Decisions from the secretary of agriculture, secretary of labor, all these folks. You can understand how farmers feel like its a bureaucratic answer that we cant do anything. Are you sure theres not a special authority you have to do something more on this issue . Have you looked at every legal possibility . Unfortunately, some of the more difficult were not addressed in the senate. These mr. Miller for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Ranking member, mr. Secretary, but did see you again. A very patient young man. I could tell you, mr. Secretary, you are very patient secretary. Thank you. I would stay ranked my nation. Livestock producers in my Congressional District at their local leaders that my Agricultural Advisory Council keep concerned impacting large regions. More troubling is the u. S. Most recent forecast released just last year indicating a 25. 5 decrease in the foreign income and 23. I know that that was touched on earlier. Farmers include strengthening pharmacy the net and Risk Management tools and the initiatives innovative technology, research, expanding biofuels, trademark, u. S. Dea for Technical Education including the underserved heat area of the economy. A trade deficit of 30 billion and trading up to the expanding markets through the fuels including bipartisan farm to fly at modeling update and i on thet of agriculture concerned partnerships and meat inspections if we are not able to cover all of my questions today which i know that we have not. I will submit that i would respectfully have the thanksgivings response in writing. International trade is critical to ohio in the United States agricultural producers, the most recent outlook for the trade deficit nearly doubled last year to 30 billion. Strengthening the ability to meet Global Demand detailing trade losses driven by the livestock treatment area export. For this reason i am working with several of my colleagues including forte, craig on a letter to you. Mr. Secretary, finally get to the question. I am out of breath. For roughly 60 years agriculture trade surplus, that is no longer the case. Resident expert counsel, to expand expert Market Opportunities can you please detail your plan for the global trade market. We recently announced our break room Agricultural Program design to expand and some of the lesserknown Market Opportunities that we know to diverse and five. No longer to live reliant on china. The chinese economy suffers, basically export software. When our economy is stronger than any other economy in the industrialized world, our consumers are able to purchase more. That impacts exports. The fact that for too many years we have ignored our infrastructure needs allowing our competitors to catch up with us. That is also part of it. We did put this program together in an effort to invest in our present, more trade missions, or promotions, or ability to get the word out about u. S. Products i think will be cost competitive we did have record years. I anticipate that we will get that surplus back. It will take a year or two. Thank you for the detailed answer. Calming National Security for foreign countries. All i asked that we question patient. Periodparagraph the problem still exists. I think that you recognize this. Not having the capacity to access these programs. If funding is being distributed unevenly and inefficiently. Can you discuss with us why would usda announced new initiatives, some authorized, some not without having the capacity to assist farmers and municipalities. With all due respect, i do not think that that is accurate. We have expanded to cooperative agreements and contracts with a number of organizations and entities helping farmers all across the country being able to Access Programs and assist them in applying for programs. I do not think that this is anecdotal. Farmers have consistently seen the inability to access that. We have literally over 100 organizations we will be contracting with. Thirty organizations contracting with fsa. The assistance is there and the help is there. As a number of the new initiatives as we set aside earlier is series of resources to provide for technical assistance. I was a mayor of a small town. I came from a local government background also. Councils of government. Basically providing that service im surprised that new york does not have those Regional Government to basically help with the grant writing. I dont know. New york does not have an institution when it comes to grant writing and i am heartened to hear that you do not believe that there is additional need for those initiatives. Farmers and communities have consistently said this to me now in this role. We are simplifying the process. We have cut the application process for loans and half. We have created a Loan Assistance Program to maybe make it a little bit easier. We have simplified the programs. I appreciate that. I would encourage them to take an earnest look. We will communicate where we think in the state, certainly new york there are some concerns i did want to ask at least one other question. Upstate new york to our dairy farms and fair milk pricing and farmers are anxiously waiting for determination from the usda. Hoping they will be restored to the higher of the Pricing System can you provide to us any incitement for the decision announcement. The announcement of 12,000 pages of transcript. They need to be analyzed and reviewed by their folks at usda and the economist and so forth. That will take some time. We will try to get this done. Sometimes within the next 10 11 months. Sooner than that, probably. It is of concern to many farmers across america. Mr. Secretary, we have an open invitation to visit the west end of upstate new york. The folks at cornell would love to see you. Congresswoman for five minutes of questioning. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for coming before the committee. I will jump right to it. National security. It is important we do everything that we can to support and protect american grown products. As you know, unfair competition is a growing problem for our producers. In florida, this is a growing concern. We know that mexico has on their schemes. Everything from peaches and honey in apple juice from china. All of which is ending up in american schools. What is usda doing to making sure american grown products are being served in american schools and if there is a requirement to be used in schools. There is a requirement that proves we purchased and has to be produced and processed and every aspect of it being done in the u. S. What are we doing to ensure that that is in fact happening . We are finding products from all over the world and our school systems. If you want to give us information about the pacific specific circumstance, we have a process in which we can do the best we can to ensure that purchases are being made with the rules and let regulations. By the end of the corner, we can have a conversation and go through that. I would be interested in the School Districts that you alluded to so we could take a deeper dive into that particular area. Perfect. Moving on, as of february 9, there are currently 1550 applications for ecp applications with the usda that are either approved and not paid , not approved are still pending. In wake of Hurricane Ian. We have chatted about this offline. It has been a year and a half since Hurricane Ian in six months since hurricane a daily. The few that we have been very helpful. We know that that is also an issue. The ability to processes applications in the aftermath is simply put inadequate. Mr. Secretary, can you explain the delays and our producers getting the assistance when they needed the most . We are doing the very best we can to get the resources out. I know that you wanted to ensure that the state would be allowed to do this block grant process. If you authorize at the Congress Grant the opportunity and we would be more than happy to utilize that program. In the meantime, we are doing the best we can with the resources that we have. The resources your secretary can take to make programs a little bit more flexible and get the money out the door faster. I encourage you to utilize that authority. You mentioned the Biden Administration historic assessments to ensure small amid side producers get a bed shake. Other agencies are proposing that will regulate these very users that you are saying you want to protect their will regulate them out of business. They include waters of the u. S. The limitation guidelines and standards for meeting poultry products, reporting and the politicization of Crop Protection tools. The disclosure rule just a few. I had the administer of the epa tell me to my face that he had no idea what it was or vegetative straps were. Yet his agency is doing this for those we are trying to protect and support. Other agencies are playing in the sandbox. They want to dictate what producers grow and how they do it. Instead of advocating for farmers and ranchers that attended expanding and funding policies related to what they believed to be climate chart climate smart. You testified multiple times that you do not want other agencies to tell you how to do your job. Every other opportunity, other agencies are telling our farmers and ranchers how to do theirs. You and your written testimony asking if we are okay losing another 400,000 family farms in the next 40 years. Overregulation by the other agencies in this administration outside the usda are exactly, they are on the path to do exactly what your testimony is outlining. And set up idalis standing by i would encourage to take a very active role with this administration in which you serve to advocate not only in your department but across the other agencies that are pushing us out of business. I give back. The gentlemans time has expired. She no other questions to be asked by members, before we adjourn today, i want to offer my closing comments. Ranking member scott had an unavoidable conflict. Not able to be here for his closing comments. First, mr. Secretary, i want to thank you for joining us today. The agriculture which is the industry itself, it is so complex. Being commended and for the same goal that we want a highly effective farm bill. You have made the case for that. I think we have worked together to achieve from a policy perspective if that and all. Where we disagree, perhaps, quite frankly we have to find a way to pay for it. It is kind of a pipe dream. The good bipartisan work that we have done. I want to thank our members for participation. We have almost everyone. And thank our staffs for doing such a great job for putting this together. Im about frostbite here. [laughter] the as a few points i want to make. I heard about the inability to pass a farm bill. I just have to say Agriculture Policy takes teamwork. And we all need to be working as a team and, quite frankly a lot of reasons why we have not gotten a farm bill done it the fact that this farm bill, the senate has to take action and reconcile, i do not know how soon they will be ready. But, with that said, we are still waiting on technical assistance. We have at least a dozen that have been submitted three months ago. We have gotten great technical assistance. We are still bending from usda. We need that assistance to make sure that we are on track with great policy. Coming along. They cannot proceed without them we have a syndrome going on in this committee and i would say in the executive branch we have funding denial. I will come back to that. For the record, this committee has not been idle. Each member here has been invited to the countryside to hear from the very people that we are charged to represent. I have been very appreciative and thankful for the bipartisan participation that we have done over the last three years. Thousands of miles, meetings, roundtables, visit illustrated today. Seeing agriculture in action. That is how you build a great farm bill. Democrats, republicans and quite frankly the industry. Does our office that we have brought to the table. I have engaged in round tables and discussion. We have also heard today a lot of cherry picked data points. The farm economy has positive it the departments own analysis tells a very different story. With many different farmers and ranchers it is a really different story today. Struggling. Also gathering this administration frankly of all sizes. Cases where they do not subscribe to a far left climate agenda. Hopefully everybody in this room and most people watching in no that i appreciate the fact that our farmers and ranchers are climate champions. We dont give them credit for what we do already. Knowing that american agriculture can be defined as Science Technology and innovation. It is not static. It is dynamic and we will move it forward with this farm bill. The fact is they are good ways to do that in their ways that really are not helping the american farmer. This administration embracing continued inflation, record cost of production, i appreciate some of the things we have talked about have come down a little bit. Not down to where they were to that in past years. Really, destruction, what leads to destruction of the agricultural landscape. I guess that that is a complex way of the loss of family farms we have heard and uneventful Market Basket update to solely allow them to increase the state. It is disingenuous. Using the data is at best. Not like he ample opportunity. It includes being prescriptive. Article one authority in terms of nonabusive way of how a future threat to food plan is evaluated. I have heard so many time the word cuts when it comes to that proposal for being prescriptive of the food plan. It is disingenuous. The leading factor in terms of hunger for many families that are struggling, really and poverty, is the cost of living. The impact of inflation adjust other factors. Supply chain disruptions. Think that would drive up the cost of living and the costofliving adjustments is not being taken away in this proposal. If that is the primary driver of increased costs and financial burden on these families, it is disingenuous and that is being nice. I could think of a few other words of saying our proposal makes cuts. A lot of talk about the climate pilot. Which, quite frankly, better done now by using ccc which should be there to directly help our farmers who are challenged financially. I would say that that is much better under what is been rolled out by usda under research. I am pretty confident there is a bipartisan consensus. We are still ahead of our competitors around the world. That is not where we want to be with agriculture. A unilateral insertion costing billions of success. Zero transparency and a self proposed clip. At includes the ira monies. Whatever is not spent, we hope it is all spent in an accountable way. It is an investment. The proposal that we put on the table being said by the farmville base. That money would be there for farm bills in 2015 at 2055. It will continue to grow an increase in investments. Also frustrated by the fact of the following up personally on this. You talked about the interests. We know that there is interest. That is how we built that piece of legislation that President Biden signed and now its 14 months ago. If we are really serious about getting investments in the conservation, we want to bring the private sector to the table and i think it will come in a big way. In 14 months at a time where we all know that conservation is so important, it is too long. To my friends on the other side of the aisle, the leadership has been hesitant to share how the proposed funding framework will help with priorities. Your number one priority is to reduce hunger. That is incredibly important. And the proposal which i freely admit is a budget gimmick. But it allows us to provide to snap to populations. They have had limited or no access to snap. They can increase access to people that have not been eligible for it. Quite frankly we maintained the costofliving adjustments which mean we are not cutting benefits i think that it is exactly why reducing means the expansion. Having that kind of pay for and also it seems to not be translating. If we put this in place the next administration, and it will be at some point a future administration, it may be more inclined, i hope not because i am a big supporter, may be inclined to decimate individual snap benefits. Our proposal for funding will present that from occurring because it will be prescriptive. We have almost unanimous support for this. Market access for our constituents. Directed by congress for any administration. All members appreciate the conservation programs. We will reinvest the ira to continue the great work of the great conservationist who would do that for more than a 10 year window. They will be made available to thrive. I would like to throw in the record a list of democratic priorities that i have here somewhere. Sent to me by the new dem coalition. Just an example of the request that we are trying to accommodate. 125 bills are priorities. It does carry a significant price tag. It will require the ability to move mandatory dollars into our current baseline. So, to which, you know, for all my colleagues, do you want your priorities funded, or not . Not just to build great policy, which i think weve done over the past number of years, we have to be at the table figuring out how we fund those. The funding that i propose is very thoughtful and balanced. I would argue in the long run beneficial for expanding the benefits that we see under these programs and the leadership of each and every person and your leadership says that these will not work, your leadership says that these will not work. So, quite frank the send me your realistic play paid for. With that, under the rules of the committee, the record of todays hearing will remain open for 10 calendar days to receive additional materials and supplemental responses from the witnesses to any question posed by a member. This hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] cspan washington journal our live form involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and Public Policy from washington and across the country. Coming up thursday morning, the congressman Glenn Thompson and oregon congresswoman. Cochairs of the career