Will Rogers Quotes

Mr. President, it may surprise my colleagues, but I am no fan of federal disaster programs for agriculture. They are difficult to pass and often a disaster to implement.

We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do. People who aren't familiar with the agriculture industry, you know, try and make that look like something exceptional.

Let’s help farmers when they need it; let’s not, when they don’t.

For years, the United States has criticized Europe for lavishly supporting its farmers, but the truth is, the United States and European Union spend roughly equal amounts on farm support, which is spread across 7 million farms in the European Union (16 million after E.U. enlargement) as opposed to 2 million farms (mostly large ones) in the United States.

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?

Farm subsidies are a waste of money.

Farmers, get out your sense of humor. Congress meets to relieve you again next week.

This session of Congress is also to relieve the farmer again, relieve him of any encouragement that he might have received during the last one.

Farmers have about given up hope of getting farm relief and have decided to fertilize instead.

What in the hell would they do with the farm program without us?

Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 - twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.

Yes, agriculture subsidies are far too generous. They need to be reined in because they cater to special interests while distorting free market competition. Yes, the farm laws are an anachronistic mess.

Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.

We don't pay truckers not to truck, we don't pay miners not to mine and we shouldn't pay farmers not to farm.

The only way to keep food prices down is to keep them [farmers] down on the farm after they've seen the parity.

Don’t confuse me with all that. Just tell me how to vote to help your farmers.

Sugar protectionism is government planning, It is industrial policy—government picking winners and losers—applied to agriculture.

President Lincoln’s biggest blunder was—no not General George McClellan—creating the Agriculture Department. Since 1995, 75 percent of all agricultural subsidies have gone to the largest and wealthiest 10 percent of farms.

One of the many economic differences between developed and developing countries is that developed countries subsidize farmers while developing countries tax farmers.

On the Agriculture Committee, I will be an ardent and strong champion for our farmers to ensure that they are treated fairly, particularly in regards to how their products are priced.

People are quick to say with their mouth full, 'Well, the American farmer is on the dole.' But a loaf of bread is two bucks when it could be 10 bucks. I know what it is with the government in my business. We would be all for not having government in our business, but we need a fair system.

The government simply waits for farmers to grow their crops - nine months of growing grapes, then two to three weeks of drying them in the sun. Then it takes away a part of that crop and stores it in warehouses around California.

Since 1933, New Deal farm policy has continued and expanded, pursuing its grisly logic at the expense of the nation's consumers, year in and year out, in Democrat or Republican regimes, in good times and in bad.

I think there is need for economic stimulus... and government can help make that up in a very difficult time.

I am happy to announce that to provide remunerative price to millets-growing farmers and to improve the nutritional security, state government will procure millets and utilize them in government schemes.