Richmond Daily Journal - July 10, 2010
As I traveled throughout the 8th District during this week’s district work period, I was proud to see the beautiful farm fields of our district. My travels took me by cotton fields, peach orchards; crops used for the production of biofuels, beautiful stands of corn, and livestock operations. I was reminded of the words that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison 'I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.' The founding fathers certainly knew the importance of agriculture to help build their young nation, and its ability to sustain it in the long term.

Agriculture is alive and well in North Carolina and is the state's number one industry responsible for over $70 Billion in economic activity and just under one-fifth of our jobs. North Carolina is one of the top states in the production of tobacco, cotton, soybeans, poultry and hogs. While we continue to be a leader in these traditional commodities, North Carolina has quickly become the nation’s third most diverse agriculture economy.

As a member of the House Agriculture Committee, I am proud to represent the 8th District's agriculture community. The chief legislative mandate of the Agriculture Committee is to oversee the nation’s Agriculture and Rural Policy, the majority of these policy decisions fall within the Farm Bill. It is important to remember that the Farm Bill is not just a price-support system for farmers, but an investment in rural America and the country as a whole. The Farm Bill has strong and wide-ranging rural development programs that strengthen our rural areas, foreign agriculture and market access programs that provide our nation’s bounty to the world, and a nutrition title that feeds millions of hungry children.

While the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently administering the programs refined or created in the 2008 Farm Bill, we on the Agriculture Committee are currently starting the process of writing the 2012 Farm Bill. The first step in this process is to gather information from farmers across the country by holding field hearings pertaining to the effectiveness of current programs and to determine what changes need to be made to federal food and farm policy. I was very pleased that the Agriculture Committee chose to hold one of its field hearings in Fayetteville just a few weeks ago.

The Farm Bill often affects the various regions of our country in very different ways. While certain programs may work well for farmers in the West or Midwest, those same programs may not be as effective in the South—and vice-versa. I was very pleased that at the Field Hearing in Fayetteville, a diverse group of panelists from across the state, many from the 8th District, provided the Committee with a Southern agriculture perspective. I am confident that the views of these North Carolinians will enhance the next Farm Bill and allow it to work even better for our area.

One constant theme heard throughout the field hearings was that a working safety net for producers needs to be kept in place. I completely agree that it is important to provide agriculture producers with a proper safety net. It is vital to our national security that we be able to produce our own food. If our farm economy isn't protected, our country isn't protected.

I believe that farmers were our nation’s first environmentalists, and I believe that they are truly great stewards of the land; after all they depend more on the environment and the land than any other industry. The Farm Bill has a robust focus on conservation, and our farmers constantly work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) within USDA on a daily basis.

One of the programs discussed at the field hearing was the Environmental Quality Incentives Program commonly referred to as EQIP. EQIP is a voluntary conservation program that provides financial and technical assistance to farmers and ranchers who face threats to soil, water, air, and related natural resources on their land; the NRCS develops contracts with agricultural producers to implement conservation practices to address environmental natural resource problems. Many producers across the 8th District take part in the EQIP program and employ environmentally sound practices that benefit the producer, their crops and animals, and the community as a whole.

Agriculture is cutting edge. Right here in the 8th District, we are home to the NC Research Campus which is soon to be home to a USDA Nutrition Research Center. The nutrition research done in Kannapolis at the Research Campus will have effects worldwide.

I am a big supporter of renewable energy and believe that 8th District farmers can play a big part in producing this bio-energy. In fact, the first commercial ethanol plant in North Carolina is in the 8th District, and I hosted a tour of that facility during the 8th District Biofuels Summit earlier this year.

While the 2008 Farm Bill extended and expanded many renewable energy programs, implementation has been slow. At many of the field hearings, producers have stated that the programs in the Farm Bill are sound, but they are frustrated with both the delays in implementation and the lack of funding that leaves many willing participants out of programs. These delays and funding constraints are definitely problems, and we on the Agriculture Committee have been working with USDA to make sure that these programs are implemented and administered properly. The current economic situation and budget constraints are definitely hurdles to finding funding for many of these programs, but if we want to wean ourselves from foreign oil, we must find funding in the 2012 Farm Bill. I am committed to this cause.

The testimony presented at the Fayetteville field hearing will be a valuable asset to members of the Agriculture committee as we draft the 2012 Farm Bill. I will continue to work to protect our nation’s farmers and rural America by supporting programs and policies that work and fighting to change or repeal those that threaten our farms and rural way of life. It is imperative that we pass food and farm policy that provides those who feed us, and an ever-growing world, with a strong safety net and judiciously invests in our rural areas.

It has been well over 200 years since Jefferson penned those words to Madison, yet they ring just as true today as they did then.