Thank you, Dwayne. It’s only because my teacher taught me so well that I know how to do that. Our next speaker this afternoon is Chris Hanson with the Center for Alternative for Plant and Animal Products of the University of Minnesota. He will be followed by Bob Thullner and Mark Ukert. Welcome.

MR. HANSON:

Thank you. I want to be very brief. I work in a center at the University that looks at value-added products and we believe that’s a good way for us to remain and become more competitive. It’s not what I’m going to talk about today, though. I’ve got three quick points. The first is we’re in a war here. This is a trade war. And I’d like to address this to Ambassador Baas. I think food is our best weapon. It’s like a bazooka. We’ve aimed it the wrong way. You know, it’s hard to tell on that thing which way it’s going to shoot. We don’t want to shoot at people and take food away from them. We want to supply them with food. We don’t have a shortage of demand. We have an inability to distribute that food. We need to start thinking about food and our distribution of it through trade policy as a way to market. Let’s give them a taste of the good stuff. Okay? Let’s not fire at North Dakota with our food policy by cutting off sales or Minnesota towns because we’ve got our bazooka aimed backwards. Let’s provide countries with food -- with quality food products as an incentive and a way to increase our demand for our products as a positive tool. The second point, and Commissioner Johnson made this point already. It was point number four. Equalize and eliminate. I say we should equalize in order to eliminate. We can’t go in and say, well, we’re going to eliminate this subsidy and we hope you’ll follow. No, we’ve got to say, We’re going to do exactly what you’re doing and then we’re going to compete with you and we’re going to beat you at your game and you’re not going to want to subsidize anymore. That’s the way we have to approach it. You can’t give away the farm and say, we hope you give away your farmers’ farms, too. You know, like Patton said, we don’t want our trade representative out there to give up her life, our farmers’ lives for our country. We want that other unfortunate trade rep to give up their, okay? The last point is a very important point to me I think and that is what I call free trade in America. I was glad to hear that Paul Christ from Land-O-Lakes, my friend from Land-O-Lakes, said, they believe absolutely in free trade. So do I. Let’s get it here in America. Dairy policy in America is not free trade. We shouldn’t be out there knocking on the world’s doors with the dairy policy that we’ve got in the United States today that pays inequitably between producers in the Midwest and producers father away from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Let’s do our own homework first. Thank you.

MS. KINNEY:

Chris, if you’d return to the question Marc Baas has a question for you.

AMBASSADOR BAAS:

Not really so much a question as maybe just a comment on your -- your first point since you addressed it to me on the trade war. I think actually we’ve been doing that and I think the Department of Agriculture has been in the forefront of -- of trying to use food and food assistance as a way to market. It’s not what we’re in the food assistance business for, frankly. We’re it in for humanitarian reasons. But we had a huge program that went to Russia. We had a huge program that went to Indonesia. We had the whole 416 wheat program. I have in my office probably on a -- it seems almost like a daily basis, it’s probably not more than a weekly basis, Australians and New Zealanders complaining about we’re stealing their markets because we’re giving people a taste of our wheat or our whatever. And...

MR. HANSON:

Good.

AMBASSADOR BAAS:

So some of that is happening and I think -- I think USDA and, specifically, and I think probably the government generally deserves some credit for that. And I would just make an observation about your second one on, you know, subsidize until they can’t subsidize anymore kind of thing. That’s easy to say until you go and look at the budget. Unfortunately, the EU has much deeper pockets correctly or incorrectly. I’m not taking that point, it’s just a fact. They have much deeper pockets on subsidies and a willingness to subsidize and we don’t have that much money to do it. And they would beat us in a subsidy war. That’s a problem. And I think unless you think the U.S. Congress is going to vote huge new amounts for us to match subsidy to subsidy, probably our best goal is to get them to cut back their subsidies in a -- in this upcoming trade round.

MR. HANSON:

Well, I certainly agree that the goal is the elimination, but I find it hard to be compelled to eliminate my subsidy that is making my farmers a good living. And as we go out of business as a result, there is no incentive. So I think you can’t give up that card too quickly. Thank you.

MS. KINNEY:

Thank you. Our next presenter this afternoon is Bob Thullner. He will be followed by Mark Ukert and then South Dakota State Senator Frank Kloucek.

SECRETARY SCHROEDER:

If I may add one comment here. Mark mentioned the program and I’m sure you’re all aware of it that last July we started the program utilizing Commodity Credit Corporation under the authority of Section 416 initially for purpose of 80 million bushels of wheat and then that was expanded to include 180 million bushels. That’s a total of five million metric tons of wheat that has -- has been or is in the process of being donated to a number of countries throughout the world, particularly in Africa and lastly Russia. That’s been a tremendous program. And nobody has worked harder and done more on this program than Ambassador Baas. Whatever the program, whatever the policy, you’ve got to have people that -- that really implement these programs and Marc has done a terrific job in overseeing that program in the interagency process for the State Department. And as he says it hasn’t been greeted with appreciation in all corridors, but by and large it’s been a tremendous program. It’s helped our producers here, but more importantly it’s helped a lot of starving and poor people around the world. North Korea, for example, actual famine in North Korea and then, of course, Russia and Africa where people are really hurting.