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So what do people usually say
when you're about to give a public talk?
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It's to imagine
that your audience is naked.
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(Laughter)
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Well, I'm doing a different trick tonight,
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and I'm going to imagine
all of us without farmers
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and well, it's not so much different.
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[Without farmers,
you'd be hungry, naked and sober]
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(Laughter)
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And our farmers do so much more for us
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than simply feed and clothe
and provide us excellent things to drink.
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Our farmers are an important part
of all of our communities,
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particularly our rural communities.
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And more than that,
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they're a strong driver
of resilient economics.
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Think about it this way:
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When a brewer buys hops from me,
grown here in Minnesota,
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90 percent of that dollar
stays in our state,
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compared to just 10 percent
when they buy it from somewhere else.
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What that means is a lot.
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That 90 percent means local jobs.
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It means tax revenue
for better schools and roads.
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It means support
for the co-ops, the mechanics,
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all the support staff that are needed
for a farm to thrive.
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And they are our best
stewards of the land.
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This quote I think exemplifies
what our family farmers do for us
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in stewarding our shared
natural resources.
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"That land is a community
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is the basic concept of ecology,
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but that land is to be loved and respected
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as an extension of ethics."
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Now, they sure do
a lot of good stuff for us.
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And our family farmers
are great, we'd all agree.
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However,
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the trends in agriculture today are dire.
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The average age of a farmer in America,
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according to the latest
agricultural census --
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58.3
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Of all the farmers,
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33 percent are 65 plus.
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That's a little caricature of my grandpa.
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(Laughter)
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He's still farming,
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and he's much older than 65.
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But to put that in perspective
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another important
public service job, teaching,
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average age of teachers is 42.
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Farmers are pretty old in this country.
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And unfortunately,
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when they retire, if they retire,
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we're not really replacing them.
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Of all the farmers
that we added in this country
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between 2008 and 2012,
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across the entire United States,
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see if you can catch this difference,
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we added 2,000 under the age of 30.
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I'm one of those.
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I'll be around to autograph
some photos later, if you'd like.
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(Laughter)
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You know, our farmers are getting older
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and we're not replacing them,
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what's going on here?
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What are we going to do?
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And I think there's a reason
folks aren't coming into it,
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and that's prices.
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We're going to go through
a couple of slides like this.
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Milk: This is the average retail price
of a gallon of milk in the United States.
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Four dollars 49 cents.
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How much do you think the farmer gets?
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Dollar thirty-two.
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Dollar thirty-two.
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We'll try again with bread.
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Average retail price of bread
in America, three forty-nine.
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Farmer gets 12 cents.
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Audience: Oh!
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And so how are we supposed to have
strong local farms
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in this scenario?
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What are we supposed to do
if there aren't any local farmers left?
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And this isn't just a farmer problem,
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it's not just something
for the few of us farmers to sort out.
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This is an all-of-us problem.
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This is rural and it's urban
and it's state-wide and it's nation-wide.
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So what do we do about it?
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I'll tell you that.
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But first, a story.
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The green movement,
we're all kind of familiar,
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started in the '60s, planting trees.
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And now we've come such a long way.
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Green is part of our day-to-day lives.
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It's part of the day-to-day lives
of Fortune 500 businesses.
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It's a subject of international treaties,
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the subject of presidential debates.
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You and I, we switch our light bulbs,
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we use reusable bags.
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We participate in the green movement
each and every day.
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Yet --
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and this is how we get to the idea --
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the food movement,
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relatively younger,
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but also somewhat familiar, I imagine.
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You go to the grocery store,
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you see a sign that says "Buy local,"
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you go to the farmers market,
you go to the co-op,
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you read books by prominent authors.
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The food movement to date
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could be summarized
as voting with your fork.
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The idea is you pull a dollar
out of your wallet.
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How you spend that dollar
affects the food system.
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It supports farmers close to home.
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And that's all well and good,
but where are we going?
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How do we get to our
renewable-energy moment
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like the green movement did?
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And this, I think, is what we need to do.
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Just voting with out fork
is not solving the issues
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that our farmers are facing.
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And so we need to do more than that.
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I believe we must move on
from just voting with our fork
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to voting with our vote.
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We need to take our dollars
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and continue to spend them locally.
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We also need to show up
at the ballot box for our farmers.
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This is bigger than just
buying local strawberries
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once a year at Pick your own.
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This is a year-round effort
that we must make together
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to make the change we need.
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Changes like fair pricing for farmers.
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That's quotas, supply management,
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guaranteed prices.
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Changes like fair and open trade.
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That means ending trade wars.
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And yeah, of course it means voting.
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Now we all knew that one already though.
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For example, it's working.
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Hey, who's that?
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(Laughter)
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Just this year in Minnesota,
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we've passed a historic,
first-in-the-country tax credit.
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The Beginning Farmer Tax Credit.
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It incentivizes our transition of land
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from the existing generation
to the next generation.
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That was done by a handful
of us young farmers,
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We certainly don't have money,
you saw that earlier.
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We don't have political experience.
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But we showed up
and we made our voices heard.
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And thanks to the support
of farmers and non-farmers alike,
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we got something incredible done
here in this state.
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If we can do it, anybody can do it.
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Now, that was all light and fuzzy
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and feels pretty happy.
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Skeptics in the audience, you're here.
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That would be me if I were here.
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Skeptics are thinking,
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"Wow, what do we need to change
about our food system?"
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Farmers are great.
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We have unlimited food
and it's real cheap too,
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isn't that great?
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Well unfortunately,
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in the '80s and the '90s in this country
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we went down a path of policy
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that could be described as
"get big or get out."
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And what "get big or get out" means
is you maximize production
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while minimizing costs.
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On its face value,
that sounds pretty simple.
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However, that shift
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turned our farmers from a venerated class
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and a valued class in our society
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into a cost to be minimized.
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That shift made it
so that my great grandfather,
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who supported the family with six cows,
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that same dairy,
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trying to support their family,
has to be 600 cows today.
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Six thousand-cow dairies
are not unheard of.
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What happens when
there's this one dairy farm
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in an entire county,
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where there used to be hundreds?
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The same could be said
with corn or beans or field crops.
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What happens when it takes 10,000 acres
for one person to support themselves?
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When it used to only take 40.
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We know what happens,
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we read about it in the news.
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[unclear] rural decline,
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but schools close, schools consolidate,
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post offices close, grocery stores close.
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People leave,
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the community suffers and goes away.
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I believe all of us in this audience
with ties to rural Minnesota
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know this story well.
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This is not a problem that we can solve
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with farmers markets and good intentions.
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We have to do more for our farmers.
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Policy got us into this mess,
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and policy can get us out.
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American farmers are only getting
older, fewer and poorer.
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Yet they are crucial to our state.
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They are the vibrancy
in our rural communities.
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They are the drivers
of the economic growth and stability.
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And they are our best protectors
of our shared resources
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of land, water and air.
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So we have to do better for them.
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So join me, would you?
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Let's fight for our farmers.
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You can see it,
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we're already doing it in Minnesota,
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having great success.
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And together, we can do even more.
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And we must.
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So we were voting with our fork before,
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and we want to keep doing that.
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But if I could have one idea
for you to go home with today,
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it's vote with your vote.
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And so to that end,
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on the count of three,
I'd like all of us to say it together.
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Are you ready?
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OK, one,
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two,
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three.
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Audience: Vote with your vote.
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Very nice, thank you.
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I think you got it.
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(Applause)