I would like to welcome everyone to the first official hearing of the Risk Management and Specialty Crops Subcommittee.

The topic for our first hearing --- the review of implementation of the Risk Management Education provisions of the farm bill --- is an appropriate one because the education of producers about the availability of various risk management tools has been and will continue to be of primary importance to the Members of this Committee.

Risk Management Education is an element vital to producers in each of our districts … and … throughout the entire nation. As many of you are aware, the need to provide objective information to producers about available risk management tools was becoming more important as producers increasingly developed their marketing and hedging skills long before enactment of last year's farm bill.

However, the new flexibility provided to producers will now place a larger emphasis of risk management on individual producers who will undoubtedly bear more of the responsibility for managing price and yield risk on the farm.

This additional responsibility emphasizes an important development in the agriculture sector similar to the development that occurred when mandated catastrophic crop insurance forced producers to rely less on disaster assistance and more on crop insurance to cover their losses.

Now … more than ever … producers will be looking to the market … rather than to the government … to manage risk.

This new emphasis will drive a growing demand for risk management tools for the agricultural community which necessitates an accessible, objective education delivery system for producers.

To that end, Section 192 was developed … to require the Secretary of Agriculture to work in consultation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to develop and implement education programs about the management of financial risks inherent in the production and marketing of agricultural commodities.

Congress looked to USDA as the lead agency on this effort due to their close proximity to producers. We understood that the knowledge and expertise of the CFTC in the futures markets would also be beneficial to this educational effort.

Diversity in availability of options is important because producers will seek to utilize a wide-variety of risk management tools. Risk management for one producer may simply mean the purchase of crop insurance …. while … risk management for another producer implies active use of the futures markets.

Today, the Subcommittee is interested in receiving an update on the progress of this provision. We are interested to know how the implementation process has proceeded.

What activity has taken place to date?

What future activity is expected?

Who was consulted throughout the process?

Our time is limited this morning. As a matter of procedure, I would like to reiterate the Subcommittee's request to keep our discussion focused on the issue at hand.

We are mindful of some of the many controversial issues under discussion … particularly concerning the crop insurance program. I want to ensure the Subcommittee that these issues will be discussed during our crop insurance hearings to be scheduled at a later date.

We do not want to detract from the importance of this morning's topic regarding implementation of Section 192.

With that, I would like to thank each of the witnesses for attending this morning's forum and I look forward to your testimony.