Committee will receive testimony from representatives of farm groups and those involved in rural economic development. Farmers and livestock producers play a critical role in maintaining the health of the rural economy. Therefore, it makes sense 

that these groups offer their suggestions on the path that Congress 

should take in promoting the health of the farm economy and rural 

America for the next five years. 

Despite increased revenues, stemming from tax cuts, the monies 

available to fund all the discretionary programs including those 

policies suggested by the witnesses are severely limited. This reality constrains the options that this Committee and this Congress 

have in meeting the needs of the small business communities in 

urban and rural areas. In our deliberations we will have to adopt 

those policies that are most cost effective, providing the greatest 

opportunities to the largest number of Americans. And once again, 

I thank you for holding this hearing and I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. Now we’re going to start 

with our panel this morning which is comprised of distinguished 

panelists and I welcome the Honorable Glenn English back to the 

Capitol and Congressman English serves as the Chief Executive 

Officer of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. 

Prior to assuming this post, Mr. English was elected by the people 

of Oklahoma’s Sixth District to ten terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. As chief spokesman for the nation’s consumer-owned 

co-op electric utilities, he represents the national interest of electric 

co-ops. 

Welcome, Mr. English, you have five minutes to make your presentation. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE GLENN ENGLISH, CEO, 

NATIONAL RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION 

Mr.ENGLISH. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate 

that very much and it is a pleasure to be back in the Congress. It’s 

always a pleasure to see many of our former colleagues and people 

who have come since I left the Congress. 

Electric cooperatives are very unique as far as those who are providers of electric power. There are some 930 electric cooperatives 

in 47 states across this country, so utility-wise, they’re the only 

utilities really who cover the entire country, all the way from Alaska and Hawaii up to the State of Maine. However, we cover a lot 

of territory. 

We have some three quarters of all the land mass in the United 

States being served by electric cooperatives. We only have about 

seven consumers per mile or seven members per mile, so from an 

infrastructure standpoint, there are very few people and if you look 

at what they have to pay for as members and owners of those electric cooperatives because keep in mind that as cooperatives they 

are owned by the consumers themselves about 40 million consumers actually on it. 

Well, those 40 million people have got to pay for 42 percent of 

the distribution infrastructure of this country. And that seven people per miles is the ratio in how these costs are broken out. Bigger 

power companies, investor-owned utilities, for instance, have some 

4

35 people per mile and certainly on municipals they have 47 people 

per mile, so as you can see, the burden is distributed much more 

heavily with regard to those living in rural America. That also 

breaks out as far as revenues are concerned. About $10,000 per 

mile is the revenue that comes from electric cooperatives or two 

electric cooperatives. The investor-owned utilities about six times 

that, some $62,000 per mile and municipals about $86,000 per 

mile. 

So as you can see, you’ve got a few people bearing a huge amount 

of burden covering a huge part of the land mass of the United 

States in providing this service to people living in rural America. 

We are growing very rapidly. We are growing about twice as fast 

as the larger power companies, so you’ve got a lot of folks moving 

in different parts of rural America and of course, that is part of our 

responsibility. 

In addition to that, we are also running out of power capacity. 

As far as the generation that was built during the 1980s, that’s 

pretty much used up as far as we’re concerned and that’s pretty 

much the end of it for us. And the generation that we will have 

to acquire through building or through other means is going to be 

the most expensive generation history of this country. 

We started over a year ago started telling our members out 

there, member owners of these cooperatives that your rates are 

going to go up and they’re likely to go up substantially, now the 

impact that has as far as rural America is concerned and particularly small business and small start-up businesses, we have a lot 

of ethanol plants, biodiesel plants that are starting up in rural 

America. Obviously, as is the case with any start-up business, that 

is going to be something that they most likely had not planned on 

and could be an additional burden. 

Our responsibility is electric cooperatives, since these are owned 

by consumers is really two things. Employees, directors that are 

elected by the membership out there, one is to keep the lights on, 

obviously provide power to those members; and the second is do 

our best to try to hold down those rates as much as we can. So 

we’ve got a huge challenge in front of us in dealing with this particular difficulty and the question is over the next 10 to 15 years 

is where we acquire the additional power that’s going to be necessary. And given the fact we’re growing faster than anyone in the 

electric utility industry, given the fact that the Department of Energy has said between now and the Year 2030 there will be a need 

for a 40 percent increase in the amount of power that this country 

needs to keep this economy going. Then obviously, we’ve got a huge 

challenge ahead of us as does the entire electric utility industry. 

But for rural America, for small business, for farmers, people 

that are living in those areas, obviously we’ve got a huge challenge 

in trying to hold rates down instead of simply letting this thing 

skyrocket. But it is going to go up and go up dramatically. 

Thank you very much. I’d be happy to respond to any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Glenn English may be found on page 

31 of the Appendix.]

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. 

5

And now the chair will recognize Mr. Ellsworth for the purpose 

of introducing his constituent. 

Mr.ELLSWORTH. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, it’s probably 

appropriate that I take this introduction as a fellow Hoosier, maybe 

the only one in the room who can pronounce Mr. Buis’ name properly on the first try. 

Tom Buis is the president of the National Farmers Union, NFU. 

Before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1987, Mr. Bias was a fulltime grain and livestock farmer with his brothers Jeff and Mike in 

my District, the Eighth District of Indiana and his brothers continue to operate the family farm there. 

Mr. Buis has also worked as a Special Assistant for Agriculture 

for a man that I would call a role model, former Senator Birch 

Bayh. The National Farmers Union has represented farmers and 

ranchers in all states for over a hundred years, operating organized 

chapters in 32 states. As the president of the NFU, Mr. Buis is 

here this morning as an advocate for the interest of the family 

farmers in Congress. 

Mr. Buis, thank you and welcome. 

STATEMENT OF TOM BUIS, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FARMERS 

UNION 

Mr.BUIS. Thank you, Congressman, Madam Chairman, Members 

of the Committee. It is a honor to be here, and I do appreciate 

someone in Washington being able to pronounce my name on my 

first try. I get all types of attempts, and thank you, Congressman. 

You know, the Farm Bill and what is going to happen over the 

next several months is vitally important to rural America. In preparation for this, what we did at Farmers Union is we held Farm 

Bill listening sessions around the country. We held over 30 in 

about a 5-week period. The purpose was to get the input from the 

real people who farm and ranch and live in those rural communities for a living. I’ve often felt that one of the best quotes by any 

public official was by former President Dwight Eisenhower when 

he said ‘‘farming is mighty easy is when your plough is a pencil 

and your a thousand miles from the nearest cornfield.’’

There are a lot of people in Washington, there are a lot of experts 

around the country who think that they know they answers. I’ve 

always felt that the real answers and the real solutions lie in the 

people that have to live, work, and raise their families in rural 

America. As a result of that, what we found out overwhelmingly 

was that farmers and ranchers felt that the 2002 Farm Bill was 

a big improvement over the 1996 Farm Bill. 

It offered an opportunity to provide an adequate safety net, but 

times have changed since 2005. Reality is that we have less money 

to write a farm program going into this drafting process than we 

did back in 2002. Actually probably in real terms, it’s back at the 

level of 1996, which did not prove to be a successful Farm Bill. 

So how do we protect the needs of rural American with less resources? We felt that we had to get creative, so we kind of broke 

things down in two components. One are the opportunities that are 

out there today, and the second are the challenges. The opportunities in rural America, and I know Mr. English has spent a lot of 

6

time out there, but I’ve never witnessed the optimism that exists 

today in rural America. It is primarily because of two issues. 

One is renewable energy. The boon in ethanol has been fantastic, 

not just for farmers and higher commodity prices for the products, 

but also for those rural communities. The only towns in rural 

America where you see the boards coming off the storefronts instead of going back up are those communities where an ethanol 

plant or a biodiesel plant has been built. I don’t think any of us 

in the 30-some years of advocating use of renewable energy ever 

expected that kind of boon to the rural economy. 

We often talked about our energy security, we talked about higher commodity prices. But again, if you go to those communities you 

see not only jobs created by those ethanol plants, but you also see 

spin-off industries, small businesses to help service it. That helps 

the tax base. It helps fund the schools, it helps fund the hospitals. 

Certainly because most of the ethanol plants and biodiesel plants 

have been built are owned by farmers themselves. They are a cooperative. That money, those profits stay in those communities and 

get reinvested in those communities. That’s a very, very positive 

development that needs to be continued. 

The other bright spot that we see in American agriculture, and 

this one kind of came as a surprise to me. I have farmed for 20 

years and have been out here in farm advocacy for another 20. But 

when I went across the country, all the innovative and creative 

processes that are going on, and these are small businesses that 

are doing it, they’re taking the initiative to promote local food, 

fresh food, direct to the consumer. From selling to school districts 

their fresh meat, having not just farmer’s markets but working 

with institutions, and that trend sort of started at the upper end 

of the income level, where people with a lot of expendable income 

could afford to pay higher prices for fresh, organic, natural products. Now our challenge is how to keep continuing that and get it 

to people of all means of income. Because the product is fresh, anyone who has had fresh food out of the garden knows that it tastes 

a lot different than our current distribution system, which I refer 

to as sort of the McDonaldization approach where everything looks 

the same, tastes the same, costs the same, and at the end of the 

day probably lasts a lifetime with enough preservatives for shelflife. 

Well, people want change and I think those are two positives we 

can build on. Specifics on the Farm Bill, I think everyone’s goal is 

the same. There is a lot of differences on how we get there. If we 

get the current Farm Bill structure on the commodity title, which 

tends to get the most publicity, we have—we don’t have enough 

dollars to provide an adequate safety net. We currently have three 

programs—the direct payments, the loan rates, and the counter-cyclical. 

What I think needs to be done and what we have recommended 

is you shift money out of direct payments into a counter-cyclical 

safety net. That way, when farmers, when they get the price from 

the market, it doesn’t cost the federal government any money. If 

you witness what has happened in the last couple of years, our federal expenditures have gone down because we did have higher 

prices. The number one goal of this Farm Bill ought to be to enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 033615 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 G:\CLERK SB\HEARINGS\TRANSCRIPTS\36103.TXT LEANN
7

courage that, so farmers get their money from the marketplace. I’ve 

never met a farmer or a rancher that wanted to get their money 

from the government first. They want to get a profitable price. 

So we recommended a counter-cyclical safety net, reducing the 

direct payments. If we did that, we could save enough money to 

also have approximately three billion dollars for other farm bill priorities—conservation, nutrition, permanent disaster program. I 

know each of you have to vote several times a year probably on disaster programs. We get as tired of having to promote disaster programs as you probably do on having to vote for them. 

We might as well be realistic. Weather-related disasters are 

going to occur. The crop insurance program helps, but it doesn’t 

fully protect the interests of farmers and Congress has to step in. 

We ought to have a permanent disaster program. You can stop the 

abuses, you can make sure that it goes directly to those people who 

suffer losses. 

I see I am probably out of time. Let me mention two other things 

real quick. On the renewable energy, we have this tremendous opportunity. It’s not just corn ethanol. It’s not just biodiesel. It’s also 

wind energy, it’s cellulosic ethanol, and I think if we move in that 

direction we’ll all be better off. 

And finally, broadband coverage in rural America. Rural America 

is under served in that capacity. We need an effort not unlike what 

they did when Franklin Roosevelt proposed helping electricity for 

every American. We need it in the broadband sector. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Tom Buis may be found on page 47 

of the Appendix.]

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Buis. You will have 

more time during the question and answer period. 

Mr.BUIS. Sorry, that Farm Bill is a big document. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. I know. Our next witness is Mr. Mike 

Noonan. Mr. Noonan is representing the National Association of 

Wheat Growers. The National Association of Wheat Growers represents various state wheat organizations, alerting them of possible 

programs that may affect the wheat industry in a particular state. 

Mr. Noonan is president of the Oregon Wheat Growers League 

and farms in Klamath County in Oregon. Sir, you are most welcome. 

STATEMENT OF MIKE NOONAN, PRESIDENT, OREGON WHEAT 

GROWERS LEAGUE ON BEHALF OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 

OF WHEAT GROWERS 

Mr.NOONAN. Is this on already? Yes. Madam Chair, Committee 

Members, first of all thanks for the opportunity to speak today. It’s 

a great opportunity to come out here to Washington and take part 

in this Committee discussion. I’m Mike Noonan. I farm over 10,000 

acres in the Klamath Falls area. I started as a young farmer. I got 

out of college and started with less than—started with 100 acres. 

So a lot of the things that I talk about is going to be about rural 

infrastructure and how to get a young farmer the basics it takes 

to get young farmers into farming and how it is all affected. 

It’s a bright time for agriculture. High commodity prices, things 

are looking very good. Six dollar wheat. But as a farmer, you look 

8

at the good times and you look back to a lot of years where we 

were looking at $80 ton barley or less than $100 wheat, which is 

less than $3 a bushel. With that being said, one of our biggest concerns as wheat producers is the counter-cyclical payments, or the 

LDPs have never triggered for wheat growers in the last six to 

seven years. We’ve actually been left out of that by having a lowtarget price. 

We’re not after a target price. One of the biggest things that we 

need is to continue our direct payment, which is 52 cents, or raise 

it. To raise it right now is probably not what is going to happen. 

At least to maintain the direct payments is very important for 

rural infrastructure for a couple of reasons. It is bankable. It is a 

thing that a young farmer can take and it’s going to be something 

that is for sure. It’s 52 cents every year or whatever the number 

is, and it is something that is bankable. Well, the LDPs and 

counter-cyclical, it changes and it’s just not a sure thing. 

The other thing is it also helps us compete globally in the sense 

that with all the increased environmental and also labor issues 

that we have, it causes us to be able to compete with lower cost 

of production. Our production costs are higher. The other thing 

that we would like to see is full funding of the CSP program and 

other conservation programs, including ECIP. But the conservation 

security program gives us, rewards us as farmers for what we have 

done and encourages us to move forward with new conservation 

practices on our farm. 

I am currently moving to almost a third no-till farming now, incorporating carbon into the soil and it’s really working for us in 

certain areas. So looking at that and full funding of the CSP and 

all watersheds, so that everybody can take part is definitely a priority. 

To technology, one of the big things that we see is switchgrass. 

We can see switchgrass growing with the right type of research, so 

that we can get the most biomass production. We can see it actually out on wheat acres, helping out with our renewable energy 

that we need within the nation. We could also look at high sugar 

wheat in the sense that it could be used. One of the things that 

is our concern, especially out in Oregon, is the fact that you have 

a situation that corn is going to be hauled all the way to Oregon 

to be made into ethanol. We’ve got a 25 by 25 resolution going on 

there, and you know we as Oregon farmers are looking through Oregon state and as a state looking how we can keep that more of 

a regional thing. So if we could take wheat into ethanol production 

or cellulose type switchgrass, I mean, that would be a great thing 

for us. 

Lastly, transportation. One of the things that my farm did to be 

successful was to add value. So adding value, we do transportation 

plus I also have a packing shed to pack my vegetables and we also 

have a trucking company. But one of the biggest things that we’re 

under served in is in rail transportation. With that being said, the 

100 car unit trains generally come out, but to the countryside, 

when you get out to really rural America where you need four or 

five railcars, most of the time we will wait to ship our crop until 

it is an off-demand time. 

9

So if it is September or August type of harvest conditions, we’ll 

wait and I will have to wait to ship grain until generally because 

the premium on rail cars is so high, I really can’t ship it until—

and that happen everywhere—until getting into November, December, into January when it is not demand time. 

Lastly, when it comes to work shortage, there’s definitely a worker shortage in the countryside. I don’t know what the answer is, 

but one of the things that I can see personally from my farm and 

within the people that work or the employers, farm employers in 

Oregon, is there needs to be a way for documentation of workers 

so you can be sure exactly of what is going on. One of the big concerns that I have is that when I hire somebody, they have a driver’s license and a card, and great people by the way and a very big 

part of what we do. It’s very hard to tell—it would be nice to have 

one national standard that would say when they come up, my secretary and my brother can take a look or I can take a look and we 

know that they’re documented and also, we’re an advocate for more 

workers so we can have—so they can take part in our businesses. 

[The prepared statement of Mike Noonan may be found on page 

56 of the Appendix.]

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Noonan. 

Our next witness is Mr. Mark Schwiebert. 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. Schwiebert. Pretty close. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. He serves on the National 

Corn Growers Association Corn Board. The National Corn Growers 

Association is a producer-directed trade association headquarters in 

St. Louis that represents the interests of more than 30,000 farmers. Mr. Schwiebert is a partner in a farm operation that grows 

corn, popcorn, soybeans, and soft red winter wheat in Harmon, 

Ohio. 

Sir, you are most welcome 

STATEMENT OF MARK SCHWIEBERT, CHAIRMAN, PUBLIC POLICY ACTION TEAM, NATIONAL CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and also Ranking Member Chabot. The Members of the Committee, on behalf of 

NCGA National Corn Growers, I certainly appreciate this opportunity to share with you what our priorities are for the 2007 Farm 

Bill and the potential impact on the family owned farms and also 

rural businesses. As the Chairwoman just said my name is Mark 

Schwiebert. I am from northwest Ohio and I am a partner in a diversified cash grain operation. 

She also said the National Corn Growers Association does have 

about 32,000 dues paying members across the U.S., and over 

300,000 members contribute to corn check off programs across the 

United States, likewise. Over the past ten years we’ve had some 

relatively stable production, particularly from corn. That’s been 

made possible by innovations in production practices and also technological advances. And that’s helped ensure really ample supplies 

for feed for livestock, certainly for the expanding ethanol industry, 

new bio-based products, plastics, and others and a host of other 

uses in the corn industry. 

10

Moreover, investments made by American taxpayers in our nation’s agriculture programs have helped produce a more stable financial environment for production ag. and a brighter future for 

our rural communities. I must emphasize that the farm safety net 

provided in the current Farm Bill is considered a critical component of most producers’ risk management plans. It’s important to 

note that NCGS supported the 2002 Farm Bill for the improvements that it made to our nation’s agriculture policy. In short, the 

2002 Farm Bill implemented the right policy for that time. 

Looking forward though, today’s farm safety net is simply not designed to meet our producers’ long-term risk management needs 

given the dynamic changes that are underway in U.S. ag. NCGA 

has developed a proposal to reform our commodity support programs, changes that would help ensure better protection against 

volatile commodity prices and significant crop losses. And what’s 

really important is it provides those benefits when farmers truly 

need it the most and if we have questions after a while, we can 

delve into more details on that. 

Shift gears over to rural development. NCGA also views commodities support programs to be strongly linked to revitalizing our 

rural communities. We urge Congress to carefully evaluate those 

programs administered by the USDA and Small Business Administration that are better leveraging farm support dollars that facilitate investments and locally-owned enterprises. 

For many years, USDA rural development funds have been made 

available for much needed improvements in public infrastructure. 

Rural broadband, rural electric co-ops are certainly good examples 

of those. These investments to enhance the quality of life in rural 

America coupled with recent initiatives to bring more jobs to communities might be better described as rural economic development. 

While our members’ experience indicates that direct value-added 

producer grants and loan guarantees for renewable fuel projects do 

indeed stimulate economic development generating a wide range of 

benefits that have been outlined by some of the other speakers this 

morning. 

If we are to continue building a more prosperous economy and 

a better quality of life for rural communities, NCGA believes the 

next Farm Bill can serve as an engine of growth for new businesses. Unfortunately we have seen these cost-effective programs 

and other important rural development initiatives in the 2002 

Farm Bill impacted by reduced funding and in a number of cases 

no funding at all. 

One of the most significant success stories for new value-added 

businesses and employment opportunities is the ethanol industry. 

It started in a cottage industry size in 1980, about 175 million gallons and in 2006 it has grown to an excess of 5 billion gallons. And 

what’s really interesting and important about that, this is with 

more than 1.8 billion gallons of that production coming from farmer-owned plants. I think that’s a very significant point. 

For the U.S. economy, the ethanol industry in 2005 spent in excess of $5 billion for raw materials, inputs, goods and services, a 

lot of those coming from rural areas. It was 1.4 billion bushels of 

corn in that same year. That’s a $2.9 billion value directly into the 

checkbooks of producers. 

11

And according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the remainder of spending by the industry for inputs such as—includes chemicals, electricity, natural gas, water, labor, services, and we certainly don’t want to forget does contribute tax revenue from those 

communities as well. 

While we now have the opportunity to advance the growth of domestically-produced renewable fuels and bio-based products with 

forward-looking farm policy, in addition to our proposed reforms of 

the farm safety net, NCGA supports rural development policies 

that encourage farmers to move towards ownership in higher-value 

markets and greater profits beyond the farm gate. 

NCGA’s second task force report on grain belt agriculture concluded that and I quote, ‘‘rural incomes in farm communities will 

benefit if national priorities begin to encourage self-reliance and 

marketplace solutions.’’

Last, but not least, is conservation and stewardship. And that’s 

priority for NCGA as well as agriculture policy promotes the best 

available practices to further improve the environment. Corn growers are certainly concerned with the health and well-being of American citizens and mindful of the need to balance environmental concerns with necessity for long-term profitability. 

We certainly support the use of sound science to set environmental policy and use of voluntary programs to assist farmers in 

meeting and achieving those environmental goals. 

During the last 70 years, there’s actually been fewer acres of 

corn under cultivation than there was 70 plus years ago, but we 

have had almost and 8 to 10 fold increase in the amount of corn 

produced during that same time. It’s not just about growing more 

corn though. It’s about how we grow it and we’re making important 

environmental gains. We’re able to reduce soil erosion. We’re able 

to improve water quality and increase wildlife habitat and still 

produce that size of a crop. Well, we certainly do need to have continuation and a greater emphasis on working lands conservation 

programs that allows us to produce and still take good care of that. 

Madam Chairman, on behalf of NCGA, thank you very much for 

yours and your Committee’s interest in this. I certainly appreciate 

the opportunity to discuss these goals with all of you this morning. 

[The prepared statement of Mark Schwiebert may be found on 

page 65 of the Appendix.]

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. 

Mr. English, I would like to address my first question to you. 

This Committee and the Congress have been looking at different 

ways to see how can we bring down overall energy prices. And it 

is an issue that reigns as a top priority for small businesses. And 

we know that the Farm Bill has a number of programs that affect 

the ability of new members to keep electricity rates down. 

Can you talk to us about the different programs that have been 

successful in helping reduce prices for your members and any of 

these programs that need to be revised or any changes that should 

be made to these programs so that they do accomplish the mission 

that they were intended? 

Mr.ENGLISH. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. Let me 

just say I think this Committee is making significant contribution 

12

just giving us this opportunity to talk about it today and I appreciate that very, very much. 

One thing that I think that we’ve got to understand and keep in 

mind is that at some point we’ve got to come up with a plan. Now 

we’ve got several different agendas, I think that this Congress 

wants to address in a bipartisan manner. One is to reduce carbon 

emissions in this country and deal with climate change. That’s a 

big issue. At the same time, we want to also make sure that we 

keep the lights on, as far as electric power is concerned. And that’s 

no longer a given. And we also want to try to do our best to hold 

down the cost of power and what rates. We also want energy independence. All these things have got to come together and somehow 

we’ve got to resolve this out so that we’ve got a plan. We know 

where we’re moving toward. 

I had a reporter about six weeks ago, Madam Chair, and his solution to dealing with climate change was to simply jack the rates 

up so high that people couldn’t afford to buy power. Now I made 

the response to that, I said any elected official I know of that votes 

for that is going to be committing hari-kiri. That’s basically what 

he’s doing. I can’t imagine going back to a constituent and saying 

by golly we’re going to reduce carbon emissions in this country by 

making this power so expensive you can’t use it and therefore we 

don’t need any more electric power. That puts us right back to the 

dark. 

What I would suggest to you is this, I think we’ve already got 

many programs in place that make a lot of sense and we’re moving 

in the right direction. As a Steering Committee Member of 25 by 

25, they’ve laid out an implementation plan I think that makes a 

lot of sense as to how we can start moving toward relying on domestic fuel produced in rural America, renewable fuel. 

On our side, what we’re looking at right now, in fact, there’s 

going to be a meeting take place among many of our members 

about three weeks from now in talking about how we might be able 

to take all 47 states that we have electric cooperatives, figure out 

where we can be most productive, most effective as far as producing renewable energy and in effect, collectively do that. Let regions of the country that may not be suitable for renewables, make 

contributions and help invest and help bring this about so that in 

effect we’re developing a new industry and we’re able to move that 

power out of those regions into the areas of the country, urban 

areas that need renewable power and where it makes sense and 

helps us depend more on renewable power. 

At the same time, we’ve got to be focused on efficiency and there 

are many steps being taken by many of the utilities and I think 

Congress can certainly do more in this area. Primarily from our 

standpoint the Rural Utility Service is important. The Rural Utility 

Service and the loans that they make cost the federal government 

budget-wise about $25 million a year, $25 million a year for a $4 

billion program. And this is something that is vital as far as dealing with this infrastructure cost that I spoke of earlier where we’ve 

got 42 percent of the infrastructure we’ve got to maintain. We need 

to build transmission. We’re going to have to produce more power 

and certainly the Rural Utility Service, if Congress sees fit to conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 033615 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 G:\CLERK SB\HEARINGS\TRANSCRIPTS\36103.TXT LEANN
13

tinue, can reduce those interest rate costs about 2 percentage 

points. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. English. 

Mr.ENGLISH. Yes, ma’am. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Mr. Buis, I know that the USDA, that 

they have a lot of programs to help farmers farm but none to help 

farmers on the business side. I just would like to ask you would 

you find it helpful for the Small Business Administration to provide 

counseling and technical assistance to your industry to develop 

strategies to better manage the natural risks inherent to farmers? 

Mr.BUIS. Absolutely. I think we would welcome that. You know, 

oftentimes in agriculture we kind of get like everyone else kind of 

wed to one program or wed to one piece of legislation or one department. If you look at what has been happening recently in agriculture, it’s not the Farm Bill issues that are really driving it. It 

was more the energy and tax provisions that provided for renewable energy. I think we need to look at a lot of different ways, because they are small businesses. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Mr. Noonan, obviously the commodity 

title in the Farm Bill will have the biggest impact on wheat growers. Depending on a producer’s needs, some commodity programs 

are a better fit than others. For farmers who grow wheat, it’s direct 

payments. Are there any modifications that your organization is 

seeking in regards to this direct payment? 

Mr.NOONAN. Thanks, Madam Chair. You know, we were running 

around the Hill yesterday trying to get a read on this Farm Bill, 

and there’s a lot going on. It’s very important and a lot of good 

ideas and then again, a lot of new ideas. All of them are probably 

good, but one of the basics like I hit on in my brief discussion there 

was a—there’s some talk about cutting the direct payment. We’re 

definitely not in favor of that. We need to at least maintain the 52 

cent direct payment. Like I said before, it’s got bankability and it 

creates a sure safety net every year. 

Loan deficiency programs and counter-cyclical payments, when 

they kick in, loan deficiency program for us, if the loan deficiency 

is raised, we wouldn’t be against it, but at the same time it encourages us to carry a lot of wheat within storage in low-price years. 

Then we’ve seen in the past that we will have a couple million 

bushels in the State of Oregon carry-over, and then you just get 

into this LDP cycle that is not good for the free market. 

So with that being said, we’re very cautious about LDPs and 

then what we really need—we’re in favor of the direct payments. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Mr. Schwiebert, you mentioned importance of commodity programs as a safety net for farmers. It seems 

that this farm bill will be limited in expanding the various incomes 

of work programs due to budget constraints. If there are little if 

any changes made to the commodity title, what impact will this 

have on corn growers? 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. Certainly we’ve seen a significant change in the 

price structure, but what also brings along with it is increasing 

input costs. Certainly, that has raised and enhanced the risks of 

that. So as to begin to make modifications to what we have experienced in the 2002 Farm Bill, it adds some additional inherent risk 

to that. What we’ve been looking at and proposing - it’s kind of the 

14

gist of our proposal - is what we call a revenue counter-cyclical program. 

So what it’s doing is it’s targeting revenue at the farm level as 

opposed to just price alone. We think provides some benefits because it protects the producer from a variety of things. It could be 

a wild swing in prices. It could be a swing in production or a combination thereof. Because ultimately, it’s revenue that pays the 

bills on the farm. We think that’s a better approach and it also 

tends to be responsible recognizing there are constraints to the federal budget and how many dollars can float agriculture. 

An additional benefit of that you would bring along with that a 

built-in disaster aid program so we’ve been running each year 

about $1.8 billion spent annually on ad hoc disaster aid. Why not 

incorporate that so it would be reliable and so we could plan on 

that looking forward in the future. We think that provides a safety 

net with much smaller holes in the past. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Does Congress need to consider other 

changes to the title, other titles of the Farm Bill to offset new commodity programs? 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. Well, certainly the PAYGO rules are going to 

have a pretty strong impact on that. 

We recognize the need for budget constraints is there. We’re certainly not averse to taking a look and examining those. It’s cases 

where you know the devil really is in the details and to say yes, 

we certainly agree with that, but not knowing the details is pretty 

tough to go out on the limb and make that promise. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Chabot. 

Mr.CHABOT. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Congressman 

English, I’ll probably start with you first here. You had mentioned 

I think by 2030 that we’re going to need to have an additional 40 

percent increase in our access in energy production, etcetera. And 

you also mentioned that some folks have suggested that one of our 

ways of dealing with our need for energy is to dramatically raise 

taxes and I think Tom Friedman of the New York Times and I believe Al Gore as well and some others have sort of in the past advocated that point of view, that we need to just tax it so that it 

makes it even more painful than it is now to buy gas or whatever 

our needs are. 

Would you tell us why that’s not a good idea? 

Mr.ENGLISH. Well, what I was struck by was the fact that I 

thought it was rather noncontroversial to say that you’re trying to 

keep the lights on, and you’re trying to keep the rates down. Now 

that, to me, I didn’t see a whole lot that folks could object to that, 

but I found from this one reporter that it was in fact the case. He 

wasn’t talking about raising taxes. He was just talking about raising rates. And one of his objections was to the Rural Utility Service 

and under the Farm Bill was the fact that it helped us in rural 

America keeping the rates down. Now he ignored completely the 

fact that about 60 percent of all the co-ops have rates already higher than the neighboring investor-owned utility. He didn’t care 

about that. He ignored the fact that we’ve got about half of all the 

electric cooperatives out there in this country serving three quarters of the land mass of this nation, that in fact, today have more 

than the national average as far as people living under the poverty 

15

line. So you’ve got some of the poorest people in this country. His 

deal is the only solution, the only way to deal with the whole question of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions is to raise rates. 

Now I don’t think that’s right and I’d be very surprised if the Congress decided to go down that path. 

Instead, what it’s going to take, it’s going to take every tool that 

we have at hand. It’s going to take renewables. It’s going to take 

more efficiency. It’s going to take technology with regard to coal, 

because we’re going to have to continue to use coal. That’s the reality. MIT is even saying that, that you’re going to have to have 

coal to meet that 40 percent increase we’ve got. We’re going to have 

to have carbon capture and storage and that’s expected to be commercially available where we can incorporate in our power plants 

by the year 2020 and we need to do that. 

We need to also build more nuclear plants. We’re going to have 

to do that. That’s one way we can get at that. In fact, we need 

about three times the number of nuclear plants that we have on 

hand today. We need in plug-in automobiles to help reduce this, 

but you’ve got to have the power for those plug-ins. So we’ve got 

to have more power to do all this and we need distributive generation. We need all this stuff. And I think that’s what I was saying 

that we need a plan here. We’ve got some conflicting objectives that 

we want to get. We want to reduce carbon emissions. We want to 

move toward energy independence. We want to make sure small 

businesses out there that are going to give us that hope of reducing 

our dependence on foreign energy, namely, we’ve got what, 112 ethanol plants out there and about 30 some odd biodiesel plants. 

Those are small businesses. Our rates go through the roof, a big 

bunch of those biodiesel plants and ethanol plants are going under. 

There’s just no way they can make it. 

So somewhere here we’ve got to reject this simplicity that the 

only answer is to raise rates. I guarantee you our rates are going 

to be going up and up to take care of any desires about anybody 

because this is going to be the most expensive power that we have 

to add that we’ve ever had in the history of not only electric coops, but the entire country and the entire industry. So that’s where 

I think all this stuff comes down to. We rely on technology and developing technology and making our investment there, or do we go 

over here and say well, we’ll take a simple rate and then we’ll just 

jack the rates up so high that people have to conserve and they’ll 

have to be more efficient. Now what that does to the economy and 

this nation is it drives into the tank. It destroys rural America. It 

destroys small business and it doesn’t make any sense at all. But 

there are people, believe it or not, that are out there advocating 

that. 

Mr.CHABOT. Thank you. Mr. Buis, and I think I used a lot of my 

time. If I could go to you next. You had mentioned about the very 

positive impact that ethanol has had in the rural community, agriculture, etcetera. Now there’s also the other side to some degree 

that being number one, it takes a lot of energy in order to produce 

ethanol is my understanding as well. And so that’s something that 

has to be dealt with to some degree and in addition to that, obviously, it drives up the price of feeding cattle, for example, and the 

16

consumers at the store when they’re purchasing the food for their 

families, etcetera, it drives those up. So all of this has two sides. 

If you could sort of address that issue, as well? 

Mr.BUIS. I’d be glad to, Congressman. Thank you. Number one, 

on the energy efficiency of ethanol, when this began some 30 some 

years ago, I was working for a United States Senator in Indiana 

who actually chaired the first Alcohol Fuels Commission. And very 

frankly, it was called gasohol. It wasn’t energy efficient. It wasn’t 

economically efficient and truth be known, our real expertise was 

probably backyard stills along the Ohio River on how to even 

produce ethanol. 

But we’ve come a long way since then. Part of it has been public 

policy that’s driven it. But it’s also that investment and technology 

that Glenn just referred to into the industry. Now it’s energy efficient. 

We produce more energy than it takes to produce the ethanol. 

It’s also economically efficient. And I know there’s a lot of critics 

out there. We hear well, this adversely impacts the livestock industry. Well, we’re very sensitive to that. We’re a general commodity 

organization, meaning we have farmers that produce all kinds of 

commodities, and heavy into cattle production. But 105 out of the 

last 120 months corn has traded and this is USDA statistics, at 

below the cost of production. And that means that those people who 

were using corn were basically being subsidized. A lot of people 

look at the commodity title and say oh, look at all that money going 

to those farmers. Well, actually, it was a bastard. The subsidy was 

going to livestock industry. The subsidy was going to consumers. It 

wasn’t necessarily staying in the farmers’ pockets. And they 

weren’t making a profit from the marketplace. Now that’s changed. 

Last year, when ethanol drove prices through the roof, suddenly 

people said well, you’re not—now you’re taking food out of people’s 

mouths and that again is not true. We’re still exporting almost as 

much as we’re using for ethanol in this country and the other component that has to be looked at is how much percentage of that 

total food dollar is actually related to the raw commodity? I read 

where the cereal companies are all raising their prices blaming 

farmers. There’s a penny’s worth of corn in a corn flakes box. Other 

costs, factors out there. 

Mr.CHABOT. They were also blaming the high cost of gas in 

transporting things around too which is clearly—there’s many factors, but—

Mr.BUIS. Sure, if I might add though, whenever they raise those 

prices, when corn comes back down, you won’t see corn flakes coming back down. It just doesn’t happen. They stay up. So that direct 

relationship and if you look over, of course, the last 20 years, the 

farmers’ share of that food dollar continues to shrink. We’re paying 

as consumers the best deal of anyone in the world, less than 10 

percent of our expendable income for food. 

Mr.CHABOT. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, in the interest 

of the others on the panel, I will yield back. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Mr. Braley. 

Mr.BRAYLEY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Ranking 

Member Chabot. I think this is a very important hearing. The 

Farm Bill used to be the FFA, the Food and Fiber for America Bill. 

17

And now it’s more realistically called the FFFA, Food, Fiber, and 

Fuels for America. And I think that’s a very significant change because a lot of us really saw the food and fiber as part of the benign 

things that showed up on our tables every day. We didn’t really 

give it a lot of thought, but now that we’ve injected the fuel component, we’ve got a lot more volatility and a lot of enthusiasm for 

small business owners. 

I want to focus more on something that doesn’t get as much attention as the fuel component and that’s the ag. based chemical 

and industrial products component of where we go when next generation innovation from some of the things we’ve been talking 

about. 

And Mr. Schwiebert, I grew up in the small town of Brooklyn. 

I think you’ve got some distance relatives living there. 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. There are Schwieberts transplanted. 

Mr.BRAYLEY. I’m familiar with the name. Congressman English, 

I may—I think I can say in fairly good confidence, I am the only 

Member sitting up here who is a member of a rural electric cooperative. My brother worked for an REC and during the ice storms of 

this spring when we had 350,000 people in Iowa without power, 

your members and the people who work for those cooperatives did 

outstanding work. 

But to give you some sense of what I’d like the panel to talk 

about, I spent the last week on the renewable energy tour of my 

District. I went to the U.S. Bioenergy ethanol plant that’s being 

built right now near Dyersville, Iowa. I toured the Hawkeye Renewables ethanol plant near Fairbank which has been up and running and doing great things. And then I got a much different perspective by touring the ADM facility in Clinton, Iowa and that’s 

where they are building the first PHA plant in the country that’s 

going to use wet starch from a wet corn mill to make natural plastics that are biodegradable, environmentally sound, and also will 

give rise to a whole new generation of small business opportunity 

to compete with petroleum-based plastics. 

I also have a small utility in my District that came up with an 

innovation to replace lubricants in electric generators that used to 

be contaminated with PCBs with a soy-based biodiesel type of lubricant. So there’s a lot of exciting things going on that don’t get 

the attention that renewable fuels do and I’d like all of you to comment on what you see your members doing in the next five years 

to benefit us? 

Mr.ENGLISH. Well, I think that’s exactly right and what you’re 

talking about is using that in the transformers with the oil from 

soybeans. That’s something that’s certainly being supported and 

looked at now. I know the Rural Utility Service is giving that a 

look as well as to whether we get in there. I think there are a few 

technical issues that still remain to be dealt with on that, but that 

makes a lot of sense and moving in that direction. 

And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. If we can start laying 

this thing out and get a plan as to where we’re going instead of 

this kind of skipping around haphazardly a little here and a little 

there and focus our resources and our attention, and that’s what 

I find so exciting about the fact that we’ve got so many of our members who want to come together and invest in one great bit naVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 033615 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 G:\CLERK SB\HEARINGS\TRANSCRIPTS\36103.TXT LEANN
18

tional entity to produce renewable electricity for not just for the 

local area, but for the country. And to really go into this on the 

basis that it is an effort to, in fact, provide that kind of renewable 

power that this country needs. And it fits right in. I know with 

what many of the farmer organizations have been trying to do, 

many of our farmers trying to do, and every one of them as you 

well know, those are all local folks that own those electric cooperatives. If they have the chance to do that, that it also has an opportunity to bring some revenue to the people back home, if the Congress will give us that chance. 

We’ve got to tweak the laws, make a few adjustments here, to 

make that kind of a plan and to move that forward, but it’s also 

a way in which we can minimize those rate increases. They’re 

going to go up, but we want to minimize that and have as little 

impact on this economy and certainly on small business and people 

in rural—living in rural America as we can. 

Mr.BUIS. Thank you, Congressman, for that question because I 

think it sort of defines rural America. There’s a lot of innovation 

and creativity out there. It’s often having the programs and the 

funding and the incentives to take part in it. As we do this Farm 

Bill, one of the titles and I know Mr. English is very familiar with 

in his days in the House Ag. Committee, it often gets overlooked 

and shortchanged, it’s research. Research and the technology and 

development. You know, corn deicer, for example, you can use on 

the roads. You can use it in the airport runways. Those type of 

products don’t just happen. It takes some serious research. And 

federal research dollars usually are the first cut. 

You can look at any budget reconciliation package that’s gone 

through this Congress and those are easier because the constituency often is in the future, not in the present and I think we really 

have to focus on that in this Farm Bill, especially with the limited 

dollars. 

Mr.NOONAN. Well, in Oregon, one of the things we’ve got going 

right is now the Treasure Valley Renewable Energy and what it’s 

doing, basically, is taking barley and what and it’s just under process right now, and the byproducts are actually worth more than the 

ethanol that’s produced. Using byproduct as an edible for like these 

food bars and stuff, so that’s a perfect opportunity where the byproducts actually is what you’re after. 

Another thing that’s been happening is with use of canola meal 

and organic production of canola and using the canola oil as organic canola oil for edible uses. So there’s a lot of things being 

stemmed here with all this discussion going on. 

The other thing that I’d like to hit on is you know a molecule 

is a molecule and with that being said anything that’s oil based can 

also come from a plant. So we just hit the tip of the iceberg in what 

can really happen and with the ingenuity out in the countryside 

and the work ethic that’s out there, I think you’ll see a lot of the 

things that you’re seeing at your home and we’ve only just touched 

the tip. It’s going to be a lot about ethanol, but it’s going to be a 

lot about the things we’re going to make from the byproducts. So 

I’ve got to agree with you. 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. Thank you for that question as well. Some examples you can see right in front of us is you can take polylactic 

19

acid which is derived from corn starch and make drinking glasses 

as clear as this, use those, put those in a compost pile. They degrade to carbon dioxide and return to the soil to grow corn again. 

You can use it to make the carpet on this floor, even the clothes 

that you and I wear. 

What we’re seeing today with fuel grade alcohol is the first generation of uses of renewable products, in this case corn, wheat, soybeans, other products as well, to launch us down a road of replacing our complete dependence on petroleum-based industrial building components to those from bio-based products. Kind of going 

from a petroleum to a carbohydrate-based economy for perhaps 

that stated as well. 

So we’re on the first generation of that. The technological advances, the advances in biotechnology are certainly driving us 

down that road rather quickly. Sometimes it’s almost surprising me 

how rapidly that’s happening. But don’t see today as we’ve reached 

the goal and we can set back and rest on those laurels. It’s just 

barely begun. So I think the future is very bright. I think it positions rural American agriculture to certainly be not just a contributor of food and fiber, but also a strategic national advantage in 

providing energy and also the basic components for our industrial 

processes. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Time has expired. And now I’ll recognize Ms. Fallin. 

Ms.FALLIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman, it’s a pleasure to be 

here with you today and it’s always good to see my fellow Oklahoman, Congressman English. Good to have you here and appreciate 

you coming and appreciate the good job you’re doing and it’s good 

to see you other gentlemen too. 

I’m just sitting here thinking about the current Farm Bill that 

we’re getting ready to take up and listening to the debate and I 

came in a little bit late, but and thinking about the issues that 

you’ve been talking about at hand. Can you tell me and just reflecting back on the past, on the last Farm Bill that we had, I think 

it’s always helpful for us to look at the good parts of the bill that 

we passed, maybe some challenges that were there and some opportunities that we might have in the upcoming bill. But what are 

some things that you saw in the last Farm Bill that you might 

think we should definitely not do, some things that were not helpful or some issues that became a challenge to your various industries? 

No one wants to answer that one. 

Mr.BUIS. Well, there are a couple of things that I think we have 

to take a look at and one thing that we’ve recommended is shifting 

the direct payments to the counter-cyclical payments. We have high 

corn prices right now. We have high wheat prices. We have higher—I learned a long time ago, never say they’re high. They’re never 

high enough to a farmer, but it’s tough to justify to Congress and 

anyone else paying a farmer when they’ve got a high price. And 

conversely, we all know prices don’t stay high forever and they will 

come down and when they come down having that safety net that 

really kicks in when you need it. 

So we have suggested a shift in how you fund that. And base it 

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cause if you really are talking about a safety net, the one gaping 

hole in the whole last Farm Bill is every farmer got caught with 

rising input costs that went through the roof. Agriculture is very 

dependent upon energy, not just the fuel, but the fertilizer, even 

the equipment is very energy intensive to produce. 

And the safety net when chosen by a price, whether it’s a direct 

payment or a loan rate, doesn’t move with that. And we were fortunate that last summer commodity prices went up because the rising input costs for farmers because energy was really hurting, we 

can’t pass on those costs. We’re price takers, not price makers. And 

you know, the old line is you buy retail, sell wholesale and pay 

freight both ways. Well, we also pay a fuel surcharge both ways 

and that’s tough to pass on. 

Mr.ENGLISH. One that I raise with you that it’s not something 

that the Congress has allowed, but is happening, we had back—I’m 

going way back now. This is ancient history to all you all. Back in 

1987, the Agriculture Committee was faced with a situation as far 

as rural development was concerned we had no money. There was 

no money that was available. We had very tight budgets and it was 

very difficult during that time and one of the areas that got cut 

back substantially was in rural development. So the question is 

well, what do you do about rural development? How do you help 

in rural development? 

And one of the ways that we did this was that we started quite 

frankly tasking some of the electric cooperatives to get involved in 

this to help out in this and finally developed a program which is 

now known as the REDLEG program in which electric cooperatives 

would, in fact, pay back their loans early and that would go into 

a fund and then the local electric cooperatives could make that 

available for local business loans to help small businesses, small industries come into those areas. And that’s been a very productive 

program, not a big program. It isn’t massive, but it is a way in 

which we could achieve that and that’s kind of the back door way 

of trying to come up with the money to be able to do something out 

there. 

Well, what’s happened here in the last couple of years is that the 

Department of Agriculture has started reaching into that fund and 

taking that money and using it for other purposes, using it for 

other purposes. $200 million has been taken out of that fund and 

used for other purposes. And that’s wrong. 

And we’re hopeful that Congress will speak out on that and put 

a stop to that kind of practice to allowing that sort of thing to happen. But that’s not something that the Farm Bill allowed last time. 

I guess this is another one of those things and I know the frustration that each of you have is that seems like folks always figure 

out some way to do something different than what we intended 

when we passed the legislation. You get that kind of frustration. 

You leave any little inch there, there’s always somebody who is 

going to figure out an angle to get after it and this is one of those 

cases and it’s unfortunate. 

Mr.NOONAN. Well, I keep going back to direct payments and 

they’re very important to us. One thing was that we were pretty 

much left out of the LDP program in the counter-cyclical in the 

2002. Our target price was set so low and partially that was beVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 033615 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 G:\CLERK SB\HEARINGS\TRANSCRIPTS\36103.TXT LEANN
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cause we didn’t want an oversupply. Storing grain doesn’t create a 

free market. And when the target price gets too high what happens 

is and you drop, you get LDPs and a lot of time you’re storing up 

grain to sell later. And we’re just—we’re of the mindset if we have 

moving our grain crop every year it’s going to create opportunity 

in the free market. 

With that being said, you start talking about a safety net. And 

if we want to talk about cost of production, a real direct payment 

for recourse that would be equal with our low target price right 

now would be a $1.19 direct payment for the cost of production that 

you can look and that’s exactly what we should have. Instead, we’re 

getting 52 cents. 

So we’re kind of left out in some of the Farm Bill. I think one 

thing that I urge you guys, all Congress to do, is to make sure we 

get a fair shake this time, because we really were left out a lot of 

it. We keep going back to the direct payment because it’s something again that’s bankable in rural America that counts. Yes, you 

pay it every year, but you know when you’re budgeting, you know 

what it’s going to cost. It isn’t going to be like a counter-cyclical or 

an LDP. It’s going to be differing depending on market years. You 

can set a straight line that you can both budget and count on our 

end. 

And then the other last thing is full funding of the Conservation 

Security Program. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Okay, time has expired. IF you want to 

add, to answer a question, please do it in a short answer. 

Mr.SCHWIEBERT. I’ll be as brief as possible. One conflicting issue 

is you’ve got disaster aid, ad hoc disaster aid kicks in about every 

year. You’ve also got a pretty significant heavily subsidized crop insurance industry as it pertains to corn growers, sometimes that’s 

that cross-purposes. To do both kind of undermines, one undermines the other. We’ve had some pretty good corn crops in the last 

number of years, some excellent production. Had some low prices 

with that. A lot of farmers, even though they had, you know, pretty 

good income levels from that, we’re still able to receive a pretty 

large loan deficiency payment because of the low prices. 

Well, you know, you received generous benefits, and we’re not 

complaining about that one bit, but it was times such as in a year 

where it wasn’t a crucial need. What we’re proposing in our plan 

really targets that to be delivered when crops are short, you know, 

yields are down and prices lower, or a combination thereof. So I 

think it would be a more efficient use of taxpayer dollars. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. Ms. Clarke? 

Ms.CLARKE. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member Chabot, for holding this hearing on the Farm Bill. 

We’re moving from Brooklyn, Iowa to Brooklyn, New York, so I just 

want to put that in perspective for you. As you know, Madam 

Chair, New York City has made great strides in maximizing sensibility to federal food stamp programs for eligible New Yorkers. But 

many potentially eligible people have not yet enrolled. 

I believe that Congress must take the next logical step to maximize the participation of small farmers in the program by modifying some of the guidelines that will bridge the gap between family farmers and low-income families. We need policies that promote 

22

a food system that is more sympathetic to the health needs of 

under-served communities around America, including support for 

market incentives and institutional procurement policies that favor 

healthy food, a seamless flow, if you will, of produce from small 

farms to urban consumers with the real meaningful, sustainable, 

expansion of the marketplace. 

The 2007 Farm Bill should support an increase in food stamp 

benefits to help more poor and low-income families to buy healthy 

foods, improve outreach and efficiency in the food stamp delivery 

as well as nutritional education. 

We must expand the scope and size of the USDA Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program, to about $60.5 million 

annually mandatory spending and add specific uses of fund in the 

flowing new program area into funding new program areas to meet 

the urgent need to supply healthy local foods to under-served markets. We must also expand farmers’ market nutrition programs to 

2002 authorized funding level of $25 million and authorize these 

farmers’ markets to be certified for WIC fruit and vegetable vendor 

status to give greater opportunities for seniors, nutritionally at risk 

women, and children to buy fresh, local, healthy produced foods. 

Having said all of that, I would like to raise a question with you, 

gentlemen. Over the past 15 years, most states have switched from 

pay-for-coupons for food stamps to debit cards, thereby removing 

the stigma of redemption at the checkout counter. As of last year, 

there were nine farmers markets in New York City that used EBT. 

The WIC program, which still uses paper, will mostly do the same. 

Most small farmers, of course, don’t take plastic and have seen 

their sales plummet with the switch from paper. 

Without the expansion of the EBT card readers in rural and 

urban areas, small farmers fear that they will lose the bulk of 

Farm Bill that they get now and be shut out of those hundreds of 

millions of dollars. How can Congress help both small farmers and 

people struggling to feed themselves and their families? 

Mr.ENGLISH. Well, I understand where you are coming from, but 

of course a lot of those folks that you are talking about through the 

food stamp program that we have had in the past, WIC programs, 

and others, live in rural America. The point that I was making earlier, an awful lot of folks living below the poverty are living it in 

rural America and have those kind of challenges and difficulties, no 

question about it. As far as making those improvements, I know 

that the Agriculture Committee historically has been very mindful 

of that, and believe it or not we’ve had Members of Congress from 

Brooklyn on the Agriculture Committee. I was thinking of Fred 

Richmond back years ago who was very active about that and Shirley Chisholm as well. They were very active and very vocal about 

that and I think certainly helped to keep that as a major part of 

the Farm Bill and did a great job. 

I can’t help but given a little bit of an opportunity here, go back 

to this point. There are some real problems out there, and that’s 

the reason why I keep harping on this rate thing. It’s going to be 

so important for so many of those folks that are certainly living in 

our areas, but you’re going to have the same thing in New York 

City, is this rate issue and if it gets out of hand, it’s going to do 

great damage. 

23

I had one of the directors, who is a manager of an local electric 

co-op in Arkansas last month who was telling about the fact he had 

this lady who called him up, an elderly lady, and she was talking 

about the fact that she thought she had finally figured out how she 

was going to be able to pay her electric bill. She was having a real 

difficulty in paying her electric bill. As I’ve mentioned, a lot of electric co-ops, their rates are higher just because we don’t have many 

people living out there to bear that burden on the infrastructure. 

It came down to the way that she finally figured out how to do 

this was she was only going to take her medication every other 

day. Now, that’s with today’s rates. That’s what scares the daylights out of me, quite frankly, is that if we don’t get a plan together to figure out how we’re going to deal with energy independence, climate change, and recognizing the fact that we’ve got to use 

all the tools, and if these folks—and we’ve got them in this town, 

who see this as just simply well, we’ll just jack it up. It’s a supply 

and demand thing. That could do great damage. So I’m hopefully 

we can help you on that. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Time is expired. We’re going to be having votes soon, so I would like to recognize Mr. Sestak. 

Mr.SESTAK. Thanks, Madam Chair. I just have one question, Mr. 

Buis, and maybe one comment to what you’ve said, Congressman 

English. You had mentioned briefly and had spoken about to build 

upon the Congresswoman’s comments. It seems to be more desire 

in suburban and urban areas for access to fresh foods. Could you 

comment upon the potential economic impact that this might attend for the future. But also, what is it in the Farm Bill—you’ve 

mentioned in your written testimony, country of origin. But is 

there more that needs to be done? I mean, I can remember—of 

course, in Philadelphia, always going down to the wholesale market 

there—Ruben Amer, or Carmen Zirisky. I can still remember my 

pop saying we’re going into Ruben. So it was always to my mind 

this desire to have this type of access. Is there more that can be 

done in the Farm Bill to open that part up? 

Mr.BUIS. Absolutely, Congressman. You know, we sort of stumbled on this. Traditionally, fresh local food was the way that our 

food was distributed. We got beyond that, and now how do we get 

back to it? I think you’re going to have to see some serious investment in both federal dollars to help people with the delivery and 

the marketing structure. You know, that’s an obstacle for small 

farmers. They literally have to haul that product up there. There 

is no ready-made distribution program. 

I also think we need to adopt the type of policies as the Congresswoman just mentioned to make that food accessible to all federal nutrition programs, whether it is school lunches and school 

breakfasts or the WIC program or any of those. Federal policy will 

help drive it. Right now it has been a consumer thing on the high 

end. They are willing to open their check books to pay for quality, 

and you know people of all means ought to have access to that 

quality. It helps our producers. 

Mr.SESTAK. Growing up, because we were eight kids, and my father worked the Philadelphia Shipyard, so this was the wholesale 

and we used to go in the back gate. But we did it because it was 

low prices, but there’s now this desire on the higher end. I just was 

24

curious if there was any follow-on and what tools might help that 

market, because it seems to just—you see these more and more. 

Because of time, also, one comment, Mr. Congressman. 

I think your comments are so spot on, and yet I think they actually undersell the challenge. I mean, I remember sitting down with 

an investor one time a few months ago who has done a lot of research, and if we want to bring China, and China does want to 

come up to the Ozzie and Harriet level of 1965—a car in the driveway, a dishwasher, a decent home. All the energy that we produced 

this year in this world would be needed times ten just to get into 

the 1965 standard of living of the United States. They want to go 

there. 

I think back in the military, you know, the Internet really did 

come from somewhere. It came from the DARPA program, the defense over there in the Pentagon. So whomever made the comment 

that we really do need the S&T and the R&D to get us out there. 

But there is also another element missing. We truly have to, as you 

so well said, the environment and the energy approach, strategically, which Congress doesn’t do well. But the transportation, if 

that is imbedded in also, and we’re patch working a broken system 

that we built after World War II. 

You just take what we’re doing on our airports. All planes into 

Philadelphia come from 500—50 percent of all planes come from 

500 miles away. Thirty percent of them come from 200 miles away. 

Well, why are we trying to expand that airport? Why don’t we just 

put a bullet train? There is so much to be done in this area. We 

are nibbling at the edges. I am just very taken by your comments. 

I’m sorry to go on that. Thank you. 

Mr.ENGLISH. I’ll just say amen. 

(Laughter.) 

Mr.ENGLISH. You’re right on and the one question I think we’ve 

got as we take on these challenges is the question of whether Congress was going to sit on the fence and play Monday morning quarterback as to what ought to be done or whether Congress is going 

to join in and we get a partnership on this thing and deal and engage in these programs. We desperately need the Congress to get 

down with us and to form a partnership and move forward and 

solve these problems and take care of all these needs. 

Thank you. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Any other? Yes. 

Mr.NOONAN. I’d just like to add one thing to the Congresswoman 

from Brooklyn. You hit something right on the head. Young farmers trying to enter the market right now, there’s so many dollars 

it takes to get into it. One way of helping would be the Farm Service Agency, they’ve got a low cap on entry for farmers. I think it’s 

a $220,000. Well, with land values and just the cost of production, 

it would be nice to see that raised up for the opportunities so you 

have the infrastructure. They can go get the financing they need 

to get started. 

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Okay, well, this has been a fascinating 

hearing and I want to thank all the witnesses. The only thing I 

would like to add is I have five farmer markets in my District and 

one of them is in a housing development project and you have to 

see the experience that these young kids are having, cultivating 

25

and even going into upstate farms and gaining from that experience. Crime activity has been going down. These young kids are 

unbelievable. They are so fascinated to see the interconnection that 

exists between access to quality foods and obesity issue that we 

have been dealing with. 

So I do believe that there is a great opportunity here to bridge 

the gap between rural and urban America and I hope that in a 

comprehensive way it’s addressed in this Farm Bill. 

I will recognize Mr. Gohmert. 

Mr.GOHMERT. Thank you, Madam Chair and I really appreciate 

that. I’ll be very quick, very brief here, but we’ve got an on-going 

problem right now in my District. Meetings are going on this week 

in some of the rural areas of East Texas. I think there are maybe 

200 FSA offices in Texas over that, and anyway, we’ve got a whole 

slew of offices being closed in East Texas where I am. And I would 

just like very quickly to ask what’s the role of the Farm Service 

Administration within your organization and what role do you see 

them playing? Very, very briefly, if I could get a response. 

Mr.BUIS. Well, Congressman, the role of the Farm Service Agency is really important to rural America because that’s the people 

that deliver whatever federal farm program Congress comes up 

with. It’s also the people that administer disaster assistance. The 

folks live and work locally. They understand farmers. They know 

who’s doing the right things and who is doing the wrong things. 

And it’s a good system. I’m really concerned and we’re very much 

opposed to these attempts that pop up about every four or five 

years to reduce the number of Farm Service Agency offices in 

states. Number one, besides delivering the service, it’s oftentimes 

the biggest economic attraction in that local community. It draws 

people to town that helps the other businesses in town. But they 

do a good job and they do a great job at delivery of federal farm 

programs and we’re opposed to their closing. 

Mr.GOHMERT. Thank you and I couldn’t agree with you more. 

That’s my understanding. And in fact, one of my counties, Shelby 

County, they tell me produces more chicken fryers than any other 

county in the country and although what I was presented shows 

that they may have the second highest rate, they’re very, very 

rural, they may have the second highest farm loan rate through 

FSA. All that the Texas FSA director and president or the chairman wanted to talk about is how it has one of the lowest commodity program rates. And anyway, so they’re closing the office 

and saying we’re going to consolidate it. But they also—it said they 

had tried to advertise and nobody was interested. I thought we had 

an agreement they would readvertise because I was told there was 

somebody that would take that, who would be perfect. And I 

thought we had an agreement and then instead, we find out they’re 

closing three more offices in my District. And these are people that 

are feeding America with chickens and without the assistance, 

they’re not going to be in business. And so anyway, I would appreciate any help I could get from you and I will give you any help 

I can to help make sure that America keeps eating good food and 

we help those get it to us who are really doing the work. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

26

ChairwomanVELA ́ ZQUEZ. Sure. And with that I ask unanimous 

consent that Members have five legislative days to enter statements into the record without objection. So ordered. This hearing 

is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]

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