In the past 40 years, the United States lost more than a million farmers and ranchers. Many of our farmers are aging. Today, only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming, and more and more of our farmers are looking elsewhere for their primary source of income.
I have spent my life reassembling the family farm.
In the fall term of 1933-34 I was on my family farm in Maine.
The family farm is the foundation for who we are as a Commonwealth. And for over a century, the family farm in Kentucky has centered around one crop: tobacco.
The greatest job I ever had was working on my family farm. Each morning my father would come into my bedroom around 4:30 am and command me to get up and work the fields. I would spend the next two hours before school slopping pigs and cropping tobacco.
I was raised on a family farm in western Minnesota. So I didn't have the background to prepare me for this business life.
I hope that the Senate acts quickly to pass this legislation so that Americans will no longer worry about having to sell the family farm or business to pay taxes after the death of a loved one.
Well, I was born in El Paso, Texas, it was in the nearest hospital to the family farm.