Thank you, Secretary Schroeder.

MR. THULLNER:

Thank you panelists for giving me the opportunity to address to you this afternoon. My name is Robert Thullner. I’m a diversified family farmer from Herrick, South Dakota. South Dakota continued and enacted amendment "E" which prohibits corporate farming and was the first state to pass mandatory price reporting of livestock. South Dakota is the largest monetary statewide supporter to the ARCAB program. I am the son of an Austrian immigrant. My father spent a good portion of his life in the Twin Cities area as a bridge builder and meat cutter before buying a farm in South Dakota. I represent the average age of all the farmers in America and I’m categorized as two percent of this nation’s population. We as family farmers are living in a period of self-denial brought on by unfair trade, currency exchange rates, Freedom to Farm bill and low commodity prices. We essentially have six months left as family farmers. Board rooms across this nation are laying final plans for the year 2000 whether it be in manufacturing, processing, education, government, religious ministry or food production. The goal for all segments is controlled through merger, controlled monopoly, consolidation and guaranteed secure profits. We as a nation are yielding to the year 2000 readiness for those corporate raiders that know how to work the system of vertical integration to perfection. When multinational companies gain control as they have, consumers will pay dearly for food and producers receive less. We could experience food shortage on the pantry shelf if this trend is allowed to continue. I also sell seed for a company named for a county in the State of Illinois. A corporate rural raider bought this company that has a name that rhymes with the State of Montana. 32 years ago I sold DeKalb -- for 32 years I’ve sold DeKalb seed products. Now with the Monsanto name employees, consumers and customers don’t count. Monsanto made the decision to terminate the job of my district sales manager a few weeks ago with 50 percent of the corn and 80 percent of the sunflowers in our area yet to be planted. Pack test plots weren’t planted, seed shortage distribution was curtailed and seed supply grew out from foreign countries was shorted or failed to arrive in time for planting. Monsanto’s next agenda is next to eliminate farm dealers and through contract consolidation have chemical and seed one-stop farm shopping malls. If Monsanto can sell their technology to every seed company, why should they raise seed? Producers will have no guarantee that tech commodities or GMOs can ever be sold into a global market. We have ten firms worldwide that have 55 percent of the world’s grain storage facilities. Our breakfast and cereal companies had no problem raising prices to consumers recently. We have four major packers that slaughter 82 percent of the nation’s beef supply. With livestock prices being low, these packers raised prices to outlet stores within the past few days. IBP is the world’s largest packer and is known to provide the price leadership to the other packers. The Freedom to Farm bill was designed to help increase the concentration of livestock whether it is hogs, cattle or poultry. Freedom to Farm was the agi-businessman’s dream. How else could they be guaranteed cheap feed and the most abundant supply known to man? Livestock concentrators wouldn’t have the manpower, land, time and resources to supply their feed needs below the cost of production like the present day family farmers. John Deere has given 5,000 employees two weeks extra vacation this summer because of lagging equipment sales. Cargill and Continental Grain talk merger. Farmland and Cenex talk merger. We as family farmers pray for rain and fair weather on Sunday and Monday morning like a den of thieves the Board of Trade and Mercantile manipulate the price of the world’s food supply. I was in Southeast Texas a few months ago and visited a large cattle ranch. I learned that over a hundred years ago we only exported beef hides to Europe because there was no refrigerator ships to keep the meat from spoilage during the voyage. Today we cannot sell meat to Europe because of the drug residue. I cannot afford to sell my cattle and hogs to Canada because of the dollar exchange rate and without proper health papers. NAFTA and GATT seem to make America the dumping ground for the world’s bounty. Never once have the mega-multinational companies ever advertised that they paid more for our agricultural products than the competition. They don’t have to because there is no competition. We need to enforce existing laws, close loopholes and restore competition to the marketplace. Let’s give the family farmers a level playing field and restore dignity to rural America. Thank you.