Sam Graves held a teleconference with constituents about the Farm Bill, energy policy, and related issues Tuesday night. Along the way, he got a couple of questions from area residents and talked about ways to bring down gas prices.
Graves said that the 6th District has 65,000 agricultural jobs and that the entire country depended on agriculture for its survival. "What a farmer decides affects what someone has for dinner on the table in New York City," he said. The problem is that the Farm Bill is bottled up in a conference committee and that without a new farm bill, it would revert to 1938 and 1949 laws that he said were a lot less flexible in allowing farmers to decide what to produce in a given year. He praised the bi-partisan work of the Agriculture Committee in Congress and that while the Farm Bill was not perfect, "it meets the needs of the 6th district well."
Graves said that the US had the "safest, most abundant food supply in the world" and that the Farm Bill would work to keep it that way. He said that it gives farmers a lot of flexibility, which he said was needed because of the volatility of food prices. He said that it creates research opportunities for farmers, increased biofuels, and reduced our dependence on foreign oil. "A lot of people don’t realize why helping farmers is so important," he said. "Take price quotes and throw in the weather, and you get a lot of uncertainty." Graves said that stability was the goal of the new Farm Bill.
However, only 10 percent of the Farm Bill actually deals with agriculture. The rest of the bill involves such things as rural development, conservation programs, and more broadband access, which Graves said was key to the development of this area. "Broadband can bring the world to your doorstep," said Graves. "That means someone from Albany can have access to the same kinds of opportunities as someone in Kansas City. Where you live will no longer dictate your opportunities." Graves said that the biggest challenge of the area was gas prices; "When we got our first delivery of fuel at our farm, I thought my dad was going to have a heart attack," he said. Graves said that he was frustrated that the leadership in Congress was "not serious" about stopping the rise of gas prices despite the fact that experts predict $4 gas prices this year.
Turning to ethanol, Graves said that technology has gotten to the point where not only would it address the problem of gas prices, he said that it would provide feed for livestock through distiller’s grain as well so that policymakers would not have to choose between livestock production and bringing down gas prices. But Graves said that it would only provide a partial solution; he said that more nuclear energy, coal plants, and oil drilling was the key to energy independence.
Graves then went on to take questions from constituents who participated in the session; the first question was from a local caller who pointed out that wealthy businessman T. Boone Pickens had invested $1 billion in wind farms and that it might be more energy-effective to produce wind power than it would ethanol. Graves responded that the technology for ethanol was improving and blamed "oil company misinformation" for a lot of the resistance to ethanol. For instance, he said that it was about to progress to the point where you could get both biodiesel and ethanol fuel from the same ear of corn.
Graves was ambivalent about oil companies; while he reserved some of his harshest criticisms for the oil industry, going so far as to say that Congress was held hostage to the oil lobby, he advocated a lot of measures to help them; for instance, he advocated opening up the the continental shelf and the controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. "The ANWR is an area about the size of South Carolina," said Graves. "The land that is needed to do the drilling only covers three square miles. The technology has gotten to the point where we can get to the oil by drilling almost totally underground."
Graves said that thanks to ethanol, gas prices were $1 a gallon cheaper than they would have been otherwise and that it was cheaper to produce. "On the other hand, Big Oil pulls oil out of the ground, has to transport it overseas, and then reimport it to the US and transfer it to district facilities." But he said that wind energy was important as well; he said that there were 2-3 wind companies that he knew of that were looking to expand into the area.
A Pickering caller said that Congress needed to stop what he called "all this pussyfooting" and stop importing so much oil. Graves blamed the refusal of Congress to open the ANWR for drilling. "I thought that they were finally going to when gas hit $2 per gallon," he said. He said that Congress was being held hostage by the environmental lobby and Castro had more rights to drill off the coast than the US did. "Right now, we can’t drill within 100 miles of the coastline," said Graves. "President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Cuba that allows them to come within 40 miles of the Florida Coast. And guess where all that oil is going to? China, who is working with them on drilling there." Graves said that in order to make this country energy independent, we had to open up federal lands for drilling. "The government owns 1/5 of the acres of this country; we need to open them up for drilling," he said. Graves said that there were reserves in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
In talking about CRP land, Graves said that there would be cuts in the number of acres in CRP, although nobody would be forced out. He said that it would be done through attrition. He explained that the reason was to bring down food prices and put more land in production to combat rising food prices in this country. "If you get a bunch of acres in production, that will bring down prices; the market always corrects itself," he explained.
One local caller asked Graves about roads; he said that the federal government was doing better than it had been at getting money to Missouri. "Right now, they give back 98 cents on the dollar, which is better than it has been," he said. But Graves, who was a critic of the MODOT during his time as State Representative, said that there was a long ways to go; "there are holes in roads that would swallow a car or a pickup," he said.
In addition to opening more lands for drilling, Graves said that another problem is that no new refineries have been opened in the US for the last 20 years; "it takes 12 years to do the necessary paperwork to get a permit." said Graves. He said that he had introduced a bill that he said would make it faster for oil refineries to open in the US, which he said would also create thousands of jobs as well. "Right now, it is cheaper to take oil outside the country, refine it there, and then ship it back into the US," said Graves. "Right now, it takes appeal after appeal before a refinery can open here."
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