However, at this point in time we would open the floor for anyone else that would like to come up and make remarks. Is there anyone else in the group that does want to put some remarks in the official record? Seeing none, we will go to our representatives of USDA and the U.S. Trade Representatives office for their closing comments. Gentlemen.

JAMES SCHROEDER: Well, I don't care. Let me say, I want to thank you all the hardy survivors here, but we really have enjoyed this kind of a session.

I was just going from the last comment. Like we were talking about beef we've heard from Mr. Morgan, Dick Gady from ConAgra, a wide variety of views and interests, Homer Buell, Cattleman's Association. And we really do try and listen to you all and believe it or not, represent you all. That's our job.

And so I'm really delighted to have been here today and listened to you all, and I want you to be assured that the written remarks will be collected. We have indeed a transcript. What we plan to do is to put the results of all these different sessions together to try and collate and make some sense out of it, and use it for some guidance as we go into the next round.

My colleague here has given me a little summary of main themes. For example, almost ten or more speakers talked about the need for tariff reductions, reduction of export subsidies. Half a dozen people spoke on the question of domestic subsidies. The need to maintain our science-based sanitary and phytosanitary agreement. Dispute settlement, that's been mentioned as well as the GMO and biotech rules. So we've covered the full range of issues here.

I may have gotten into trouble at lunch or before lunch when I told some speaker that trade is not the answer. What I meant to say is what I think Senator Hagel said this morning. The problems in rural America and the problems for you all as American farm producers are multi-faceted, and there's a whole series of things that we have to be talking about and working on. Certainly domestic farm policy is a big one. The Senator talked about tax policy.

We're here primarily talking about trade. That's our focus because of this upcoming round. And we think it's critical. We think it's important. It's a primary concern for you all. And for all of us here.

But it's not the answer, and I think one of the problems we got into on NAFTA and the Uruguay Round to a certain extent is that these were over sold both by the opponents as well as the proponents. Remember NAFTA, Ross Perot, my God, if we went into NAFTA, it was the end of the world. Well, it hasn't been.

On the other hand, the proponents--and I was certainly one of them--may have over sold it in terms of the numbers of jobs that would be created and the benefits. But on balance it's been a good agreement for most people.

Uruguay Round, the same thing. On balance, it's a good thing we have agriculture included in a multilateral rules-based system with the prospects of further reducing the strengths of trade and opening up market access and having a rules-based system which everyone agrees to and tries to live by.

You know, after World War II, we all got together after these two disastrous wars, and we said we have got to have some kind of an organization that's going to deal with war and peace, so we formed the United Nations. Imperfect doesn't always work, but it's not a bad idea to have I think. We said we got to have some kind of a bank that can help out in development around the world, so we got the World Bank. And, finally, we said this currency situation and inflation is bad, so we formed the International Monetary Fund. And somebody said, we also need a world organization on trade. No. That was the one we didn't do in 1948. We, I mean we, not only we, the United States, but all the countries. And for 50 years we've just had an agreement. We didn't have an organization, and now we do. We have an organization. It's not perfect, but it does have rules, and it has the potential to continue to break down barriers for trade.

And this is not the answer for all of you and every American farmer, but it's a piece of it we think. So that's my message.

Again, I want to thank you all for coming. We really do listen to you all, and we really appreciate your interest. And hopefully working together with the states, we thank Commissioner -- Director -- we thank the Director of Agriculture of the great state of Nebraska and his staff for all their hard work. And we really enjoy having been here. I now will turn it over to Mr. Murphy for a few comments.

JAMES MURPHY: I have found this a most-interesting forum. We've heard a lot of very interesting views today. A diversity of views. We've heard some common themes.

On the criticism side, I think we heard some very useful points made on areas perhaps we need to spend more time focusing on in these negotiations. I was interested in the organic presentation, and I would certainly be interested in hearing more on that if there are specific trade policies that should be made. I think our impression is organics is not treated differently in our trade policy. So I don't think there are any barriers unique to organics. If that's not the case, we would certainly be interested in hearing about it.

We've also heard that we should pay more attention to some of the higher value-added programs -- I don't know the right phrase, custom crafted products being produced for the English markets. That's a theme we're hearing elsewhere as well. I think it's something we need to think more about. As Jim said earlier, we're now in a situation where more U.S. agriculture is going out as processed product than as raw commodity. A lot is focused on particular markets. So I think we do need to spend more time thinking about how we are dealing with that in these negotiations.

On the common theme side, I think we heard very strong support for continuing to work start in the Uruguay Round. That is moving further in the direction of more liberalized markets. Reducing tariffs, increasing quotas and the TRQ's and improving administration of TRQ's, eliminating export subsidies, reducing trade-distorting domestic programs. Those are directions we charted in Uruguay Round, and I heard a lot of support for continuing and accelerating our movement down that path.

We also heard on the new issues, day trading enterprises from a number of people, necessity of improving discipline and transparency there. And on the new technology's need to address the issues arising particularly in biotechnology.

So we heard a lot of support for things that we are pursuing and some interesting and useful points that should cause us to perhaps refocus in certain areas. So very useful I think for us.

I think I would want to stress that this is the beginning of a process. We are currently focused primarily on what will happen at the ministerial in Seattle, November 30th through December 3rd. The communique that comes out of that ministerial will shape the negotiations to follow.

The negotiations don't start until after the ministerial, probably in January.

And as we mentioned, hopefully they will go for three years, but obviously there's a lot that we still need to work out internally in terms of our specific negotiating positions on issues.

What I've just listed for you is at a fairly high level of generality. We are now working in the government in our agency to develop a more specific position. And we'll want to hear from you as we go along. So you should not view this forum as a one-and-only chance to input to this process but rather the beginning. And we hope that you will feel free to come back to us as appropriate. If you have additional thoughts or insights as we go along, please don't hesitate to be in touch with us.

You've had Jim's slides here earlier with addresses, web sites. Please do take that opportunity to come back to us as we go along.

I would like to add to Jim's thanks to Merlyn Carlson and his team for creating this forum. It has been excellent. We very much appreciate their hard work for putting together a very useful and helpful day. Thank you.

MICHAEL LEPORTE: We want to thank you for making this one of the 12 listening sessions; number 5, as I understand it, 12. Let's thank these gentlemen for being here. To conclude our program today, the Assistant Director of Agriculture for the State of Nebraska, Greg Ibach. Let's see if you can still make some noise.

GREG IBACH: Next we do want to thank you very much for it is indeed our privilege to you, Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Murphy, to listen to our producers. I don't think you could help but be impressed by their knowledge base and their leadership capabilities that they brought forward and their areas of expertise. And, you know, I think you also were probably impressed, and we can tell by your summarization comments that you heard the uniformity of their comments and the reoccurring themes as to what Nebraska producers are hoping will come out of the third round in Seattle this fall.

And if you at least have some faces and some personalities now when you sit down to those tables, if you'll picture in the back of your mind those individual farmers and ranchers who wake up each morning early, go out and work hard all day long fighting the forces of nature to make a living for their families and stand by them, and, do the best possible you can for them in the negotiations, I'm sure we'll all be pleased in the end.

One last thing that I would like to do to kinda wrap up is to thank Michael Leporte. We have a little token of our appreciation. This is your pay for the day.

MICHAEL LEPORTE: Now if I could just write.

GREG IBACH: With that, we do have your addresses, and if you guys need a help linking up with them again, please contact the Department of Ag. That concludes our afternoon.

(END OF PROCEEDINGS)