Thank you, Don. Larry Green is our next presenter followed by Myron Just, Steve Sprinkle and then David Hugo.

MR. GREEN:

Yes, my name is Larry Green. I’m from Foley, Minnesota. I thank you for this opportunity to speak today and I’m really grateful for the World Trade Organization as winning the banana war for the American farmer. I mean I have raised bananas. We have four trees in the backyard in Dededo, Guam. But other than that there’s -- so I am very proud of that fact that you won that. But a little while ago the Secretary of State over there was talking about the food aid to Russia. Last fall when I was sitting in Trier, Germany, in a little shop, seafood shop, eating I was reading the paper and my understanding is that the Russians took the food aid from Germany before the United States. It was printed in the paper over there that way. The United States is good at having a lot of conditions to an agreement.

AMBASSADOR BAAS:

Seriously, we had our agreement first. We started shipping first. They were still debating. They were debating up until about a week ago what price they were going to sell it at. They wanted to really gouge the Russians. Our stuff began arriving first. Now I think it’s all kind of arriving simultaneously. But they, in fact, I think didn’t want to have a program but felt they had to have a problem because they were afraid we were going to steal a march on them and steal a market from them, as well. So their program was actually in reaction to ours.

MR. GREEN:

But getting back to some trade things. I would like to see the USDA do some things for identitative preserve products. We could move a lot of identitative preserve soybeans to the Asian market just because of the area that we live in for the soil type. They do not like the beans that are grown on red soil. They stain the bean, and it does not make good tofu. They also like hard endosperm corn shipped in their ships across the ocean. It takes the ocean voyage much better because soft yellow dent corn mushes in the ship. Those are things that the USDA could help the independent farmer market by keeping them separate. But we need a mechanism to handle the financial and the shipping of them. There is no such program today that’s available to the independent. And that’s basically all I got to say today. Thank you.

PANEL MEMBER:

Some of my cattle friends out there get that oxymoron, good tofu.