Opening Statements

Remarks as prepared for delivery:

Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. Many of you may be wondering why the Committee on Agriculture would be holding a hearing on national security. A former Chairman of this committee, the Honorable Kika de la Garza, would often tell a story when he asked: “How long can a nuclear submarine stay under water?” The simple answer, until it runs out of food.

With fewer and fewer Americans connected to production agriculture, many in Congress fail to recognize the importance of sound agricultural policy to our national security. Sitting on the Armed Services Committee and now chairing the Agriculture Committee, I find myself in a position to highlight this important relationship.

Agriculture and national security are intertwined in many different ways – whether it is ensuring that food is available to meet nutritional needs for both those within our own borders as well as those around the world, or ensuring that food coming into our borders is disease and pest free, or guaranteeing that farmers and ranchers have the needed policy tools in place to continue producing food and fiber.

It is my hope in this hearing we can begin to examine the threats and vulnerabilities to agricultural security, as well as discuss the economic significance associated with those threats.

The food and agriculture industry in the United States is not only crucial to the public health and welfare of this nation, but is an important force in the economic, social and political fabric here AND abroad. The US food and agriculture industry is almost entirely under private ownership and is composed of an estimated 2.2 million farms, which are the foundations of our nearly $1 trillion food and fiber business with over $150 billion in exports for FY 2014. In 2013, 16.9 million full and part time jobs were related to agriculture, which is approximately 9.2 percent of total U.S. employment.

From a security standpoint, there are an array of sectors ranging from farms with relatively open croplands to highly secure food and dairy processing facilities. At the retail end, small neighborhood cafes operate in markets with large supermarket chains and nationally franchised restaurants. Continuous changes in the way that food is produced, distributed, and consumed present new challenges for ensuring its safety and security.

While increasing global trade presents opportunities for raising food safety and quality standards to levels commensurate with those of the United States, it also means increasing the amount of food coming into this country. In fact, the total volume of U.S. food imports has increased 60% over the last decade. This heightens the importance of ensuring that products entering our borders meet our quality and safety standards.

Near-term threats to food security include weather, conflict, diseases, resource constraints, and environmental degradation. For example, large exportable supplies of key components of food production—such as phosphates, potash, and fuel oil—come from states where conflict or government actions could cause supply chain disruptions that lead to price spikes. In addition, monitoring and controlling outbreaks of agricultural diseases will become increasingly difficult as the world becomes more integrated, disease vectors shift, and domestic animal populations grow and become more concentrated.

Historically, our food safety, plant protection and animal health regulatory systems have assumed the accidental contamination of food or inadvertent introduction of animal disease or plant pest. The prospect of an intentional, or terrorist, attack on our food and agriculture industry raises grave concerns that present challenges for producers and policy makers alike. We intend to dive deeper into the federal role and responsibility for preventing, detecting and responding to emergencies in future hearings.

I want to thank our distinguished panel for joining us today to discuss the role U.S. agriculture plays in maintaining a strong U.S. economy and stability around the world.

Today we will hear from Ambassador Negroponte who served as the first ever Director of National Intelligence. Prior to this appointment, he served as the US Deputy Secretary of State and had several appointments as US Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. He has first-hand experience protecting the national security of this country, and I want to thank him for his service and leadership.

I also look forward to hearing from Dr. Tammy Beckham, Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University. Dean Beckham has also has served as director of the Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases; director of the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory; director of the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Plum Island Animal Disease Center; and she served as a captain in the U.S. Army where she served at the Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

While much of today’s hearing will focus on threats and vulnerabilities to domestic and international food security, we must remember the importance of our producers here at home. America has the safest, most affordable, most abundant food supply in the history of the world, and that is not by accident – it is by design. Sound agricultural policy has been an integral piece of our ability to feed and clothe not only our nation, but the world. Agriculture is the backbone of the economy, and throughout history America has been able to not only survive, but thrive because our agricultural safety net helps farmers weather the bad times. We must never forget that there is no food without the farmer.

President George W. Bush eloquently summed it up when he said “We’re a blessed nation because we can grow our own food. A nation that can feed its people is a nation more secure.”