Monday, July 30, 2001

Graves Pushes for Greater
Loan Rate Assistance for Farmers
Measure Improves Reliability and Stability in Farm Economy

(Washington, DC) Congressman Sam Graves voted to support the bi-partisan Farm Bill in the House Agriculture Committee after months of negotiations. This year's Farm Bill, H.R. 2646, will take the place of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill that is set to expire next year.

"When we started to see the specific numbers and details in Committee, I was very concerned the loan rates that the new Farm Bill was setting were too low," said Graves. Farmers depend on low-interest loans to allow them to hold their commodities until market prices increase. It was a real battle within the Committee to insure that these loan rates were adequate to assist our farmers."

"Overall, I am pleased with our first effort at constructing a new Farm Bill that will provide greater predictability and stability to our farm economy," said Graves. Rather than depend on emergency appropriations from Congress every year, farmers under the new Farm Bill proposal will receive assistance in tough years automatically.

"This first draft does a good job at maintaining the programs that farmers like the most-such as the flexibility to plant whatever crop they choose-while improving those that simply were not working in years' past. Providing a mechanism that will assist our family farmers when crop prices decline dramatically was a priority to the Committee. Our family farmers simply cannot make it alone with two-dollar corn and five-dollar soybeans," said Graves.

In addition to creating an automatic mechanism for supporting farmers in tough years, the new Farm Bill will increase incentives to farmers to improve conservation practices on their farms. "We increased opportunities to participate in soil and water conservation programs by more than 75 percent to insure that our farmers have the tools necessary to continue providing an abundant and safe food supply while protecting our natural resources and water supply at the same time," said Graves.

Unlike the last Farm Bill, this year's legislation will place an emphasis on trade promotion and overseas marketing. "Our farmers desperately need new markets to sell their commodities. Foreign nations are simply outspending us around the globe promoting their crops over American commodities. I am pleased that this bill will dramatically increase funding to promote our products overseas," said Graves.
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"Not only is this legislation important to our nation's farmers, it will have a significant impact on all of our rural areas. We added to this year's bill several new initiatives that will provide assistance to rural American's who need clean drinking water, high-speed internet access, and regional planning support. At the same time, we increased funding for our Value Added Grants Program to assist farmers who wish to start-up value added processing facilities such as ethanol and soybean-crushing facilities," stated Graves.