Mr. Speaker, there is an occurrence and an occasion in Kansas that occurs each and every year. It is a very special time in our State. It is the harvest time for wheat. Of course, Kansas is known as the Wheat State. It is a time in which families, sons and daughters, return home to the family farm. There is a lot of work to be done, but there is a history, a culture, a tradition, a family time each and every year in which harvest is a special moment.

But, Mr. Speaker, this year unfortunately is one of those times in which it appears that the Kansas wheat harvest and, in fact, the harvest across the Midwest is going to be less than what we would hope. In fact, the 2006 crop is expected to be the worst in the last 10 years, and many yields are expected to be less than 50 percent of normal. This is a huge consequence to the economy of our State, to the Midwest, and really to the country.

Rainfall has been about 28 percent of normal this year. In fact, 84 of Kansas’ 105 counties received no precipitation during the month of February when that wheat crop is attempting to grow. Of those remaining counties, the greatest amount of rainfall in those other counties was thirty one-hundredths of an inch for the month. This is the fifth and sixth years across many portions of our State and in Nebraska and eastern Colorado and Oklahoma and Texas and South Dakota and Wyoming in which drought has had serious consequences. In 2005, drought damage was also exacerbated by tornadoes and hailstorm and freeze. In 2005, every county but four in our State was declared a disaster county.

Today we debated the emergency supplemental appropriations act. I am very supportive of the efforts to bring disaster assistance to the farmers of the gulf coast and those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But, Mr. Speaker, $500 million was included in that bill but directed only to those farmers and other producers who were in hurricane-affected counties.

It is one thing, Mr. Speaker, for us to deny farmers across the country any assistance due to budget considerations, due to our desire to work toward balancing the budget; but it is not understandable in my State that we would pick and choose which farmers receive assistance based upon whether or not the event is a result of a hurricane. Those farmers who have had inadequate moisture in the Midwest for the last 5 and 6 years are no less damaged than those farmers who were affected by the rains and the breaking of the levee and the saltwater in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

I can explain to my constituents about the desire to hold the line on spending, but I can’t explain to them why their problems are not addressed in this emergency supplemental but some other producers, some other farmers have been.

And so, Mr. Speaker, I am hoping to set the stage tonight as we conclude the debate on the emergency supplemental, but as we work our way through the remainder of Congress to see that there is some level of disaster assistance provided to all farmers, regardless of the cause of their losses.

Many in this body will say, but Congressman, isn’t it crop insurance’s duty to provide that kind of assistance? And isn’t ad hoc disaster, isn’t this disaster assistance package unnecessary?

Well, Mr. Speaker, I chair the subcommittee responsible for crop insurance. The reality is that crop insurance policies insure about 50 percent of the crop losses. The best policies cover 85 percent of the losses. And there is no insurance coverage for livestock. When you have 5 and 6 years of disaster in which you are only being compensated for 50 percent of your losses and you have paid the premiums for that coverage and your average return on equity as a farmer in our State is 3.66 percent, you can’t lose year after year after year and stay in business.

The average age of a farmer in Kansas is 59 years old. Our farmers are reaching the conclusion that there is no future in agriculture, and that is not only detrimental to the communities of Kansas, to that individual farm family, but it is detrimental to the people of this country to lose agriculture as a way of life and as an economic driver of our economy.

So we do need to work to improve crop insurance in our subcommittee. Our agriculture committee is working to do that. But the reality is the problem is with us today, and we are losing another generation of farmers. We will revisit the issue, I hope. 2005, which should be included in this year, is not in this bill; but 2006 may be even worse.