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Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to talk about a real crisis in America that we are not talking enough about. We have a farm crisis going on in the United States of America. It is facing our entire country. It is facing our rural areas, and it is facing some of the most noble Americans in our country who are part of a great tradition and a great heritage that is vital to all Americans.

We are in the midst of a farm crisis, and we are in the midst of a nutrition crisis. And despite the need for Congress to step up to this moment, to meet this crisis, and pass a bold farm bill, it is not happening right now.

Since we passed our last farm bill in 2018, we have lost over 150,000 farms--most of them small farms. That is an average of 51 farms we have lost every single day for the past 8 years. And the farmers who have managed to hang on are telling me that the economics of farming simply do not work for them anymore, and they fear that we are on the brink of another 1980s-type of farm crisis.

I am hearing more and more now from farmers about the reality that most of them have to seek off-farm employment just to be able to keep their families afloat.

Now, this trend has been going on for years. It is a trend that we saw under Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. It demands a bipartisan response. I know the policies of this administration, though, are making the situation worse for farmers--not better. They are acting as an incendiary to this horrible fire.

We see this President's reckless tariff policies have driven up costs for farmers; President Trump's reckless war in Iran, which closed the Strait of Hormuz, drove up costs for our farmers; USDA's decision to cancel critical programs that farmers were relying upon such as local food purchasing programs for schools and food banks--these are all things that have severely hurt our farmers. USDA's staffing cuts and field office closures have further injured our farmers, and I could go on with that list.

But the heart of this problem that our farmers are facing, the heart of the problem is the massive amount of corporate concentration that has taken place in our food system over many decades as both Republican and Democratic administrations stopped enforcing our Federal anti-trust laws.

Farmers are now being squeezed by monopolies on all sides. A handful of companies now control the inputs that farmers need like seeds and fertilizers and drive up those prices. And at the same time, farmers now have very few buyers for their products, and so they are not being paid a fair price for their crops and for their animals.

Back in 2018, as I worked on my first farm bill here in the Senate, I went on a tour to meet with farmers--not just in New Jersey but also in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas. Some of the farmers I met with were Democrats and some Republicans, but what I heard consistently from all of them was that our current farm system was not working for farmers.

Farmers and ranchers told me about how decades ago they would have many buyers competing and bidding up the price for their livestock, but now, today, they often only had one buyer who was able to dictate a low purchase price undercutting them as they made more profit.

I heard heart-wrenching stories about farmers whose land has been in their families for many generations but were now on the verge of losing their farm.

Farmers told me about how the current system was created to keep farmers growing commodity crops like corn and soy for animal feed rather than healthy foods to feed their communities they cared about because nearly all of our farm bill subsidies and safety net programs are designed to benefit big farmers growing a handful of commodity crops but not to support the farmers that grow the food that people eat like fruits and vegetables.

And these farmers were right. While our Federal dietary guidelines tell us that 50 percent of our diet should consist of fruits and vegetables, less than 10 percent of our farm bill agricultural subsidies actually go to farmers that grow fruits and vegetables.

And that has led us to the second crisis I mentioned: The nutrition crisis in the United States of America.

Diet-related chronic disease is now the No. 1 killer of Americans. Every single day in America, 2,700 people die from diet-related diseases. That is nearly a million Americans dead every year from what we eat.

Half of adults are now prediabetic or diabetic--one in four of our teenagers are. Half the children alive in this country today are projected to be obese by the time they are 35. Cancer rates in young people are climbing. Dementia rates across our country are climbing. And a chorus of doctors and researchers are now tying this explosion of diet-related diseases directly to the ultraprocessed foods Americans are eating every single day.

And so what our farmers need right now--and what all Americans need-- is for Democrats and Republicans to come together and pass a much bolder bipartisan farm bill that provides immediate assistance to our farmers--the assistance that they desperately need.

We are losing farmers every day, and this body and the House and the President are not rising to meet this crisis.

Farmers are wondering: Who is fighting for us? We need to show them that we are--in concrete policies that address their issues, that address this farm crisis, and for the millions of Americans suffering from preventable diseases that affects the nutrition crisis too.

Farmers in America--our fellow Americans that farm--need a farm bill that provides substantial emergency financial assistance to all of our struggling farmers--and especially our specialty crop farmers who have so far been shortchanged in this administration.

Farmers need a farm bill that puts more money into conservation programs and begins to reform those programs to better serve farmers and help them diversify their farms.

And farmers need a farm bill that makes other policy changes to help our farmers and ranchers--policy changes like restoring mandatory country-of-origin labeling, reforming our Federal checkoff programs that are so broken, strengthening the Packers and Stockyards Act to protect our farmers and ranchers from abuses by big meatpacking companies creating a real farm safety net for specialty crop farmers in America.

Farmers need a bold farm bill that reinstates funding for healthy food purchases from our local farmers for schools and food banks.

Farmers need a bold farm bill that scales up programs like SNAP Double Bucks that purchase fresh fruits and vegetables from small farmers and gets those healthy foods to families that are participating in the SNAP program.

Not only would a bold farm bill like that be a lifeline to our farmers, but it would be an example of using food as medicine and provide healing--healing--to Americans suffering from diabetes and other diet-related diseases.

But unfortunately, how did the House of Representatives--the Republican-led House respond in this moment? Well, they passed a farm bill that fails to meet this crisis, that fails to lead when people are looking for help, that fails to meet the needs of our farmers and our families. They passed a farm bill that would hurt our farmers by preempting State laws such as Prop 12 that create new markets for our farmers.

The Senate now has to do better. Democrats and Republicans in this Chamber must come together. We must put aside poison pills such as Prop 12 preemption and pesticide preemption and negotiate a bold farm bill that helps our farmers and families and meets this crisis that has been growing and growing and growing.

And at a time when we are seeing President Trump's policies causing food crisis to increase at an alarming rate, that bold farm bill must reverse the destructive Republican SNAP cuts that already left nearly 1 million of our children today going to bed hungry.

I hope that we rise to this occasion in the Senate. I hope that we are a nation that knows our fundamental health and well-being rely on American farmers. They protect our heritage. They are stewards of our land. They are the hope for a better, healthier future.

Let's stand together, join together, and be bold, be strong, and bring about a better deal--a new deal--for our farmers.

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