Thank you so much, Governor Ventura and Governor Schafer. We really appreciate your being here. I think that helps to illustrate the commitment to agriculture that, in fact, our states do have. I would like at this time to introduce our panel members and then they are going to proceed with their presentation. I just would mention that Secretary Cruea from South Dakota will also be taking part a little later. He had more traffic problems getting here from Pierre than even the Governor did from Maple Grove. So when he gets here we’ll hear from him at that point. Under Secretary Gus Schumaker was not able to be here today. As of last Friday he got a change in schedule from Secretary Glickman, and so as a result Jim Schroeder the USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Ag Services is here in his place. Jim, maybe if you could stand so the people can -- can see you. I know you’re going to be doing part of the presentation here in a little bit. Jim is a native of Illinois, most recently been from Colorado and has been at USDA, I believe, since 1993. He has been involved much with trade issues, has done a lot of globe trotting, so to speak, including China where he has spent a lot of time involved with trade negotiations there and I think takes off next week for Rome, as well. So we really appreciate your standing in for Mr. Schumaker and for the work that you’re involved with. Teresa Howes from the United States Trade Representatives Office, she’s the Director for Asian Agriculture Affairs, has been a Peace Corp volunteer in Thailand, most recently has been at the -- been the ag representative attach(e in Beijing in China, originally from Michigan. Teresa, we’re glad to have you here, as well. Marc Baas from the Department of State. We promoted Marc to Ambassador, so we’re glad to have you here. We appreciate your involvement. And I think it’s significant to know that the State Department is involved with these listening sessions, as well, because, certainly, when it comes to the intricacies of foreign trade, it’s imperative that the international relations between the countries are included, as well. So these three individuals, as well as some other folks from the Federal Government, we appreciate your being here. So with that in mind, we will proceed to the presentation that they’re going to do and then we will get onto hearing from the members that have come here to testify.

AMBASSADOR BAAS:

Well, I have very short remarks because I think my colleagues from -- particularly my colleague from the Department of Agriculture will be somewhat more lengthy and I don’t want to take up all the time. But I want to say, first of all, thank you for the introduction, and I should say that I also am from Michigan, but more importantly perhaps for the purposes at hand my mother grew up on a farm in Chandler, Minnesota, down in the southwest corner, a farm that my cousin still runs to this day. Anyway, some of you might be wondering why the State Department is taking part in these listening sessions, and really it’s very easy. Our job is foreign policy, and we cannot do a good job of running the nation’s foreign policy if we don’t understand what’s going on in trade policy. Trade policy makes up a very important part of our foreign policy. It’s something that we pay a lot of attention to, that my office pays a lot of attention to. We have 100 -- we have embassies in 150 odd countries around the world. What are they for? Well, they’re there to represent you to promote American interests. They are there to promote our trade policy. They are there to promote agricultural exports. They are there to find out what the trade policy is of the host country so that they can let us know what sort of things we ought to do in a negotiation. If we want the European Union to reduce export subsidies, which we assuredly do, maybe in a negotiation we need to know from our embassies in Europe that one thing that the Europeans are really interested in is increased access for widgets in the United States. So that’s the kind of thing that we do. We cannot do it, however, if we don’t know what you all want. You are our constituents, our first constituents, and that is why the State Department is here to listen to you. Thank you.