00:00Thank you Mr. Chair and Mr. Fordhouse I'm really pleased to see that you're willing
00:11to serve in this capacity again having served before and done excellent work the first time
00:17and so I want to welcome you back and tell you how much I appreciate your work and how much I look
00:21forward to working with you and I know you're going to be spending an awful lot of time
00:24in Arkansas due to the power flag committee chairman but when you're not tied up in Arkansas
00:33would you be willing to come to North Dakota well yes senator I would and as you know you did invite
00:39me a couple of times the last time and I I think I came both times yep but you'll still come back
00:46again won't you oh absolutely yes sir in the summer would may be better yeah
00:54well we'll absolutely make sure it works but we we want to get you up there and we uh appreciate that
01:02and and of course all the good work you do talk to me how you uh the uh the chairman myself others
01:07worked very hard on getting that disaster assistance uh you know passed and my understanding is it's
01:14going well it's been very important uh to our state and now you're starting um you know on the weather
01:22piece talk to me how that's going so uh you know I the only information that I have is anything that I
01:32might see in in the ag news ag press um I have not had any conversations related to policy policy development
01:42um with the folks at fpac so I I do know just because I've heard it from a number of farmers that
01:49the first 10 billion the implementation of that was incredibly swift um uh seemed to be pretty seamless
01:57and you know I would I would expect while the second part of it is probably just from way the way I read
02:04some of the language is probably going to be a bit more complex and complicated um but you know I have
02:11confidence that that that's being worked on um not I I would have no idea as to what the progress is
02:18in that at this point but I have confidence that they're working on it the um and maybe somebody
02:24else brought up to you but both the corn growers and soybean growers have been in uh to see us over the
02:29last week or so and in the case of the corn growers that they still have a lot of 24 crop they haven't
02:34moving of course they've got 25 crop coming and and they're not uh able to get that uh contracted
02:40right now and same with the soybean guys um you know we put the disaster assistance in place we put
02:46you know um important uh components of the farm program in place arc plc updates uh enhancements to
02:54crop insurance to make it more affordable in the um o3b and um but we got to have uh you know we got to
03:03have some sales going um you know any any thoughts in terms of uh what we can do there and uh you
03:10know to to try to address some of these sales that we need to make uh certainly um you know I know that
03:19the the market I know you mentioned corn and soybeans and you know that market is not incredibly robust
03:24right now um you know and if I'm confirmed we actually are going to have to change the structure
03:32of our farm um but currently my wife and I and my wife is sitting right behind me senator um uh she's
03:38the marketer for the she looks awfully young richard well would you believe we were married 36 years ago
03:46yesterday I would not I would not she likes that answer are you sure he has the right number there
03:54it is yeah well congratulations on that for sure uh so um you know from a from a marketing standpoint
04:02a sales standpoint I'm not completely sure why that's why that's happening unless it's just the
04:08fact that the the market is not in a place where they want to move where they want to move grain
04:14um but I think you know we have um in the first administration when I was the administrator
04:22we had a very open dialogue with a lot of organizations both commodity groups farm groups
04:29conservation groups um and I would commit if confirmed I would commit to visiting with those
04:35organizations and understanding a bit more about what that what that problem is yeah well we have some
04:41work to do there and as you know um in the uh first trump administration we worked together with
04:47the commodity credit corp uh which is funded out of the ag appropriate committee and we you know we're
04:53going to need to continue to do that work with our chairman and ranking member on ag and and I and I
04:58know you're committed to uh making sure that we do that as needed
05:04I'm looking for a yep or a no yeah yes yes senator yes for sure okay again thanks look forward to working
05:11with you and appreciate your service thank you thank you mr chair thank you thank you senator shift
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