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[Opening Music]
This farm bill isn’t just about rural America,
it’s about all of America. It’s about providing food security for all of America,
it’s about providing affordable food to all of America, it creates flexibility with paychecks
for every person in America. It’s about creating energy security.
This makes America stronger and better. So, I’m excited about this,
I appreciate the hard work that folks have put into it,
and candidly, the work’s just beginning and I know there are going to be a lot of long hours,
but it’s worth it.
We’ve waited a long time for this bill,
it’s a good, solid bill.
We’re going to do a good job implementing it.
[Music]
Our budget continues to be stressed.
There’s no question about that. When you deal with an overall cap that Congress has
created on the entire federal government spending,
it puts a lot of pressure.
And we have stepped up to the plate at USDA
through our Blueprint for Stronger Service.
We’ve identified significant efficiencies,
but the reality is that we’re going to be continually challenged in that area.
We’ve got to continue to be creative.
[Music]
It’s going to be a very busy year at USDA.
We now have this added responsibility of implementing a 932-page farm bill.
We’re obviously going to start with disaster assistance for our livestock producers,
because they’ve been in a very difficult strait for a couple of years without those programs in place,
we’ll obviously want to put crop producers in a position to be able to
make important elections by the end of 2014 for the crop year 2015
with the new safety net programs, nutrition assistance has several pilots,
great opportunities to expand local and regional food production,
an opportunity for us to better link fruit and vegetable purchases for folks who are receiving SNAP,
so there’s just an awful lot of work that has to be done.
[Music]
You know, if you look at the impact that this Department has,
if you look at the number of people –
the millions of people – who are impacted and supported and helped every single year,
the forty thousand producers, for example,
who have received credit as a result of the farm bill credit programs,
most of which are beginning farmers, socially disadvantaged farmers,
helping us to reverse the trend of aging in our farming population,
if you look at the thousands of jobs that are helped and created through
the hundreds of businesses that are helped through our Rural Development programs,
when you look at the energy independence that we’re now seeing in this country,
more energy security because of renewable energy,
I mean, if you just take a look at the totality of what we do here at USDA,
and you start thinking about the millions of people that are helped,
you get excited about coming to work every day.
[Closing music]