>> you can watch every winning studentcam documentary online at studentcam.org. minutes, new0 jersey senator cory booker will be kicking off his 2020 presidential campaign in his hometown of new work, new jersey. we will bring you live coverage at this rally when it begins. before the rally, senator bob menendez of new jersey is speaking to the crowd. next, a preview of his campaign event from today's washington journal." >> opportunities, equal rights, and justice for all. mentioned that senator cory booker officially kicks off his campaign today. today. for more on that return to jonathan of nj advanced media. he is joining us by phone -- phone this morning. cory booker has been in the u.s.

senate for more than 60 years, was mayor of newark, and how does he plan to reintroduce himself to america today in this kickoff? kickoff rally and then a two week tour where he is going around the country and going to nevada, georgia, and speak about voting rights. we had a contested gubernatorial election last fall. he will focus on that issue. he will go to the -- he is going to go to iowa. he has not released the rest of his schedule. he has a kickoff to get attention focused on his campaign. how does he intend to break out from the pack when it comes to a democratic field that is nearly 20 candidates large? guest: right now he is not worried about. this rally may give him a chance to have attention. we talked to the top campaign people on thursday, and they talked about that there was no going below the radar and

spending their time building infrastructure. one consultant says that everything he has heard, cory booker is doing everything right. they have big names in local politics, they are building a big infrastructure of people to knock on doors and make phone calls. that will not show up in the polls they are hoping that shows up next february. host: you've covered a lot of campaigns and have known his work for a long time. what is your sense of that infrastructure and how it compares to other candidates? i do not really know what other candidates are doing. i do know what he is doing. i know he has nicknames in the iowa democratic party, and the new hampshire democratic party. -- every year there is a great competition to get this handful of people. host: who are some of those folks out iowa and new hampshire?

general folks who worked on various campaigns. ean, who worked for obama in 2008. he is one of those guys. south carolina he has gotten two or three big names of people who say these are really good guests for you. host: we talked about fundraising on the democratic side. amy, ander is behind elizabeth warren. is he concerned about where he stands in terms of getting the money to run a campaign? guest: they say they have all the money they need to do their strategy. sayingt going on air they need a lot of money. booker should have no problem raising money. he has strong ties to silicon valley and he has strong ties to

the community, which in 2008 a bus as much money as the airline industry. theas people out there, and question is that he did not run for office in 2014 and in those intervening years, the democratic party shifted to a lot of small donations, when i first started covering campaign finance, that was used to make up for the fact that you could not attract large donors. hillary clinton relied on large donors. two of the scientists i talked are nothat they caucusing for cory booker because he has 20 thousand dollars contributions. host: you covered cory booker for a long time. your thoughts that there is a front-page story on the " washington post." could electer they

a rare bachelor in chief. guest: it is historical. the last president was a bachelor was another new jersey native -- native, over -- grover cleveland. besides that, the fact that there is a lot of interest and rumors that he was gay, he said no i am not. he has a girlfriend, a boo. and there is attention on his personal life. our people are going to go to the iowa caucus and say i'm not going to stand with cory booker because he has a girlfriend and is not married yet? it is fascinating, but that is not with the election will be decided on. host: what would people be most surprised to learn about -- about cory booker. something that you know for -- from covering him? guest: he is a product of the black church, and he uses the

cadence of the black church. andreaches, he is not shy hesitant to talk about his upbringing and how it influenced his beliefs. is theonathan salant correspondent for nj a man's 0 c-span's live in newark, new jersey, we are waiting for senator cory booker to launches presidential campaign. this is his first official campaign event, which is expected to start shortly. right now, we see the governor and first lady of new jersey on the stage. while we wait, some of the issues candidate space in the campaigns ahead. and an even bolder --

with secretary of agriculture sonny perdue on capitol hill this past week, it is a good time to hear from presidentarmers union roger johnson during the fiscal 2020 budget plan, a budget plan that your group disagreed with. why? guest: because it is major cuts, and this comes at a time when agriculture is really and a lot .f financial stress the income today is about 50% of what it was five years ago. down priceseting all of that exacerbated by a lot of the trade disruptions that have been happening around the world. host: this is sonny perdue's statement on the trump administration's usda budgetary "president trump's budget is fiscally conservative, lays out the path for an accountable

government with spending, with a national debt of $22 trillion, we can no down theck the can road, and the usda will actively do its part to reduce federal spending. are you saying there is no belt-tightening that can happen at usda? guest: i am not saying there is no belt tightening that can happen, i am saying these are really messed up priorities. after this administration and the previous congress just did a it isllion plus tax cut, what really added to the deficit in a major way. of there both sides ledger that we need to be paying attention to, and what we are saying is the usda buys enormous services both to agriculture and to low income communities, and we need to make sure that those services are provided, and we need to recognize that rural america is important. host: agriculture usda saw a 15%

reduction in but trump budget plan that was put out. talk about where those cuts came and what the priorities are. guest: they came in a lot of places, but if you want to talk a sort of long view here, the plays with probably the most damaging is in the research area. this administration is looking to take major premier research institutions in the usda and, frankly, move them out of town and make major cuts at the same time. impacts oures is it efficiency, profitability, likelihood of staying ahead of the rest of the world and being in a position where we can feed not just in this country but around the world as well. cutting research, that is the long term that we are talking

about, and that is a real problem. it is very shortsighted. host: special phone lines in this segment with roger johnson of the national farmers union, farmers can call in on a special line, (202) 748-8000. if you work in the agriculture sector writ large, (202) 748-8001. all others can call in at (202) 748-8002. in, even as calling this budget has proposed billions of dollars in cuts, aren't farmers in this country receiving billions of dollars in assistance, when it comes to offsetting some of the impacts of the trade dispute? does that balance out at all? guest: yeah, so there was a one-time payment made last your copy market facilitation program payment -- last year, called the market facilitation program payment. farm is in north dakota,

and i can tell you that the soybean crop in north dakota probably dropped in practical value three dollars as a result of what happened. you saw an immediate to dollar per bushel decrease tariffssult of the 25% that were proposed. if you think about soybeans ,eing nine dollars a bushel what happened particularly in the western part of the soybean market outa is the to the pacific northwest, which is where most of the western soybeans went, because they went to china, and china dominates our export market first toy beads. over half of all of our exports used to go to china. that disappeared overnight. you saw the two dollar decrease in the marketplace, plus you saw

a huge basis drop in a lot of places in north dakota, you know, they stopped buying soybeans at any price. there was no longer transportation, there was no market for it, so the indians now had to come east and south over the top of all the other beans. you just had a major sort of disruption, and that $1.65 was intended to compensate for some of that, but you saw across the penny though, corn got a a bushel. it was an insult to the corn producers. trade issues with the chinese are ongoing. do the farmers not receive assistance right now? guest: that is right. they cannot. i mean, it was a one-time deal

from the usda through what is called the ctc. congress does not act on it. frankly, we think congress ought n on this question and put some longer-term policies in place to help. what i will say about the trade dispute, first of all, is that we do not disagree with the administration's focus on trying to hold china to account. that is absolutely appropriate that that happened. where we disagree is the methodology in which it is happening. so we first were offending all of our trading problems around the world. there will be significant reputational damage that will outlast, even if we get an agreement with china and whatever other countries we are negotiating with, our reputation is to the point where we will be the residual supplier of last

result to a lot of countries. host: meanwhile back here at home, congress left town before approving a new disaster aid bill, with all of that flooding in the midwest. how would that bill in fact farmers? helpere money there to farmers who have been impacted by the floods? guest: so the bill that was left a bill thatually principally looks at image from a hurricanes and the wildfires from a year and two years ago. the flooding damage happened much more recently, and there was some discussion about should there be some additional assistance put on top of this bill. i do not know that that is going to happen. i mean, nobody knows. it seems like that is probably unlikely. the dispute over which congress passing a billut was really over assistance to

puerto rico. theyhe president saying did not need any more assistance, and the democrats thebasically treating them way you do the rest of the country. we are not in the middle of that dispute. i am just saying that is what it is, not over the midwestern flooding. host: how many farmers do you represent? guest: about 200,000 farm families. host: what is your job on capitol hill? is it lobbying, is it working with members of states with a lot of farms? guest: it is both. is everything, really. i am president and ceo. our office is here in washington, d.c. we have some companies that we operate, some investments that we oversee, put it is mostly to represent our membership, and that representation happens up here on capitol hill, but it happens in a lot of other venues as well.

host: roger johnson here to take your call for the next 25 minutes or so. sarah is a farmer in wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. hello. host: go ahead. guest: good morning. have a my husband and i dairy farm with his family, we know a lot of calais, and we have extended low prices. for some federal dairy price policy reform, but i experience armer, lot of consolidation in the market. we have prices going up, fewer choices, and i'm wondering if roger can address the consolidation in the ag market. host: i am sure he can. guest: thanks for the call, sarah. and i can tell you, i know as a

dairy farmer, this is a sector of agriculture that is struggling probably as much as any, if not more. price is very low. gary farmers are going out of business, frankly, in a lot of places in sort of record numbers right now a lot of distress, particularly with family-size dairies. but this is the really big issue, particularly for family farmers. in onhe is talking about the input side, the stuff that farmers have to buy, the fertilizer, the seed, the fuel, all of those kinds of things, the feed in particular, the ies thatf compan provide those services have been reduced to a small handful, so as a result, there is far less competition in that marketplace than what ought to be there. a generation ago, farmers got about $.35 of the food dollar.

today, it is $.14. so where is the rest of that $.86 of the consumer food dollar going? well, it is going to these companies that are selling at higherfarmers prices, making it even more difficult for farmers to make money. and the other sheriff of that is going to the marketing side, so itn sarah produces the milk, goes through a small handful of companies. on my farm, we selfie wh -- sell wheat or the soybean or what have you, it goes to a very small handful of companies, and of companiesndful is in a position that the marketplace is less and less competitive. as a consequence, they have more market power, they can pay us less than what otherwise those products would be worth, and we end up with the short end

of the stick. host: for dairy farmer specifically, this is an associated press story, dairy safety net program expected in june. this is an insurance program from the u.s. farm insurance is agency. can you talk about it. ? in the 2014 farm bill, there with a new dairy program put in place called the margin protection program, and the design was so essentially the price of milk is here, and the that farmers have to buy in order to feed their dairy , so that program tried to cover the cost of that difference, that margin between the cost and the revenue, if you will. and as it turned out, it into roundlyg, i think, despised, disgusted. it was not effective.

and that ledttle, a lot to these dairy farmers going out of business. in the last farm bill that was just signed into law before the end of the year congress made changes to that program. they made a number of adjustments. hopefully it is going to be a lot more beneficial, particularly to farmers that may be of sarah's size and smaller, 200, 300 cows. it is designed to provide more assistance to them, but it is not going to be in effect until june or july. and that is one of the challenges. i think the other challenge is dairy farmers are so disgusted with the current policies, i think they are just having a hard time getting their arms around it. the final point i say about this is we are producing too much. we are just producing way too lot of otherd a

commodities, and a lot of the dairy industry right now, at least in our membership is ought to havee some sort of supply management provisions coming into the dairy program. host: let's head up into chicago. andrew works in the acag sector. andrew, what kind of work do you do in chicago? andrew, are you with us? caller: i am with you. host: go ahead. what kind of ag work do you do in chicago? caller: just basically ,roundwork around the company just basically taking care of the grounds around the company that i work with, and it is saturated. it is saturated with chemicals, chemicals surrounding this company. a manufacturing district, and it is actually -- what do

you call it? spilling -- this is the stockyards area of chicago, so it has been going on. i would not grow a garden in this community in about six or seven blocks or radius of this community. ag spillingcause of , years and years, what do you call that? host: are you talking about a toxic waste dump here, or is this something less than that? ,aller: just through the years getting into the soil'ss here. host: mr. johnson. guest: that is one of the effects of some of the different processing companies.

i do not know the particular situation that is being discussed here, but certainly, i mean, we want to do the best job possible to keep the soil clean, and we have a lot of members in urban areas now that are trying to do urban farming, so this soil remediation issue is a really big issue. in some cases, you can come in treatments to make the soil better. in other cases, you simply have to come in and remove it and replace it with fresh soil so that you can grow in these areas. letter elton john -- let's go to john. my father lives on a family farm. they are actually vegetable farmers.

my first question was about allow farmers not to their program that should still the budget, i think that should be eliminated. i was wondering about corn subsidies. these were originally designed so that farmers could actually eat their own corn and produce their own oil, and i think corn subsidies should be better used to do biodiesel and alcohol, and we could use sugar to produce if alcohol much cheaper we use it as a biofuel. the next thing i would like you to address is the new financial services tax that democrats are pushing and how that would affect agriculture didn' derivatives. there are farmers here that i went broke milking -- all went broke milking cows, like that lady was talking about.

or soybeans,milk and they came together and they floated a derivative, and derivative has helped cover the cost of the grain, helped cover the cost to, you know, run the tractors. one guy came in with a combine to harvest all the rallies. that are000 laborers unproductive, and how the taxonomy derivatives, if the democrats did it. host: you gave us a lot to talk about. we are taking notes. mr. johnson? [laughter] thet: let me start with fact about biodiesel and about ethanol, because these are programs that we have strong waste it for many years. -- that we have supported for many years. we produce biofuels in this country, in fact, our production is so large that it has driven prices well below the cost of production, and that is a real problem, because this idea that

some have espoused that, when prices just get too low, farmers producing quit stuff, because they are not making any money at it, it does not work that way and agriculture. when prices get low, farmers' only recourse is to try to produce more so that they can get more income to cover that low-priced or so that is historically why there have been incentives in government programs to reduce production or to take some of that excess production and turn it into something else. that leads me to the ethanol biodiesel fuel question here and we have a surplus in this country, and we were lot ofental in helping a other folks in agriculture to organize some of these ethanol plants, to produce ethanol, which can be added to gasoline. it makes your gasoline cleaner, safer, better debris -- not that

gas is something good to is not, but the ethanol a problem, and it makes it more affordable for the consuming public, so we strongly support those programs. unfortunately, the subsidy disappeared some years ago, so there really is no subsidy for that anymore. the biodiesel question that the caller alluded to, it is more related to oil feed crops like soybeans and crops of that nature. you can get a tiny amount out of corn, but most of that little bit of corn oil is not turned into biodiesel. i amhe derivative fact, not sure that i want to go there, because most of our members just do not deal with that, with that sort of an issue. they are producers. host: bob is aurora, indiana, works in the ag sector .

good morning. caller: good morning. yes, i used to work for a company that made livestock feed, and from, i would say, the late 1980's and early 1990's, soybean mill went just out of feed, and our prices for had doubled from one year to the next, and a lot of the farmers, in the areas i cover here in kentucky, ohio, and indiana, all of us are not farmers anymore. so what they are doing, i think, and there is so much to talk about on farmers, because i think in years to come, and not too far off, they are going to have a problem on this earth, because they have taken a lot of the -- actually, the racetrack in kentucky, there used to be

two brothers in that area, and they sold it out to a racetrack, and they do not form there anymore. that i the farms delivered to our out of business now because of higher prices, and people do not care anymore. about livingnow within their means, you know. that you, these farms are talking about, are these smaller family farms, or are they larger -- caller: most of them are smaller family, and some of them are bigger, like the clan brothers or those that sold out to the racetrack in kentucky. all of the areas now, all we have here, this little town used to have all kinds of manufacturers. we had a foundry, and it has all disappeared now because prices being so high, and people

demanding the best of everything, you know. host: bob, thanks for bringing it up. mr. johnson. guest: the one comment that i really want to address is this concern that we are going to have a famine because we do not have enough food produced. that may happen. it is happening in some parts of the world, but it is not going are takingecause we too much land out of production in this country. yes, some land is coming out of production. it is relatively small amounts. we still produce very close to the same amount of land that we have, for many, many years. the issue that we have is we have become very, very keep going so yields up faster than demand, and that is what drives the prices up very low. host: our young people going

into farming the same numbers that they used to? guest: that is a good question. does five years, the usda where widespread census they send these fairly extensive questionnaires out to farmers all over the country. farmers fill them out, and it gives them a whole bunch of data. they made some changes in how they measure some of that data and how they capture some of the data, but to the question about john farmers, it shows an increase in the number of young farmers, but they have changed their methodology. so if you bring it back to the same methodology, the increase is very small, like 1% or 2%. the more troubling statistic, though, is the number of farmers that our retirement age or beyond, it is like six or seven times the number of young farmers coming in. so you have got this disconnect,

and there are a lot of folks that are worried about -- are there going to be enough farmers entering the business to replace those farmers that are exiting the business? and to the degree that you have got a shortfall, what you end up with increasing consolidation, meaning larger and larger and larger farmers. some of that is natural. it is expensive to get into the business and agriculture. land cost is very high, machinery costs are high, and so that is a challenge. more of the young farmers today are starting on a relatively small-scale. that makes it more difficult to sort of replace these retiring farmers that are operating larger operations. host: any other major demographic changes, as you saw from this study? a significanto, number of women operators, which we take oas a good sign. is the changetoo,

in methodology your use or ask for the principal operators developed the survey, and now they are allowing further operators on the same farm to be counted in the statistics you're so you have a new methodology compared to the old, so they have the date of both ways so you can compare. there is still an increase in the number of women farmers, and that is a good thing. host: an interesting chart from the usda, if you want to check it out, it shows the number of farms in 2017.

♪ >> good afternoon.