MR. HAMMOCK: Thank you for the opportunity in this USDA/USTR Listening Session for Sarah and I to participate. I am Ardis Hammock, a sugarcane grower from Clewiston, Florida and a five-year member of the Agricultural Trade Advisory Committee, ATAC, for sweetener. I am here today with my husband Allen and my daughter Sarah. Our family has been growing sugarcane in south Florida for over 60 years.

Sugar farmers have long endorsed the goal of global free trade because U.S. sugar producers are very efficient by world standards, and we would welcome the opportunity to compete on a genuine level playing field. Until that free trade goal, which must be a fair trade goal, is achieved the U.S. must retain at least the minimum sugar policy now in place to prevent foreign subsidized sugar from unfairly displacing efficient American producers such as my family and fellow growers.

The U.S. farm economy is in its worst shape in decades. In the three years since the '96 Freedom to Farm Bill was adopted commodity prices have fallen, farm income has fallen, and farmers and their banks are going bankrupt right and left. This has devastated many rural farming communities. Sugar farmers are sharing in that misery.

It is bad enough that sugar prices to us farmers has been flat or declining for the past 15 years, but the price we receive for our sugar has dropped 10 percent under the Freedom to Farm Bill. Although the U.S. Congress passed emergency relief legislation to farmers the past two years, none of those funds have gone to sugar farmers.

In delivering my message today I am speaking with two voices. The first voice is with the knowledge and foresight of an ATAC member dealing with this serious trade issue. I encourage our government to negotiate very carefully and rationally when considering additional trade agreements. The 1999 WTO Ministerial will pay a pivotal role in establishing the scope, parameters and goals of the next multi-national trade realm.

As an ATAC member I give you the following suggestions as the U.S. government enters into the upcoming WTO trade negotiations. All countries must comply with past agreements before the U.S. forges any new agreements. In addition, the U.S. should be given credit for complying before requiring to make further cuts in the next Round.

Second, the U.S. must not reduce its support for agricultural programs any further, particularly for import-sensitive crops such as sugar until other countries have reduced their support to the U.S. level.

Third, the U.S. government should take into account labor and environmental standards. There is a huge gap in labor and environmental standards between developed and developing countries and nearly three-fourths of the world's sugar is produced in developing countries. A flexible request offer type of negotiating strategy must be followed in the next trading realm rather than a rigid, across the board formula approach. This is the only manner in which we can address the huge imbalance and support some of the nations and turn the U.S. unilateral concession to our advantage.

That being said, now my voice is from the heart as a farmer, a farmer's wife, and a mamma. Daniel Webster said it best, "Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Unstable is the future of the country which has lost its taste for agriculture." Today I brought with me the most important issue you need to deal with during negotiations, my daughter Sarah.

As you can see, she is proudly wearing her FFA jacket. The blue Future Farmers of America jacket is a symbol of all that we as farmers hold dear. It symbolizes the next generation of American farmers. It symbolizes the continuation of our strongly held family values and farming traditions. Most of all, it symbolizes the faith of our youth in tomorrow and that there is a future in farming.

This is what our trade negotiators need to remember -- that what they are doing is not just some intellectual exercise involving the trade policies of various countries. It's not a game and they should not use farmers as pawns in their negotiations. They are dealing with real people's lives. They are dealing with our future, and most importantly the future of our children. Please don't disregard Sarah's future. Don't give away her birthright to some frenchman whose government heavily subsidizes his sugar beet farm and wants to dump his sugar into our marketplace.

Ambassador Barshefsky said during these Listening Sessions and I quote, "The USTR and the USDA negotiators will continuously review the recommendations from these sessions in developing our negotiation objectives for the next Round of agriculture negotiations." To ensure you do this, Sarah will give you a booklet to take to the negotiating table. I don't think that the USDA has printed this manual. It's entitled, "Life's Little Instruction Book to Save the American Sugar Farmer." In it you will find the four positions sugar farmers urge you to use in negotiations, as well as reminders of the reason you should not sell out American farmers to foreign bankrolled farmers.

We expect the American government to stand up for American sugar farmers like me and for future farmers like Sarah, her brother Robert, and all the other Future Farmers of America. We realize, however, that life isn't a bowl of cherries, it's a bunch of raisins. Raisin' cain, raisin' kids and raisin' cash. We can't raise cash from raising cain to raise kids if you don't protect us from unfair trade practices. We believe you can cultivate trade agreements to reap a large harvest for Future Farmers of America. Just read your instruction booklet. Thank you.

(Applause.)