Sen. Klobuchar talks turkey tariff, farm bill during visit to King Turkey Day

Sep. 18—WORTHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) took to the podium in advance of Saturday's Great Gobbler Gallop in downtown Worthington to both cheer on the hometown bird, Paycheck, and to celebrate the anticipated expansion of frozen turkey product sales to India following a reduction in the tariff on U.S. turkey exports from 30% to 5% earlier this month.

While the turkey racing rivalry between Cuero, Texas and Worthington began 51 years ago — when both claimed to be the turkey producing capitals of the world — the times have changed. Today, Nobles County is home to just one turkey farm, while the same held true for Cuero several years ago.

Despite the decline in turkey production locally, Minnesota remains the No. 1 turkey producing state in the nation.

"Sorry, Texas ... we are the natural home for the Great Gobbler Gallop," Klobuchar teased from the microphone, as several members of the Cuero delegation sat on the stage behind her, or stood among the crowd in front of her.

Klobuchar said it was great to be back in Worthington — she last attended King Turkey Day festivities in 2019 — and said it was exciting to see the city's growth, including several new restaurants, a water park and other positive developments.

"I also know this is a place where the women are strong, the men are good looking and all the turkeys are above average," she said as the crowd laughed and cheered.

After briefly remarking on Minnesota's selection to send a turkey to the White House for pardoning in November, Klobuchar spoke of the economic importance of turkey production to Minnesota and the work she's done to expand markets for poultry products.

"There was this huge tariff on turkey products in India, which has over 1 billion people that could eat our turkeys," she explained.

The reduction in the tariff on frozen turkey products to India will be a "huge market for Minnesota and for our nation, so we're pretty excited about that," Klobuchar said.

In June, Klobuchar joined a bipartisan group including Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Mike Braun (R-Indiana), Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) and John Thune (R-South Dakota) in urging U.S. Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai for increased market access between the U.S. and India for turkey and poultry producers.

Klobuchar, as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, then hosted Tai in Minnesota in August, which included meetings with agricultural leaders, farmers, producers, exporters and business leaders, as well as a visit to the Minnesota State Fair.

Following her brief remarks on stage, Klobuchar stepped offstage for a brief interview about tariffs impacting agricultural products, as well as progress on the next federal farm bill.

As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Klobuchar is working on her fourth farm bill. "There's been a lot of good in the past few farm bills that have been helpful for Minnesota, but ... we've got to do more on Avian flu and some of the diseases," she said. "Senator (John) Cornyn, ironically of Texas, and I have led that bill to invest more in that kind of research."

She's also working alongside Sen. Thune on adding incentives into the bill for use of precision agriculture technology.

"Precision Ag is a (tool) for using less water, finding out what kinds of seeds we need," Klobuchar said. "You do that, of course, by using technology to our advantage. To do that we need high speed internet, which is why we just got that big grant in Minnesota to get it to every corner."

While the current farm bill is slated to expire at the end of September, Klobuchar said they can go beyond the deadline, and there's an "implicit extension" to the end of the year.

"I'd like to really get it done by the end of the year," she said.

Meanwhile, Klobuchar said she will continue her work to expand markets for Minnesota farmers, including pork products to Japan and Asia.

"There's all kinds of possibilities and markets," she said. "One of the outcomes that no one ever really thinks about with the war in Ukraine is that we're just building bigger and bigger alliances with the countries that we work with, like South Korea and Japan, like Europe. We just have to build on those alliances economically to break down trade barriers."