Thank you, Secretary Schroeder, and all of you that participated. The fourth member of our Commissioner/Secretary group has arrived from South Dakota and so Secretary Darrell Cruea will come at this point and share some comments. After that we will move into the -- to the listening part. Darrell Cruea was appointed the Secretary of Agriculture in South Dakota in September of ’96. I believe it was by Governor Janklow and we have -- as you might guess, we do a lot of things together between Secretaries, Commissioners and Directors of Agriculture among the 50 states. And so it’s always good to work together and today certainly is no exception. Darrell, we’re glad to have you here and we’d ask you to share at this point.

SECRETARY CRUEA:

Thank you, Gene. It’s good to be here. I’d like to just express my appreciation to the United States Department of Agriculture and to the United States Trade Representative Office for holding these listening hearings and allowing you, the producers, actually to have your concerns and your project solutions with regard to trade and marketing heard and something that we can come back and work on. I’ll be brief. I want to address in the broadest possible concept the scope of the trade and policy issues that we have been experiencing here lately. It’s my understanding that these sessions are to focus on the trade issues and policies that allow you, the producers and the processors of the North American food and fiber industry, to effectively accomplish two things; competitiveness and market access, at least in the continental and the world markets. I’m going to borrow three points from the proceedings of the fourth Ag and Food Policy Systems Workshop that was held December last year in Winnipeg. The first point was that grain and livestock production are the foundation of the food and fiber industry in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In South Dakota our gross for livestock and crops runs about $4 billion a year, but that’s only 20 percent of what our total $17.2 billion in gross agriculture products that are generated from direct and associated agricultural income. That -- that three to four is the foundation it generates in South Dakota, a total of 17 plus. The second point that comes out of the -- the meeting there was the substantial changes that are apparent in the grain and livestock industry are going to revolve around technology, product uniformity and consumer demand. And the impact on the regional harmonization is going to affect our trade issues and our allied markets. Let’s talk about this technology just for a minute. The technology that is driving our situation is going to revolve around communications, biotechnology, such as GMOs, and marketing. We’re back to marketing. The WTO and NAFTA adopted what we call the Montreal accord which adopted a series of important principles with regard to sanitary with the meat and animal and the phytosanitary. The accord agreements came down and made three specific statements. (1) Technical regulations were not to be used as non-tariff barriers. Unfortunately, they still are. (2) It also said that the principles of equivalency was established. Where standards are written differently but the effects are the same, they’re considered to be equivalent and they’re not to be used to prevent trade. Unfortunately, we haven’t achieved that either. But we have achieved what Jim started to talk to use about, the situations of arbitration and dispute where sound science is being based as a determining factor. This is just beginning but it’s getting on very well. (3) The third thing that came out of the Montreal base was harmonization of structure and policy. And this harmonization as we look at the alliances that are contained in NAFTA and WTO are critical to our market survival. Results will be seen basically as we harmonize in regional and geographic shifts in production and processing and will require a major change in the partnerships that we look at in the international business practices. Structural changes and harmonization in practices are going to consider such things as product labeling, both brand and point of origin; product grading; international and export subsidies which Jim alluded to in one of his slides; market access and transportation. Gene and Roger and I had the opportunity this past week to work with some North American producers on both sides of the border from Canada and the United States. Both producers demonstrated the ability to work together to point out the irritants that they found working with each other and actually to come up and develop methods to harmonize where they could work together in that aspect. Those of you who are here today are depending on State and Federal Governments to facilitate and enact some of those solutions and provide yourselves with a competitive market and the management tools you need to get the job done. It’s our responsibility in the State and Federal Government to help you do that. Thank you again for the courtesy and I hope that you producers are very specific in your comments this afternoon. Thank you.