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George Pataki Addresses Questions from Iowa Cattlemen

52 views · Published 24 September 2015 · 1:54 · Indexed 31 October 2026

Channel: RFD-TV · 2015 · Entertainment

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Q: "John Haman from the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, welcome to Iowa. Um. I’m curious how you envision federal programs such as Federal Crop Insurance playing a role and optimizing production and helping producers stay profitable going forward."

A: George Pataki:  "Federal Crop Insurance is absolutely critical. Just going back to my childhood, I grew up on the farm, and you learn so much on a farm. Mostly, you learn values. The values of work, the value of family, the value of community. And, also one of the things that... it makes me think of a debate a couple of days ago; there was a lot of talk. One of the things you learn on a farm, it doesn’t matter what you say, what matters is what you do. Uh. And, that’s a lesson that I brought to my time as Governor and I hope to bring to Washington as well. Talk is cheap, action is what gets things done. But, I remember one summer in particularly, I may have been 11 or 12 years old, on a little farm in the Hudson valley. We had everything. We’d start with strawberries in the spring and then cherries and then we’d move to raspberries, and we’d sell it directly. My grandfather would go through town selling stuff, and then we had a stand. And, we had magnificent peaches. Now, I remember being in the peach orchard when I was 11 or 12 and my father is looking at the peaches and saying, “This is just wonderful. We’re going to have the greatest peach crop.” And, about a week later, we had a hideous hail storm; and instead of having one of the best peach crops we ever had, we had nothing. And, there’s nothing a farmer can do about that. You cannot control the weather, and you have to have access to that insurance. And believe me, when it’s a choice between the federal government’s subsidizing hurricane insurance for people having a billion dollar house on the coast or helping a farm family be able to survive a weather catastrophe, I’m for the farm insurance, that’s what matters to America."

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