Thank you. Alan Roebke, you are next to be followed by Duane Alberts and then Jim Harmon.

MR. ROEBKE:

Thank you for coming to Minnesota, group. First of all, as a -- as a farmer and farmers across the nation that I talked to, the first concern that they have to you people in trade negotiations as first and foremost you look at reality of the marketplace and get away from the ideology of the world free market, because in this group here probably none of us will survive to see that. Obviously, we want to work for that direction, but the biggest challenge in world ag trade is to face reality. And looking at reality, one of the best comments I heard so far today was a Commissioner or Secretary from North Dakota talked about world inventories. The first thing I’d like you people to address is to see that all producing countries, when you start negotiating on grains, carry a minimum of 45 to 60-day grain inventory for world security and world soundness in business policy. We talk about the free market and we look at the free market. The reality is the world market has become a dump market. It’s not based on a price discovery mechanism like the people in Chicago like to talk about. The reality is the world price is $5 a ton, less than the United States price. And that is the challenge you guys have to -- people have to face is -- is face the reality that we have to get away from that. And we also have to face what was lost in the last round I believe is world currency manipulation. That also must be cemented in your mind; that we must have world -- currency is a major part of the negotiation when we look at overall world policy. The other concern is we talk about genetically modified organisms. I hope the first thing you can accomplish in Seattle when it comes to technology is the American farmer and the world farmer and the technology industry of the world is not producing an organism. We as farmers we spray and destroy organisms. Let’s debate the issue of genetically modified crops and plants that have the potential to make the world environment more stable than it’s ever been, and we cannot have a world policy that leads us away from using modern technology. And the concern -- you asked about Europe as far as labeling. The Europeans want to label the GMO crops because they want to use it as a -- as a false tariff. And we cannot allow that to happen with people going to bed hungry in the world because we do have the technology and the feasibility to feed everyone on the face of this earth. And I’m a Christian. Let’s feed them with sound policy. And that is your challenge. When we look at reality, the things we want addressed as farmers, as countries such as China that enjoy a $57 billion trade surplus with this country, take our main customer away, South Korea. They keep their internal price of corn at $4 a bushel, or basically double the world market. And yet they take our South Korea market away from us at $2 a bushel, and we as taxpayers give South Korea $20 billion in aid each year plus we lined up about $70 billion in loans to rebuild their economy. And we don’t even go to the South Koreans and say, hey, on a capitalistic, realistic business basis, you’d better buy from us or you’d better get your foreign aid from -- from China. Those are the kinds of things we need to issue. We talked about Canada here. Canada is basically -- in the recent announcements they’re keeping us with their wheat sales to America. They dumped 90 million bushel of wheat to this country a year ago. That’s equivalent of what we’re giving to the Russians. We did not need their wheat. It did not solve a problem for Canada. The reality is the United States and Canada needs the same farm policy and they need to work to open markets. The Europeans, of course, are your biggest challenge and of the Europeans the French. The talk is they want to come with their own Freedom to Farm policy. The reality is they’ll just use that as another way to subsidize their production. We have to be tough on the Europeans. That is your biggest challenge. The Australians and the other countries that talk about free markets and free trade, we’re getting by the Australians, say about the marketplace. The reality is they have a currency that’s under-valued that makes them able to prosper in today’s environment, but they don’t want to sell unless they get American dollars. So the currency, once again, is a major challenge. Brazil, we have to educate our people. We dumped IMF money down to Brazil this past year in the level of $18 billion of taxpayer guarantees, a $42 billion total compensation, and we found out that our Brazilian counterparts with currency manipulation that everybody in the multinational companies knew was coming about, turned that to their advantage, devalued their currency. The South American, the Brazilian farmer is better positioned to expand his production of soybeans this coming year than ever. Those are the kinds of facts and challenges that you people have. When we look at the overall policy in -- in our world, we have to look at country by country and face reality. That’s all we’re asking of you people, but that’s a major job. And we talked about three years. In the major crops I’m saying react to reality. We are in the information, the speed age. The American farmer out here does not have time for you people to spend three years negotiating fair and sound ag policy. The reality is we should do it for six months and then address the marketplace the way it is now and go forward. We can’t get tied up in three years in negotiations. We will not have any independent farmers back here. We need a fair and open market that looks at reality. And it’s a big challenge, but I believe our government, these farmers out here, our Congress if they just face reality, we can address the issues that are devastating rural America. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER HUGOSON:

That sounds like a State Department question to me.

MS. HOWES:

I just wanted to mention that you pointed out a lot of the problems for which we’re grateful and we’ll look to you for some suggested solutions, as well. You know, it’s a very complex process we’re starting here and we hope that you view this also as a beginning to -- of an opportunity to give input and to work with us on ways of handling these specific problems in the overall general matrix that we create.

MR. ROEBKE:

The biggest challenge I also want you people to understand, simplicity is your main goal. High tech. What is high tech? Simplicity. And the trade negotiations have been concentrated on being too complex. The issues that we face in world agriculture are simple. We want to feed the rural people at a reasonable basis so efficient producers wherever they lie in the world can be in business. The distorted policies today are distracting that and we’re not feeding hungry people. And we’re letting multinational financial companies get rich on our world policies.