Thank you, Larry. I should mention as Myron Just is making his way up that Dan Thompson of the Minnesota Corn Process has submitted written testimony. It will be in the file. And I’ll introduce to you Myron Just of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council.

MR. JUST:

Good afternoon. Panel members and Commissioners, it’s a pleasure to be here in front of you. First of all, Minnesota Agri-Growth is about a 30-year old association, about 250 members from most of the producer commodity groups from throughout the state through processors and marketers. So we run the gamut from producers through a lot of the cooperatives located here to the Cargills and General Mills and work on economic policy, trade, environmental, transportation issues where we have agreement. First of all, by and large we’ve generally really supported expanded trade. Heaven knows we’re export dependent here in Minnesota and in the Midwest. We couldn’t possibly eat all of the corn, beans, dairy products, pork, edible beans, sunflowers and everything else we produce here in enormous abundance. So we have a lot at stake and a lot of interest in what goes on with CUSTA, NAFTA, GATT, and now WTO. About 50 previous speakers have alluded to some of the problems that have evolved, particularly at this time when we’re in -- the world agriculture are in a glut and -- but it isn’t only true of agriculture. Certainly, steel, bananas you’ve dealt with some of those other problems, as well. I want to compliment you on your comments this morning. I think, particularly, Jim’s comments indicated and his written materials gave us a good overview of what’s evolved, particularly in the last 25 years with trade policy and agricultural policy and how we’ve sort of arrived at where we are today and how we’ve come to a global economy, a world economy that we as agriculture producers, processors, marketers are dependent on and how interdependent we’ve come at that and how tremendously vulnerable we are when world economies, which are big markets for us, go in the tank and given the nature of agricultural economics a little bit of overproduction causes an enormous decline in the price and so you have wheat prices, corn prices, pork prices that go readily in the tank. And so the problems come here on your lap and a lot of the problems get thrown in the lap of things like NAFTA and GATT and WTO. Well, let me say that as someone who has farmed for 25 years, almost 30 years in North Dakota and still has a farm there I just wanted to share a couple of additional observations. Certainly, my shop back there, like many of the farmers in this room is filled with Makita tools. And we buy implements from Canada and we have versatile equipment. And I think most of us in this room we’re probably wearing mostly clothes that have been made somewhere else in the world. I don’t know if you can buy an American watch. We’ll go home to dinner tonight, and we’ll probably, you know, unlike when we grew up at our mother’s table when we ate pretty much I think standard traditional family fare. Tonight you’ll go home and whether it be, you know, here in St. Paul or whether it be almost any community, you may decide whether you’re going to have Chinese tonight. Is it going to be tacos and Mexican food. My parents are 85-years old and they just love pizza. And, you know, I can’t ever remember when we were kids at home that we ever had pizza. And they like Chinese food now. And so, you know, I’m just only citing this because it’s an indication how global we’ve become, and to -- to the greatest extent we like it because we really like the choices it gives us. And what I’m getting to is that this really poses some problems for the agencies represented on this panel here, and particularly when the Seattle round of WTO talks open in December. Well, the thing I’m getting -- I think I -- I would really like to leave with you and I think an area where you’ve already begun to work after the activities last fall, but, you know, we go to Canada on vacation every year or two and we really enjoy it up there, and like many of you, I’m sure, when we go to Canada and drink the water, eat the food, drink Labatt beer or Seagram's whiskey, you know, I don’t even think about the fact that, gees, you know, I wonder what they use to raise their barley with or what they use to raise their wheat with? Or, you know, if I eat delicious Canadian bread it doesn’t occur to me that, gees, did they use some banned chemical in there? What I’m getting at is when we go to Canada almost anyone in the U.S., 99 percent of the people probably assume the food is safe. When Canadians come here, they assume it’s safe. And I think where you really need to move is, we need to get environment Canada and EPA in step with the reality of where consumers are. And so that we don’t have protests like the hog protests that Governor Janklow led, and it spread to most of the northern states, because we have pigs coming to Hormel -- I mean to Merrill and Sioux Falls from Canada, we have pigs coming to Minot, North Dakota, or plants elsewhere and we assume the pork is safe, but the laws, rules and regulations aren’t harmonized, whether it be for the production of wheat, production of potatoes, productions of sugarbeets, productions of beef, production of pork in keeping with where I think the world economy and the world market is at and it gets us drug down in all kind of problems that, anyway, I’m -- I think that we really need to move these agencies, your bosses and your sister agencies, a lot faster along so that we don’t get caught up in so many of these problems that we ought to be able to deal with because of ISO-9000 and 14,000 that’s out there today. And the reality is the global economy. And I can tell you lots of stories about farmers, Canadian, Minnesota, North Dakota valley farmers who tell me about all kinds of horror stories about chemical products, seed, food, whatever, that gets black marketed over the border because of the insanity of the fact that rules and regulations haven’t kept up with the reality of where the market is at. So thanks.