MR. STUART: Good morning. My name is Mike Stuart. I'm the President of Florida Fruit and Vegetable Organization. We're an organization that represents growers and shippers of fresh vegetables, citrus, tropical fruit, sugarcane and a whole variety of other products here in the state. We, too, would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to all of you for coming here today and spending time with Florida agriculture. I think it hopefully will be time well spent. I particularly want to thank Commissioner Crawford and his staff for all the hard work that I know went into putting this whole event together. So thank you very much.

I'm going to try to keep my words relatively short here this morning. Hopefully we'll have an opportunity here shortly to here from producers, processors, marketers, suppliers and others whose livelihoods are at stake currently with the future of Florida agriculture. We hope you'll take those comments into consideration, listen to them closely and particularly as we move towards the new Round of talks at the WTO.

To put it simply, our growers are wary of trade agreements with countries whose producers enjoy a competitive advantage in the marketplace, not necessarily because they have better technology or have better marketing practices. They don't. They enjoy that competitive advantage because they have a distinct advantage in terms of less restrictive regulatory and legislative environments.

In our experience, I think since the implementation of the Uruguay Round and particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement, would suggest that those fears were well-founded.

As we move towards another Round of the WTO multilateral trade negotiations, as well as the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative, growers are understandably concerned. They are concerned that the results of these initiatives will be the further erosion of market share here in our own domestic marketplace.

We are also concerned that there will be a continued lack of progress in opening up export markets. The bottom line is, we are concerned about losing domestic market share faster than we're losing our ability to develop export markets.

If these trends are not reversed, the future of Florida agriculture is very much in doubt. During the negotiations leading up to both the Uruguay Round and the NAFTA, the fruit and vegetable industry was assured that provisions would be in place to protect the industry. Yet, despite those assurances and commitments, the industry has suffered.

Many of the safeguard measures, in particular, have failed to function as envisioned. Before we launch into another Round of WTO talks, the United States should address and correct the failures of the previous agreements. Once that is accomplished, we then should press for WTO reforms that adequately address the concerns of both import-sensitive and export-oriented U.S. agricultural sectors.

Moving forward we recommend the following. Many of these things will be echoed in more detail, I am sure, by other speakers here today. We've provided greater detail in the written comments that we've submitted for the record.

In the area of tariff reductions, FFDA supports a requested offer approach, not the formula approach used in the Uruguay Round negotiations. We also urge that tariffs for the most highly sensitive U.S. agricultural products such as Florida winter vegetables and citrus not be reduced below the levels agreed to in the Uruguay Round.

Safeguard provisions are needed for import-sensitive fruit and vegetable products. The changes here also need to be made in the U.S. trade laws so that the unique nature of its perishable and seasonable production in the U.S. is taken into account.

A mechanism is needed to cushion the effects of currency devaluation on market access concessions. Given the recent economic crises in both Asia and Latin America, currency devaluation and its effects on trade simply can not be ignored.

Finally, we must insist that science be the driving force in the debate over sanitary and phytosanitary measures. At the same time, the U.S. must ensure that there are sound scientific concerns about the potential risk of the introduction of plant, animal, pest and diseases. Sufficient resources must be allocated to protect American agriculture.

As we move forward, it is important that we all remember that trade is about more than just tariffs. There's a high price for the quality of life and standard of living we have here in our country. In competing in the global marketplace our growers are paying that price and in many cases our competitors are not.

We look forward to working closely with all of you as this process unfolds. Using the trade vernacular at the end of the day, we want to be able to say that Florida agriculture is a winner in the Seattle Round, not a casualty, but we're going to need your help to make that a reality. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)