Bob Zelenka with the Minnesota Feed & Grain Association and to be followed by Niel Ritchie and getting ready Charles Ottem, please.

MR. ZELENKA:

Thank you very much. My name is Bob Zelenka, Executive Director of the Minnesota Grain & Feed Association, a 92-year old organization representing grain elevators, feed mills and farm supply companies here in Minnesota. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. International trade is vital to the future of U.S. agriculture with 96 percent of the world’s consumers living outside the U.S. Obviously, a big factor for us. I do have a copy of my testimony. I’d like you to pay close attention to the WTO policy statement established by the Seattle Round Agriculture Committee, the SRAC, which was organized with the objective of coordinating the interest of varied agriculture and food organizations and companies that will be affected by the outcome of these negotiations. In that statement there are two things I’d like to touch on this morning, and I appreciate the opportunity to be second here today. The -- the SRAC WTO policy statement they have 14 policies and processes that they mention. One of their concerns is access of products of biotechnology, specifically genetically modified organisms as was mentioned by the first speaker. GMOs is something that is of big concern for grain elevators. Yes, there are tests available. It costs a couple hundred dollars per test. So, obviously, a country elevator handling three, four million bushels of corn particularly when you’ve got 20, 30 trucks lined up it’s not going to happen. So we’re solely dependent upon producers to be straightforward in telling -- and informing us if they’re handling -- if they’re selling to us a variety of GMO corn that is not accepted currently by the European Union. And, unfortunately, the GMO issue seems to be snowballing in the European Union with Portugal, Spain and then what happened last week in Austria. So we certainly have a real concern about that issue. We certainly would encourage negotiators to pay close attention to that issue and work hard to do -- address it. The concerns, obviously, are real. The interest is and at least the hope is that it’s settled by this fall. Unfortunately, with the negotiations not even starting until November it’s going to be a little late this year for dealing with the GMO issue. But, again, another issue in Minnesota talked about farm. 75 percent of the grain that’s stored in Minnesota is stored on the farm, so there’s a lot of grain storage on the farm. We handle the grain at the country elevator. Our biggest concern is that when we’re loading 100 car unit train, 3,500 bushels per car going to the West Coast, it gets out there. They run a spot check at the terminals, which is where these checks will probably occur. They find GMO variety mixed in or blended in, that load is automatically going into the domestic feed use versus going export. It’s going to cost us a lot of money in the country elevators and a big concern for us in the country. So, again, with the farmers' ability to gain nearly $1 billion -- $1 billion annually through the use of these varieties, it’s certainly important to get this acceptance as soon as possible. The other issue I just want to touch on has to do with the phytosanitary agreements that are negotiated on various commodities with various countries. One of the issues that -- and again the SRAC WTO policy statement of maintaining sound science and risk assessment as the foundation of sanitary and phytosanitary measures is also something that we certainly strongly are in support of. In regards to these phytosanitary agreements, I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to do a better job in disseminating information and educating U.S. exporters about the agreements which in this case for people I represent are country elevators. We’ve learned the hard way by loss of time and thousands of dollars that phytosanitary agreements are very specific, require exact and concise information. The USDA Web-site in itself which is a source of some information related to these agreements is very difficult to follow and very difficult to understand for a lot of users. The process needs to be made more user friendly. I would encourage negotiators to realize when you’re negotiating think about the people on the other end of the country elevators. For example, we have 300 cars of soybeans currently going to Mexico. Regasa is the biggest buyer right now in Monterey, Mexico. Farmland was the broker. Country elevators are loading the trains. It’s not the broker that does the sanitary certificates, it’s the country elevator that has to fill those out, and it took weeks to figure out how to fill those out properly. And just the misspelling of soybean on this phytosanitary certificate held up a load for about three days. So these things need to be addressed and it means a lot to the upper Midwest certainly with Mexico being a big partner of ours at the present time. Regasa, the soybean processor in Monterey, Mexico, has in the last two years bought a lot of soybeans from Southern Minnesota. They look for higher protein and higher oil soybeans. The thinking was we didn’t have those kind of higher oil soybeans up here. They are actually here. Why that is I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I know that they’re looking at buying and they’re also looking at canola which I know canola is going to be touched on later. They’re processing canola at Regasa and something to look at, as well. The last two things, carnobunt (ph). Country elevators, and this is not in my written comments by the way, but carnobunt, we are in association with elevators in I believe 20 some counties up in the valley have been participating in the carnobunt surveys annually for the last four years. I think we are carnobunt free now. I would hope that something will be done to -- to bridge that gap on carnobunt access to the -- to the marketplace. Last, but not least, I would like to encourage USDA and maybe the Congressional delegation here to -- to get behind the rehabilitation efforts of the upper Mississippi. We need a lot of work done on the upper Mississippi. The locks and dams are -- are aging. And we need to compete with Argentina which is spending billions of dollars to reconstruct a river system that’s identical to the Mississippi River that we have here. It’s a real issue that needs to be addressed soon. And we would, again, encourage your support and participation in that. With that, I’d conclude my comments. Thank you very much.