And another announcement, I keep getting handed notes up here, for the media representatives that are here, they're apparently going to do some work on the roof during the noon hour and so the meeting with the panelists has been moved to room 276. Marlene Phillips, again, woman over on that side in the black and white will help you get down to that meeting and get together with whoever you want to visit with during the noon hour. So with that, Dena.

MS. HOFF: Good morning, I'm Dena Hoff, and I farm near Glendive, Montana. I am the Dawson Resource Council Chair and the Vice-Chairwoman of the Northern Plains Resource Council.

And I want to thank the US Trade Representative and Secretary Glickman for giving us this opportunity to comment on the upcoming World Trade negotiations in Seattle. Such an opportunity is long overdue, and we strongly urge both the Clinton Administration and congress to make sure that this is the beginning of broader public debate over trade agreements and not the end. We believe that the extraordinary efforts being made by some promoters of global trade agreements to circumvent public scrutiny of those agreements, whether it's imposing undemocratic "fast track" rules for congressional debate and approval of these agreements with no opportunity for public review or meeting behind closed doors, putting riders on legislation without public review has eroded the public's trust and confidence in the entire process. And the stakes in this debate are obviously very high, and therefore demand more public participation, not less, if we're going to create a global trading system that is open, public, and above all, one that preserves the democratic values upon which this country was founded.

In a recent public address at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, Cargill Chairman, Whitney MacMillan, said that the American farm economy will not improve until commodity prices go down making US commodities more competitive in the world market. This view is unacceptable to independent producers like myself who are already selling our crops and livestock below the cost of production and facing the loss of our livelihoods, our lands, and the loss of the next generation of young farmers.

Local government leaders in Rural America know that higher farm income would revitalize communities struggling with crumbling infrastructures, population loss, reduction of basic services, school closures, and the myriad of social problems that accompany a depressed economy. When the US itself consumes 70 percent of its US agricultural production, it makes no sense for the US Trade Representative and the USDA to tie farm income to exports.

If exports were the magic bullet, then Mexico, whose exports have dramatically increased since NAFTA, and I've heard up to 300 percent, would not be a welfare state dependant on foreign capital and foreign aid.

The USDA statistics themselves show that agribusinesses are reaping record profits, while family producers, workers, and the environment are bearing the burden of this corporate windfall.

Recently, I heard a US trade representative in Geneva tell an audience of delegates from nongovernmental organizations two disturbing things. The first was that US farmers no longer incumbered by farm policy are free to plant for the market. But lack of competition among buyers and exporters make selling into the current market a losing proposition for American producers. More than ever, we are price takers and not price makers for the fruits of our labor.

The second objectional statement by this trade representative was that food security should not rely on food self-sufficiency, but on access to cheap food on the global market. Real food security can only happen through food sufficiency locally, regionally, and nationally. And food self-sufficiency can be best insured by decentralized land ownership by independent producers who are afforded the opportunity to produce food in an ecologically sound and culturally appropriate manner.

At this meeting in Geneva, I was frequently approached by delegates from Asia, Africa, and Latin America wanting to know how US producers could be prospering, as they are told my their officials, when their own farmers are being robbed by their livelihood by export dumping. And these delegates were surprised to hear that family agriculture in the US is in crisis.

The United States, which once represented freedom and fairness to the world, is now seen, especially by developing countries, as a global bully willing to destroy family agriculture at home and overseas for the express benefit of giant transnational corporations.

Northern Plains has developed seven principles that we believe would represent important steps toward making international trade fairer for family farmers and ranchers, for rural communities, and for workers; and make our food supply safer and healthier for consumers; and that would keep the environment cleaner and you will hear those this afternoon from Jerry Sikorski, the Chairman of Northern Plains.

Rural and urban communities of North America have now experienced firsthand the failure of NAFTA, GATT, and WTO to deliver on the rosy promises which were made to convince congress to pass these pacts in an undemocratic manner with no meaningful public debate. If free trade is to mean more than the exploitation of farmers, workers, and the environment, and more than the exclusion of civil society from the debate, you must do more than listen.

You must renegotiate trade agreements to reverse the loss of our unique, decentralized family farm system of agriculture. You must abandon the myth of exports at any cost, and protect family farmers against the whims and volatility of the global agricultural markets which are anything but free. You must ensure that anti-trust laws are respected and enforced within the context of the new trade agreements. You must implement all the recommendations from your own small farms commission report, including immediate implementation of the Northern Plains Resource Council/Western Organization and Resource Council rule to require packers to bid openly and competitively for captive cattle supplies.

And finally, you must abandon this Administration's obsession with trying to circumvent an open public debate on trade agreements by relentlessly pursuing fast track authority. You must hold more open public hearings to give Americans the opportunity they are entitled to have. Thank you.

MR. NELSON: Thank you, Dena. Panel, any questions or comments?

MR. SCHROEDER: We appreciate your comments, and I wish I had more time to engage in some dialogue and comments. Just one point, and that is I know of no trade agreement that has not been debated and adopted by the United States Congress, so that's a fairly open procedure.

MS. HOFF: It isn't open in the fact that most people are quite ignorant of the trade agreements and what it means to them on a producer level.

MR. SCHROEDER: I suppose many of our laws are that way, but we look to our elected representatives to debate those and then to either vote up or down. Our trade agreements are not unlike all our laws.