Emergency Conservation Program Improvement Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1011.

Last month, back-to-back Kona Low storms brought catastrophic flooding to our islands. In the span of just a few days, our State was inundated with more than 2 trillion gallons of water. Some areas received over 36 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, far exceeding what scientists expected in a once-in-a-thousand-year storm event.

More than 200 people needed emergency rescue--some being picked up with excavators and farm equipment to be able to get away from the floods. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed. Over 100,000 people throughout our islands lost power for an extended period of time. Some of our ``seniors''; ``kupuna'' were trapped in their homes without food or electricity for days at a time.

While people and businesses across our State face a tough road toward recovery, our farmers have had an especially difficult challenge. Over the last 3 weeks, I have walked through farms and fields in my district and witnessed the devastation firsthand.

From Waialua and the North Shore through Koolauloa, Wailuku, and upcountry Maui, across Molokai, and in Kona, I saw flooded fields, washed-out topsoil, collapsed roads, culverts completely blown apart by flooding, ruined farm equipment, crops dying in the fields, and animals stuck in mud. I saw entire seasons of crops wiped out, and real questions as to when their next harvest will be still remain unanswered.

Early estimates put the damage across Hawaii's farms at nearly $70 million and counting. One in three farmers across our State was negatively impacted by the storms.

Our farmers and ranchers are resilient, tough, and proud. They will come out on the other side, but it is going to take real, sustained support to get them there. That is why this bill is so important.

This isn't the first time, sadly, that our farmers experienced such tragedy. Farmers in my specific district deal with some of the most relentless climate pressures and diverse natural disasters anywhere in this country--wildfires, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, landslides, and floods caused by increasingly powerful Kona low storms.

Each disaster we face chips away at our ability to grow our own food in an island State where we import 80 to 90 percent of the food that we consume. In a place as remote and geographically isolated as Hawaii, food security is fragile.

As we know, food security is also our national and State security, as well. Every farm that we lose, every farmer who decides that he is just going to give up after this last disaster, makes it more difficult for us to feed ourselves.

USDA disaster assistance programs like the ones we are talking about today, ECP and the forest restoration program, play a critical role in helping our farmers not just recover but to rebuild stronger and more resilient. I am grateful to the FSA, the NRCS, and the Rural Development offices in Hawaii that are already working to enroll storm- impacted farmers and get help out the door.

Let me be clear: USDA programs also work only if they have the funding and staff to deliver them. The President's budget proposes slashing USDA by nearly 20 percent and eliminating more than a quarter of Farm Service Agency staff. I need those people in our farms and fields helping them to make it through one more disaster, one more storm. This is the wrong decision if we are looking to pass bills like this and, at the same time, slash funding and the staff that we need to get that funding out the door.

When farmers are facing millions of dollars in losses, they cannot risk delays caused by hollowed-out agencies. We need USDA to be fully resourced and ready to respond.

I also want to be honest about the long-term challenges we face, not just in Hawaii but across the country. Climate change is real, and intense storms, more destructive wildfires than we have ever seen in our lifetimes, prolonged droughts, and extreme weather events of every single kind will continue to increase in frequency and intensity.

Farmers and ranchers are on the front lines of that reality, and our Federal programs must be designed to help them meet and overcome these challenges.

The Emergency Conservation Program Improvement Act of 2025 would take important steps to ensure disaster assistance programs are responsive to the needs of our producers by providing more flexible, upfront cost- sharing payments. This will help farmers and foresters to begin rebuilding immediately after a disaster rather than waiting on reimbursements they simply cannot afford upfront.

Most farmers in Hawaii are small, mom-and-pop, family operations. When a disaster hits, they don't always have the cash on hand to pay tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in recovery costs while they wait months for reimbursements from the Federal Government. That is not how their finances work. Frankly, it is not reasonable to ask them to make that kind of investment upfront for people who have lost everything.

By expanding advanced cost-share payments and extending upfront assistance for select programs, this bill would make sure our farmers can access the help that they need quickly enough to actually make a meaningful difference--not after the season is lost and the crops gone, not after they have had to walk away from most of their livelihoods, seen it washed away in a disaster, but right when they need it most.

I thank my colleague Representative Letlow for introducing this urgently needed, bipartisan legislation. I look forward to working together to strengthen USDA disaster assistance programs so that we can meet the needs of our farmers today and help them prepare for the challenges they will encounter tomorrow.

I thank my colleagues for their support, specifically my colleague from Louisiana, on behalf of the farmers, ranchers, and forestry caretakers in my State. This bill is important, and I am so glad that she brought it forward.

Before we vote, I want my colleagues to see what I saw. I stood in a field where 20,000 saplings ready to be planted drowned before they ever had a chance to grow. I saw thousands of coffee trees lost, including heritage trees planted by the original owners generations ago, gone in a single storm. I saw banana fields buried in water and silt. I saw fruit contaminated and roots rotting in the ground. I saw livestock lost, mature animals and their young, newly born, swept away, with only empty pens left.

Even where crops are still standing, farmers don't know if they are safe. They are unsure of what flood waters carried into their soil and are unsure if their land will produce food again next season or the season after that.

This is not just damage. This is devastation. These are livelihoods hanging in the balance.

Farmers told me how they tried to fight back, saving seedlings by hand, rushing to harvest whatever they could before it was gone, and building up pens in the middle of the storm just to keep their animals from drowning.

These aren't just fields as we all know here. These are fields that feed families. For some, these are fields that are also their homes, and now they are asking a simple question: Can we recover?

Make no mistake, Hawaii needs help now, but farmers in every State and district are one disaster away from asking those same questions because disasters don't discriminate.

While the bill we are considering today will not make disaster- impacted producers whole overnight, it would help the Federal Government deliver support faster and give farmers and ranchers the resources they need to continue growing the food, fuel, and fiber that keeps this country running.

Our farmers are not asking for a handout. They are asking for a fair shot. That is what this bill delivers, not delayed help, not paperwork and waiting, but real support when it actually matters most. That is because disasters aren't slowing down, and neither should we.

Our farmers are doing everything that they can to hold on, making sure that we have food on our table and fuel in our tanks, clothes to wear at the end of the day, and real cotton grown here in America.

The question is whether we will meet them with the urgency they deserve. By passing this bill, we can say yes.

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