MR. SCHWARTZ: It's a pleasure to be here and I want to thank the panel for inviting Wyoming to come up. I have to say that listening has been a real education for me. In preparation of coming, I talked to most of the commodity groups in Wyoming. We made a list of concerns and I could have probably been up here for two hours, but I think most of the concerns you've probably already heard one way or another.

Wyoming agriculture is in a crisis and the frustration level is extremely high by producers. The industry is as depressed as I've ever seen it. And I know it's not all world trade, but it's a major component that I think affects each and every one of us. Probably the number one issue that comes out of Wyoming is a fairness issue that we've heard a lot here today. Fairness with subsidies and tariffs and market access, environmental and health regulation are critical. And that fairness cannot be a short-term deal, it needs to be long-term. I mean, we have got to look at the long-term so there will be some stability within the industry.

I had a call yesterday from a county commissioner from one of our counties. I thought I would pass a little bit of this on. Niobrara County is about 1.6 million acres, it's primarily livestock but some crops. He heard a lot of concerns and I haven't heard a lot today about how this whole crisis is affecting communities. He indicated to me that in Niobrara County, the county seat Lusk, Wyoming, and a lot of you might have seen the Microsoft commercials that were promoting -- it's kind of surprising to me, but he said that 30 percent of the downtown businesses are now closed. He said all the related ag businesses had moved out. The construction, the pipelines, a lot of those types of businesses are gone. As a county, they're having to reduce a lot of the police protection, the sheriff's department. They're reducing the libraries and the roads and bridges. Education services are being reduced. The number of farms is down by 10 percent and they indicated that would be even higher if it wasn't for a bunch of hobby farmers that have moved into the county. 50 percent of the center pivot systems are now shut down, and primarily for economic reasons. But, basically, what his message was, was that this community is broke and primarily because the agriculture industry is under such a crisis right now.

And I think we're going to see a lot of communities in the State of Wyoming that are going to be in the same shape. One other item I would like to touch on is, three months ago we met with ten of the leading banker industries in the State of Wyoming. And we talked about if they would be willing to ride this thing out this time. They indicated that they would, that they didn't want to get into the foreclosure business that they did in the eighties. The next week I had three calls from producers who were refused renewal of operating notes. And if that refusal happens, they're basically out of business even if it's not foreclosure or bankruptcy. So I think it is a major problem, I think we got major concerns and I really appreciate the opportunity to come here today.

In closing, I'd ask you to take strong steps to address the critical issues that you've heard today. I encourage you to work with a lot of these people from these organizations and states, and if we can help, we'd sure be glad to. We know we can't fix it all, but I think if we can work together, we can get some of these issues covered.

MR. NELSON: Jim, thank you very much. And we appreciate you coming up and joining us here today. Panel, any questions or comments for Jim?

MR. PECK: I would just like to mention, we spent some time together, Jim and I, in this last couple weeks, and we spent some time on taking a look at a trade accord meeting, we met the Western Ag directors, and I think we are continuing to work on these issues and I appreciate you coming all the way from Wyoming, Jim, thank you very much.

MR. SCHWARTZ: It's my pleasure.