MR. TEIGEN: Members of the panel, my name is Dan Teigen, I farm and ranch in Teigen, Montana, actually. I am speaking on behalf of the North Dakota Resource Council, a sister organization of the Northern Plains Resource Council.

MR. NELSON: I'm still glad you're here.

MR. TEIGEN: Glad to be here in spite of the morning drive. And I am reading on behalf of Dakota Resource Council.

As we have so many times in the past, we have come before you today to plead for a fair deal for America's family farmers and ranchers. While we appreciate you hearing us out, the USDA's actions under Mr. Glickman leave us with low expectations for real action. Perhaps it's all ready too late to reverse the destruction of independent agriculture in this country, destruction caused in large part by the USDA's misguided trade policies and it's complete unwillingness to enforce antitrust laws. The beef industry is controlled by a small cartel of food processors, and now with the merger of Cargill and Continental officially blessed, the grain industry is in the same position.

If we sound frustrated, it's because we are. We are told by economists and agronomists that prices are low because of overproduction and weak export markets. Apparently, we need to eat our way out of this problem. This is true while multinational agricultural cartels continue to post record profits while our corporate food processors are getting filthy rich while those of us who actually produce the food commodities are all going broke. Could it be because of corporate dominance in the marketplace? Yes. Could it be because Mr. Glickman is not about to offend corporate interests? Yes. Could it be because some people who supposedly represent our interests seemed to have looked away from those who actually grow the food? Yes.

The interest of the agricultural cartels diametrically oppose the interests of independent ag producers. Yet, how often are we told by USDA that they won't do anything until our industry reaches a consensus as to what the problems are. This past May, the USDA released a report saying that the beef packing companies, ConAgra, Cargill, IVP, which control 80 percent of our nation's beef market, had the ability to control beef prices. But the report found no evidence that these companies actually fix prices. According to this logic, the people who are running these companies are incompetent. They have the ability to keep beef prices low, but don't do so. Are they not pleasing their stockholders?

For such executives, the risk of not pleasing their stockholders and keeping commodity prices low is tremendous, while the risk of getting caught fixing prices is minuscule. The USDA enforcement of anti-trust laws is a joke. And even should some stroke of luck lead to prosecution and conviction, the executives know that US judges will only administer a token or symbolic sentence as happened in the recent case of Archer Daniels Midland.

Neither the Justice Department nor the USDA worked to prevent the merger of Cargill and Continental Grains. The merger became one more nail in the coffin of independent agriculture in the United States. Yet, the agencies that supposedly represent our interests sided firmly with the organizations advocating the merger. The most obvious reason our elected and appointed officials and representatives side with the cartels like ADM is money. The executives running ADM donate a lot more money to campaigns than honest, hardworking family farmers and ranchers because they have the financial resources to buy and sell influence. People convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars directly from the pockets of independent producers control our ag policy. Their priorities have become our government's priorities.

So cheap beef imports dumped into the US market below the cost of production drive producers to bankruptcy. The only trade action USDA pursues involves bananas, the commodity not even grown in the United States. Apparently, it seems Mr. Glickman believes bananas are a more important commodity than that what we reproduce.

Now you ask us for input regarding upcoming WTO negotiations. Given realities of US agriculture today, you can't blame us for being less than optimistic. Many are starting to believe our ag producers would be better off had the WTO never been created and the multinational treaties that created it had never been drafted. The WTO seems to be an organization more beneficial to multinational corporations than to farmers and ranchers, thus our frustration and skepticism. However, if we are to abide by WTO rules, we need to enact and aggressively enforce antidumping regulations to punish those who don't abide by such rules. Chemical harmonization between ag producers from different countries need to be up, not down, rather than every country sinking to the lowest common denominator of food safety. We should strive to bring the entire world up to highest standards possible. We should not force countries to accept GMOs and hormone-raised beef if they don't want it. Nor should we accept produce treated with chemicals not approved in the United States.

Finally, at the very least, we need to seriously consider revisiting elements of existing trade treaties which have failed or harmed family ag producers before we dive deeper into the wave of global commerce. If the track record of the trade treaties had not been so questionable to family producers, we would not be here expressing our grave concerns. If we fail to do at least this for ag producers, ag consumers might as well stop eating today because when the farmer and rancher starves to death, guess who's next. Thank you.

MR. NELSON: Dan, thank you. Panel?

MR. SCHROEDER: Just a comment. As has been said before, the banana case was brought by the office of trade representative, it was not brought by Secretary Glickman. In the case of the Cargill/Continental Grain merger, Secretary Glickman called for a full investigation of that, the decision and the competitive effect of that merger is a decision for the United States Justice Department. It was the United States Justice Department that decided with conditions that apparently it was okay to go forward. It was not a decision Secretary Glickman could make or had any authority to make.

MR. TEIGEN: I think family farmers and ranchers would take help from any department.

MR. SCHROEDER: You know there's been a lot of talk about competition, concentration, I'm concerned about that, too. But how many railroads do we have in this country now?

MR. SIKORSKI: We have one in the State of Montana.

MR. SCHROEDER: I think Microsoft has 90 percent of the computer software programs.

Wal-Mart is the largest retail in the world. Every week I hear about the family clothing store or the family hardware store has gone out of business because of Wal-Mart. Cars, how many car companies do we have? I think, what, German bought Chrysler and General Motors owns Toyota or something. There's only about three or four car companies now in the world. My wife is now working in the book publishing industry, we're down to four or five companies now which essentially publish all the books; one of those is Time Warner and one of those is a German company which bought Random House, which bought -- it's a big problem. And it's certainly a problem in your area of interest and certainly agriculture. But it's a problem in many, many sectors. And I guess we're just going to have to live with it.

MR. TEIGEN: I guess family farmers and ranchers, we're getting Wal-Marted out of existence. Every industry is -- independence is disappearing, the concentration is increasing, it's ironic in this mad dash of free market capitalism. Pretty soon we'll have one bank, one insurance company, one grain company, one meat packer like the Soviet Union. Communism, completely, one person to go to to handle all your grain needs, one person to go to to handle all your banking. Do we realize what we're doing here? Just because all the other industries are doing this, I don't think that makes it right. There's something to be said for competition as it was originally intended back when this country was starting out.

MR. SCHROEDER: Go get them.