joe glauber is no stranger. he's the chief economist at the united states department of agriculture. dr. glauber served a usda from 1982 to 2007 and was named special doha agricultural envoy and continues to serve as chief agricultural negotiator in the doha talks. our next witness is to a roger pulwarty. i will turn to senator bennett to introduce him as well. >> i think the people of colorado for holding this incredibly important hearing. they been afflicted by both drought and fire come as a thank you for doing it and i'm pleased to introduce dr. roger pulwarty to the committee this morning. dr. pulwarty comes to us by way of boulder, colorado where he works on the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. he serves as chief of the climate and societal interactions domitian. his past research and publications have focused on extreme weather in disaster risk reduction in the western united states, latin america and caribbean. dr. pulwarty has testified before congress before. his appearance is focused o

glauber. i apologize i had to go to the hearing. you mentioned the debt to asset ratio for those of crop insurance. do you have any idea what the tattoo data ratio is not available? >> actually the debt to asset ratio i mention was for the entire u.s. farm sector. as i said earlier, you have to be careful of the aggregate. let me see if we can coax out of the numbers and i can go back and see if we can get a breakout for those numbers and get back to you. obviously this year there's no question if you are a field crop producer with high rebels, a revenue product of crop insurance is a big news and help you maintain, you know, i've set lassies. >> thank you. and to dr. pulwarty, imagine the collaboration between 79 and usda to better handle drought and drought situation. are there any other tools you can think of that would help us in minimizing the impact of these drought? >> thank you for the question. there's several practices that are there, people that have been doing for a long time. that's why they're still there. from the sta

i particularly want to thank our chief economist, joe glauber and of course all the great the work they'vedone. they plan to very full days. i know we are going to learn a lot. along with the traditional commodity and food price outlooks, this year's program emphasizes the many ways agriculture must manage risk from finances to natural resources to transportation. one of the things i'm really excited about in this particular program this year is more time spent on certain vegetables, which are increasing importance in american agriculture and diet and we see them center stage in the sears outlook and that that futuristic thing. i also really excited to be here becaus h

it's not to say -- and the last thing i want is a quote saying glauber says no relationship between droughtand yields. [laughter] obviously, there is. but it's just to say we'll be following this very carefully. treat -- at least at this point in time there's no republican we won't be thinking of yields, and again, the proof obviously as we look into spring. but as we all mow for corn that's, essentially, the critical month is july in terms of precipitation and temperature. okay. let's turn to another issue here, and i'll try to speed up a little bit. one is, and identify talked about ethanol almost every year just because ethanol has been such a large driver in the corn market and factor, obviously, in acreage decisions, so it affects others as well. you know, from 2006 to 2010 we saw ethanol production increase, corn use for ethanol increase by almost 700 million bushels annually. it topped five billion bushels in terms of corn use in 2010, was at similar levels in 2011-2012. coming into this year with the brought we saw high prices, and as soon as we saw prices start spiking, we saw etha