I call the committee back to order. Thanks to the first panel and we appreciate your testimony and i would like to welcome the second panel of witnesses before the committee. First we have ms. Botts, executive director for agriculture and rule of element, position which she was named in 2013, she has over 15 years of experience working in agriculture and helping individuals in rural areas understand issues related to policy and financing. You could be of help to individual sentors i would imagine. She pent ten years working in agriculture at federal level as policy staffer in the house of representatives. She grew up in a farm in kentucky. We see her ms and currently live on a small farm with husband and two children. We look forward to your testimony. General manager, kansas america, he is the general manager of the kansas rural Water Association. His career who has spent five decades has been focused to ensure all of kansas Rural Communities have access to affordable water. Critical
I call the committee back to order. Thanks to the first panel and we appreciate your testimony. We welcome the second panel that is with us. Fir, we have mr. Ms. Botts, she is a executive director for the kentucky she was named in 2013, has over 15 years of experience working in agriculture and World Development policy issues and helping individuals in rural areas understand issues related to policy and financing. You could be of help to individual senators i would imagine. Before returning to kentucky to work for kcard, she spent ten areas working on agriculture ask a policy staffer in the house of on representatives, grew up on a farm in kentucky and received a ms and bs in rural economics in kentucky and lives on a small farm right now, with her husband and two children, welcome to you, maam. We look forward to your testimony. Second witness is mr. Elmer general manager, Water Association and kansas america. He is the general manager of the kansas rural Water Association. His career
Of u. S. Worker is 39. The average age of the u. S. Farm operator is 55. There are not young people going into farming and we have to ask why. We need young people to enter into the farming industry. We need farming to be economically viable for young people and to supply restaurants like me the stuff that i need because what happens at my restaurant ultimately filters out to the rest of society. If you look at this chart, im not going to go into all the details of it, but you basically have a very small triangle which represents the family farm and on the other side the large part of the triangle which represents commodity agriculture. You need both. Obviously you cant be the entire world on small family farms, but to me, this chart represents something that is out of balance. We need to figure out a way to raise up family farms. We need to make farming attractive. We need to make it sexy. We need young people to understand this is something they can do as a viable job. We need food t
We did have a lot of major media that came into this event and this room has been bursting through the seams. When you go back to the newsroom please insist your editors like you do their job. [applause] thank you for coming we have a special treat for you. Those red tickets, those are for a complimentary beverage that are served over at the bar. Appear they should have been here, seek them out and talk to them. The important part of the conference is about to begin and we want to remind you the audio of all of these presentations will be available on that website. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] one more thing i would like to thank the washington report publisher whos been sitting here and his whole generation of leaders, ralph nader who is here come the Harriet Fulbright and others in this room and the many students that came to. Audience members, exhibitors and advertisers we couldnt have had this without your help. Thank you. Enjoy your drinks. [inaudible conversations] [i
Not that still makes sense in todays market. They are putting together that work plan. Will be more than happy when that process is completed to obviously provide you Additional Information on precisely what were thinking. The key here is to make sure that the Playing Field is level between those who are owners and those who are producers to make sure theres not an unfair advantage in the relationship and to make sure in difficult times that those who have invested a lot of hard earned resource and time are treated fairly if a contract is terminated order for some reason a contract is modified. We have had examples where folks have been dealt a very serious and difficult blow in tight circumstances. The Avian Influenza situation was important. Particularly those who lost birds. We found not all the payments were going to the producers who were economically suffering as well. We want to make sure its a fair and equitable relationship. Thats the purpose of the review of the rules. What d