Rep. Salinas Offers Farm Bill Amendment to Remove Statutory Cap on Whole-Farm Revenue Protection

Click here to watch Rep. Salinas' full remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (OR-06) advocated for an amendment during the House Agriculture Committee's Farm Bill markup so Oregon's specialty crop growers who want to expand their farms can do so while accessing the crop insurance coverage they desperately need. Rep. Salinas's amendment would remove the statutory cap on Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.

A transcript of Salinas' remarks is available below:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the conversations we've been having this evening on specialty crops.

Crop insurance is becoming increasingly important in the wake of intensifying severity and frequency of natural disasters in the United States and certainly in Oregon.

Producers across the nation face significant threats borne from flooding, drought, hurricanes, severe storms, wildfires, ice storms, heat waves, everything.

In Oregon, we're experiencing devastating ice storms in one season and wildfires and drought in the next.

These dangerous events destroy crops, damage existing infrastructure, threaten long-term food security and pose serious risks to producers and their ability to put food on our tables.

And as has been mentioned, this is the actual food that people eat - vegetables, fruits.

As Ranking Member of the Horticulture Subcommittee, it is my duty to support specialty crop producers in my district, state, and across the nation.

That's why I'm offering this amendment to remove the statutory cap on Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.

Whole-Farm Revenue Protection provides a risk management safety net for all commodities on a farm under a single insurance policy.

It's available in all counties nationwide. However, for producers using this safety net, there is a statutory cap on adding more acres to their operations, which results in new acreage operating without insurance.

If producers want to expand their farms, they must do so without reliable coverage on all those new acres, which just means that's a huge financial risk.

My amendment would remove that statutory cap to ensure that when specialty crop producers expand their operations, all of the added acreage will also be covered under the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.

I constantly hear from specialty crop growers about the headwinds they're facing and the need for better access to a safety net that works for them.

Producers in my district grow hazelnuts, Christmas trees, marionberries, specialty seed crops, blueberries, strawberries, and so much more.

They grow these valuable crops on farms as small as 25 acres but into the thousands. And regardless of the size or crop, all these producers utilize Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.

My amendment would allow for that much-needed flexibility in adding coverage for Whole-Farm Revenue Protection as these producers expand their very important operations.

When these producers don't have insurance, they either take the loss or are at the mercy of Congress to retroactively provide them with emergency funding.

As a result, Oregon's specialty crop growers are too often unable to access meaningful coverage that they so desperately need.

This common-sense amendment would remove one barrier for these producers to sustain their livelihoods and actually put food on our tables.

This Committee needs to ensure that specialty crop producers have the risk management tools they need when they need them. And right now, we are ignoring the needs of our producers.

I sincerely hope and invite my Republican colleagues to address these fixes. And I hope that people really understand what we have done here with H.R. 1.

We gave huge corporate tax breaks to the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, when we really needed to put our farm operations first. None of those guys have ever set foot on a farm to actually work the land.

And we have people all across this country, as exemplified in this beautiful committee hearing today, and we're not meeting growers where they are.

However, I know that it's not realistic to actually meet this need right now, so I would like to withdraw my amendment but would love to continue this conversation.

I yield back.

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