MR. SPENCER: Good morning. My name is Bob Spencer. My company, West Coast Tomato, is a grower and shipper of fresh tomatoes to the fresh market located in Palmetto, Florida. Our company has farms, packing houses and sales offices in Florida and California.

Our organization faces a number of challenges to stay in business. Winter freezes have destroyed our crops. Farm labor is increasingly scarce. The regulatory costs of doing business continue to climb. Our access to many of our crop tools to fight diseases and pests is not assured in the future. But by far the most threatening challenge of all is an unstable and unfair trade environment.

In the three years following the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Florida's production of fresh tomatoes dropped 27 percent. Cash receipts during the same period fell by 40 percent, due in great degree to the depressed prices caused by a flood of Mexican tomatoes on the U.S. market.

Without a doubt, Florida's tomato industry has been hit by dramatic trade surges from Mexico. In the early 1900s -- or about 1990s, excuse me -- there were about 200 farms that belonged to the Florida Tomato Committee which markets Florida tomatoes under our federal marketing order. Since then more than 100 farmers have gone out of business or sold out to larger farms. More than 20 packing houses have closed in that time.

Many people might blame NAFTA for this unfair competitive agreement, but NAFTA by itself could not have sparked the unprecedented escalation of tomato shipments from Mexico. After NAFTA was passed by Congress, Mexican government devalued the peso sharply over a short period of time, in fact, encouraging Mexican tomato farmers to ship their products to the United States in exchange for the strong dollar.

NAFTA's tariff reduction formulas made no account for this drastic currency shift. Additionally, the so-called snapback tariffs of NAFTA designed to address surges of product coming from Mexico in the U.S. market lagged way behind actual shipment volume trends. These snapback tariffs only took effect weeks or months after the economic damage was done. It was as if your house caught on fire and the fire truck arrived two weeks later.

Time and again I had customers who could not afford to purchase loads of tomatoes from my operation because they were receiving loads of Mexican tomatoes with no set price which they could sell at a guaranteed profit.

I encourage U.S. trade authorities to seek workable, price-based safeguard protection in future WTO agricultural trade negotiations. The protections afforded the Uruguay Round do not cover Florida's most import-sensitive fruits and vegetables. If some safeguards are to work, they must be triggered immediately in response to import surges without lengthy cumbersome proof of injury provisions. Such requirements force delays in triggering the safeguard mechanisms and compounds injury to our growers. The increased imports since NAFTA have had another eeffect, as well -- increased outbreaks of harmful pests.

Our officials now are fighting the outbreak of citrus canker in south Florida that has already forced the destruction of hundreds of thousands of citrus trees.

In Tampa, officials are currently dealing with an infestation of oriental fruit flies. These outbreaks are caused by the importation or smuggling of host materials. Earlier this year, USDA inspectors found fruit fly larvae in avocadoes shipped to the U.S. from Mexico.

While other nations use sanitary and phytosanitary provisions to block or delay our access to their markets, our country continues to import huge volumes of fresh fruit and vegetables. Can we be certain that these shipments do not threaten our domestic farms? Do you actually believe that our trade partners will quarantine their crops when harmful pests or diseases are found?

When negotiating these trade protocols we must be mindful of our nation's port and border inspection teams. They can only inspect a small fraction of the fresh produce coming into this country. We can not rely on them to always intercept infested shipments.

As farmers and growers face competition from other producing nations, we must forge a straight course that number one, will allow fair access for our own exports. Number two, protect our farms from foreign diseases and pests. And number three, incorporate mechanisms for dealing with the currency fluctuations around the globe.

I respectfully urge U.S. trade negotiators to consider these recommendations as we enter the next Round of WTO trade talks. Thank you.

(Applause.)