The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“POPCORN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S1467 on Jan. 23, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
POPCORN
Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, in 1996 the Congress promised agriculture producers that they would no longer be penalized for heeding market signals and raising crops the market demanded.
Two-hundred farmers in my home State of Missouri responded to strong domestic and foreign demand and planted acres of popcorn. Now, with the passage of the 2002 farm bill, these producers are greatly disadvantaged compared to farmers that stayed with traditional program crops.
Under the provisions of the 2002 farm bill, producers who opted to grow popcorn since 1996 on acreage traditionally dedicated to program crops or soybeans are severely penalized if they attempt to update their program acreage history or yield history.
Unless corrected, this will cause a substantial, potential loss to both farm income and land value. I believe that this problem should be corrected in the most expeditious manner, as the April 15 deadline for signup into the new farm programs is quickly approaching. Senator Lugar and I have introduced an amendment to allow producers to include popcorn in their program base acres. I am grateful to managers on both sides for addressing this issue in a managers amendment.
The correction is simple. Popcorn is simply treated as a variety of the traditional corn for the purposes of determining bases and yields. I urge my colleges to support my amendment and allow the Department of Agriculture to consider popcorn equivalent to corn for the purpose of computing base acreage. There are 278,000 acres of land nationwide normally devoted to production of popcorn. We should not penalize those who farm this land because they believed the promises of the 1996 act. Popcorn growers in Missouri and across the Nation deserve equitable treatment when determining base acres.
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