Crockett Advocates for Texas Working Families and Farming Communities on the House Agriculture Committee
WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (TX-30) sat for her first hearing today of the House Agriculture Committee, as it prepares to reauthorize the 2023 Farm Bill. Witnesses during the hearing represented broad swaths of the agriculture industry, and testified to the high costs facing farmers today:
“A common theme was the increased costs due to supply bottlenecks. Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is taking a great step forward to bring down these costs and strengthen American agriculture by rolling out the first dollars allocated in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act passed last year.
“Innovative digital technology is transforming farms and agriculture production across the country, allowing farmers to do more with less. By combining cutting-edge hardware engineering of computer chips that can perform billions of operations per second, with state-of-the-art software engineering that applies the newest data processing techniques on the world’s most powerful servers, American farmers are among the most efficient and productive in the world. This enables them to increase output while bringing down costs. Unfortunately, these technological marvels require fragile global supply changes, which have been disrupted over the past several years.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is unlocking this potential. Once American manufacturers are producing these cutting-edge chips at the heart of modern tech-enabled farm equipment, tens of thousands more farmers will be able to afford them, allowing many more farmers to remain doing the work they live, and on which all Americans rely.
“But solving the hardware problem only addresses half of the problem. Modern equipment invariably has a cloud component that allows the data collected to be analyzed by state-of-the-art algorithms running on unfathomably powerful computers all across the world. As we tragically learned during distance learning in the pandemic, many rural communities suffer from a lack of investment in essential infrastructure, like reliable electricity and broadband access.
“I am dedicated in creating long-term solutions for these problems. This is why I am proud to serve on the Rural Development Subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee. This September, we will reauthorize the Farm Bill, and I look forward to the opportunity to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure our farmers are able to take advantage of this emerging technology. We must act to ensure that, no matter where you live, everyone can share in the marvels of the modern economy.”
###
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett represents portions of Dallas and Tarrant Counties, with the cities of Dallas, Grand Prairie, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Lancaster, Duncanville, Glenn Heights, Hutchins, Wilmer, Arlington, Ovilla, and Seagoville.