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Frank Lucas: “At one point we had what, 30, almost 40 million acres, maybe…”

Featuring: Frank Lucas, Republican | U.S. House Oklahoma, District 3

#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle

Published August 17, 2026 | Video Starts at 25:39

Ronald Reagan's not going to tell you what to farm. That wasn't his style. So their version of Soil bank was the Conservation Reserve program. At one point we had what, 30, almost 40 million acres, maybe 42 million acres [in the CRP program]. It was authorized up to 45. Once again, it had an impact on the communities, but man, it changed the quality of the environment out there. Tying down the soil, improving water quality. (25:39–25:44)

CLAIM

Asserts that the CRP program once covered nearly 40 to 42 million acres.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Frank Lucas

“In the 1960s and 70s, the land grant universities and ARs developed a technique to raise hundreds of millions of screwworm flies in…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 33:41-33:53
“We pushed them out of the United States, pushed them out of Mexico, pushed them all the way back to the Panama Canal.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 34:10-34:20
“They turned down the production from 500 million a week to 100 million a week.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 34:44-34:50
“The basic policies [of the farm bill], whether it's crop insurance or price protection for row crop people or the drought protection…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 04:31-04:46
“If you don't adjust the reference prices up to reflect the inflation that's gone on, then they really don't provide any protection.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 04:59-05:06
“If you don't tweak the crop insurance side on the weather issues, then your premiums will go up.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 05:10-05:17
“When we started out with farm bills in 1933, that was the first comprehensive farm bill, the Agricultural Adjustment Act.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 05:33-05:41
“By the time we got to 1996, I came in 1994 in Congress, the concepts of the federal government telling you what you could raise, when you…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 06:41-06:55
“In the House, we passed the improved, the refined, the updated farm bill out of committee across the floor.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 09:09-09:18
“Every farm bill has been... tweaked by the Senate, but it's been the House product.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 09:37-09:42
“You have to have a farm bill in order for these people to stay in place.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 10:56-11:01
“The big beautiful bill passed at the beginning of this two year term... included the core of the funding for crop insurance, price…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 11:44-12:07
“This skinny bill... sets the reference prices, it tweaks the crop insurance programs, it gives guidance to USDA on the conservation…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 12:07-12:22
“Senator Deb Fisher from Nebraska has a bill to reverse the disaster relief funding formula.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 17:54-18:29
“The weather patterns are changing.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 19:17-19:19
“A lot of crop ground went to CRP and was sown to grass, creating incredible fuel loads.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 20:02-20:18
“Several instances in the last 10 years I've almost had entire communities burned to the ground.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 21:31-21:36
“The weather patterns have gotten more complicated. It is harder to raise a dry land field crop in summertime.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 22:05-22:12
“I'm still getting essentially the same amount of rain in Roger Mills county.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 22:39-22:44
“The original CRP program was the old Soil bank program for the Eisenhower administration back in the 50s.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 24:24-24:30
“If you put every bit of CRP back into cultivation, not only would you have dust storms and massive erosion on some pretty marginal land.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 26:27-26:36
“We do farm bills every five years to tweak on things.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 28:18-28:23
“After most of the fires in the last 20 years, we've gone back with steel corner posts.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 28:45-28:51
“The Senate may think of the House as little brothers, but sometimes you have to take care of the old guys.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 29:53-30:00
“The chairman of the Senate Ag Committee is John Bozeman from Arkansas.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 30:15-30:22
“The New World screwworm flies were among us. They're a Central American creature.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 32:02-32:08
“They came into the United States starting as far as I can determine, the 1930s in Florida.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 32:08-32:13
“By the time the eradication program was developed, they literally were from Florida all the way across the south.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 32:12-32:19
“We're paying for a new fly factory in Mexico, we're paying for to build a fly factory in South Texas.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 36:04-36:10
“USDA announced that at the end of August they're going to open up a section of the border in Arizona with Mexico to allow cattle to come…”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 36:57-37:08
“The argument USDA will make is that Arizona is farther from the flies than we are in Oklahoma.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 37:36-37:43
“By the time you open the border in a limited way up in a month... that's six months away.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 37:58-38:18
“I never actually to my knowledge got an official notification. Usda.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 38:33-38:33
“The Wall Street Journal announced [the border opening] before seemed anybody knew.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 38:37-38:45
“The hundred million flies I suspect are being prioritized in, in Texas, New Mexico.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 39:21-39:28
“If you have a fly detection, there's going to be a quarantine for a period of time around you, probably 12 miles.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 39:37-39:43
“Food Supply, the beef supply is, has been, will be and will always be totally safe.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 40:11-40:18
“Now you've got to have a Conservation Compliance Agreement copy in your file.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 41:17-41:23
“We have a new Federal Reserve chairman, President Trump's appointee.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 42:01-42:06
“The Fed's trying to balance interest rates with trying to restrain inflation rates.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 42:23-42:32
“It's felt in the Lucas household at rural Oklahoma.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 43:41-43:44
“The Oklahoma delegation is going to be fine. My Texas Panhandle friends are going to be fine. Western Kansas is going to be fine.”
#003 Congressman Frank Lucas - Farm Bills, Screwworms, and Fighting for the Panhandle | Uploaded August 17, 2026 | 44:21-44:28