I believe that’s correct. I see a lot of heads nodding. Next is Jodi Slocum. She will be followed by Alan Roebke and then Duane Alberts.

MS. SLOCUM:

Hi. I’m here as a representative of Farmer to Farmer. We’re a small group in Western Wisconsin working with local farmers and also working with farmers in Central America. Listening to the presentation this morning I was struck by how this feels like it’s really approached from a big business standpoint, from the big businesses looking down from their offices at farms and farmers and trade, the view of grafts, percentages and dollars doesn’t take into account local economies, local communities and local farmers. So I’m here to represent that voice. The success of NAFTA and GATT is disputable and from my view it’s a disaster, and from our local farmers’ view it’s a disaster. When farmers in Southern Mexico grow corn one year and can’t sell it because the corn coming in from the United States taking over their economy selling for less than locally grown corn in Southern Mexico, that’s a problem. The next year those same farmers can’t even afford the seed to grow the corn, so they don’t grow the corn and the corn that comes in from the United States is completely unaffordable to the local economy. The people are hungry, there’s no business and the farmers don’t have their crops. That’s a problem. And when we approach this important farm issue from big business down, we’re not taking into account what happens in these small communities. And it’s happening all over the world. Agriculture isn’t like other commodities. We need local control, local support and subsidies. Our local dairy farmers aren’t even paid enough to make it. And year after year we’re watching them go down the drain, and that is what is the basis of our local economy. That’s why we live where we live and why we choose the life we have. In Germany and France where there are good government subsidies, they have thriving local farms, small family farms and they have thriving local economies. And we’re talking about, you know, throwing that out the window. Mr. Schroeder said we need programs that help our farmers and don’t mess up global markets, and I’m really not sure that’s possible. We live in a democracy and we should have the right to choose what we sell and buy. When this is decided by representatives of big business, health and environment suffer. It’s Europe’s right to decide not to sell food that it finds unsafe. By forcing countries to buy and sell what business decides, it takes us down to the low -- the lowest common denominator. Words like scientific and safe science are disputable. Is DDT safe? We said no, but we are making DDT and we’re selling it to South America and they’re putting it on their bananas and we’re telling Europe they have to sell their bananas regardless of if the DDT is safe or not. In a democracy these decisions are made by representatives that are elected to represent the people. This should be where these decisions are made, not by the World Trade Organization. It’s critical that local farmers and citizens are represented. The World Trade Organization rules override our local federal laws, and that’s wrong. When you make your decisions, I urge you to take these issues into account and to look from a farmer’s viewpoint, from a local economy viewpoint and not just from the grass and the dollars and cents. It’s easy to lose touch with the personal faith of these people actually growing the food. Get out and talk to the people in our communities. And that’s all I have to say.

MS. KINNEY:

Thank you, Jodi.

MS. SLOCUM:

Any questions?

PANEL MEMBER:

Well, I suppose I ought to make a comment. The history, again, we’ve seen on our slides and from our speakers, that starting in 1948 after World War II, the Western Democracies led by ourselves, as well as our European allies, and at that time supported by Chinese and Russians, decided we’d try to overcome some of the difficulties we’d seen which had led to two world wars. And so we formed the United Nations. We formed the World Bank. We formed the International Monetary Fund. International organizations to try to deal with the world financial, political and development problems. In the area of trade we set up a thing called the GATT which was to try to bring some semblance of order and rules to the world marketplace and we’ve been on that road now for 50 years. And finally what we did in 1994 was to bring a little more structure to what with an organization like the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank. A 134 nations agreed to that. Most of the world’s democracies agreed to that and their elected representatives agreed to that, and that organization is a rules based, law based organization. It does not require any country to change its own laws. If you don’t want to play in the game, if you don’t want to obey the rules, there’s a price to pay for that. But the WTO cannot effect the laws of the United States Congress. So if -- if we don’t like something, we can go our own way. There may be a price to pay for that under this new world system. The problem we have, and what I tried to say is, all countries historically want to support and have a good sound agriculture policy and healthy farms; Germany, France, ourselves, the Scandinavian countries, Japan. And two things are happening. Number one, whatever we do the number of farmers is decreasing. It has for I guess a hundred years, not only in this country but almost in every country. But, number two, what we have all decided is let’s try and support our farmers and our agriculture base, but let’s try and do it in a way that’s least disruptive to the world marketplace. And so we all still have policies and programs to support our farmers, but we’ve all said is, let’s see if we can’t eliminate or reduce those programs which skew the world marketplace. And that ultimately is to the benefit of those producers and farmers around the world who can produce and want to produce good, sound, safe agriculture products competitively. So that’s where we are. End of speech.