MR. GLOVER: Good evening. I was one of those that partook of that chili, so I'm glad I'm this far away from you.

Tim, we want to thank you and the USDA and the US -- pardon me. The USTR panel for this opportunity to express our concerns. I would also like to thank Secretary Glickman and Commissioner Barshefsky for allowing these listening sessions to be part of this WTO information gathering points so that you-all can sort of hear from us in the grass roots out here.

I might explain just a little bit. The Texas Corn Producers is a 15-member board across the state of Texas that represents about 19,000 corn farmers in Texas. Next week you'll be in corn country. I think it's next week you'll be in Iowa. This is also corn country. We just wanted you to know that we're a deficit state in the production of corn. A lot of our corn does go into Mexico, which I think NAFTA -- that is one of the few things I think NAFTA has helped is, is the ability for us to get corn in and out; the drought that sort of helped the cattle industry, because they haven't had any cattle to come this way. So it would have been a trade-off as far as we're concerned.

Since 1964, we've seen the demise of the American farm. Across the nation our ranks have dwindled from over three million down to less than two million. The acreage has declined some, maybe about two million; we used to farm about 434 million acres across the nation and now we farm about 432. The cost of doing business has escalated. Back in those days whenever I first started farming, it cost the American farmer about 37 billion in expenses. Now our expenses are about 150 billion. And this is by USDA's latest census.

Though there's been a decline in the farm population, we've increased our productivity, not only in farm products but in manufactured goods and. However, this increase in productivity has come at the expense of the American farmer. The American farmer has clothed and fed this nation with no guarantee of profit, and now he's bordering on bankruptcy.

It appears that the United States has made agreements in the past that probably did not have the information that you're gathering now. The people I've -- we don't feel like that the GATT and NAFTA treaties really represented the feelings of American agriculture, but they've opened our doors, totally opened our doors. But yet some of the foreign countries that we're -- supposedly were going to trade with during those treaties have been closed and can be closed at any time they want to. We don't feel that the word "free trade" is something that we really believe in. We believe in fair trade. And has been spoken today, there have been instances where the devaluation of some of the different currencies has really caused us problems. And you would think with a good, strong dollar that America would be really prospering in the world's economy. But a strong dollar does nothing to us but it cuts off our exports, because it takes more -- and I'll explain to the -- explains more of our -- takes more of our dollars to buy their goods.

Our government seems to be more worried about other countries' ability to keep their ag economy strong, with little regard of our own agricultural economy. And, of course, you-all heard today, and I know you have in some of the others, that we should be dedicated to eliminating all of our export subsidies in the next WTO rounds and to restrict our own internal support measures. I think if this is allowed, more producers will be forced to leave the vital industry at a faster rate than we've seen in the last 30 years. Rural communities will vanish unless a profit is placed back into agriculture.

The American farmer has been used as a pawn for too many years in the world affairs.

And, of course, I know many of us has read Dan Morgan's book back years ago. One of his chapters was titled "Food, the Ultimate Weapon." We feel like we have been used as a B-1 bomber for too long, with our government putting sanctions on different countries and stopping our flow of goods. And, of course, there's been mention that Cuba and some of the other countries, that those sanctions should be opened up if you're going to call it a free market.

Back in those days whenever Carter put an embargo on us, nothing really happened to the major grain trade. It was all put back on our lap. The major grain trades only just reverted their route of grain and it finally got to Russia. The embargo was just placed on us, we feel like.

We're having a hard time competing. I'm not a protectionist. I don't feel like I'm a protectionist, but when it comes to a vital industry like agriculture in America, I guess I may be a protectionist. Because I don't feel like I can compete as a producer with $5 a day labor in Mexico, I can't compete with EPA. There's not the EPA standards in some of the other countries. They don't have the labor unions that has forced all of our goods and purchases that we purchase to be so high.

So, you know, I'm really worried about how we're going to be able to have this competition fairly with the changes in the currencies and with them not having to live under the same standards that we do. And unless American farmers can be assured a return on his investment, how can he be expected to produce in the future?

Now, I could have spoke a lot about what was going on here today, what all the other speakers were talking about as far as addressing the tariffs, export subsidies, the market access, the internal supports, the STE's, the environment and labor issues, and phytosanitary standards. But I want you to realize first and foremost that the ag a reasonable profit. For without a reasonable profit, no viable entity can survive.

And we're having a hard time surviving. Me and my son farm about 3,600 acres up in the Panhandle of Texas and we can live with the weather that God gives us. I mean, we've lost three sections of cotton since the first of May. We can live with that because that's sort of an expected deal. But we can't live with the commodity prices that we have today, and we think because of where the commodity prices are, it's because we've opened our doors. And we don't want to become as dependent on food as we do for oil. My own personal belief that our independence on oil -- you know, we think it's only 15, 17 dollars a barrel, but really, I think it costs more like $100 a barrel. Because we're so reliant on those people to deliver it that we've got our Armed Forces over there protecting it. I don't think the American consumer wants to be that reliant on food that we have to send our Armed Forces. And unless we put profit back into agriculture, I think that's where we're headed.

I won't spend any more of your time, other than, Tim, what did you say while ago to some grain sorghum guy about growing grain sorghum in Spain or something? Or sending it over there and you wanted to not send corn?

MR. GALVIN: Only until we can get them to turn around.

MR. GLOVER: Okay. All right. All right. I understand, Tim. But the thing about it is, you know, we grow everything. We want to be able to export our cattle, we want to be able to export our grain sorghum, our wheat, our rice, our sugar. We need a profit in those so we can continue.

MR. GALVIN: I understand.

MR. GLOVER: Thank you. Any questions?

MR. GALVIN: Maybe just if you could just kind of sort of boil it down to, do you think corn growers have been better or worse off the last, basically since the Uruguay Round because of the trade agreements we have in place? Do you think on the whole it's been positive or negative?

MR. GLOVER: Well, it's according to which way you want to look at it. I mean, if you didn't have the Asian flu, if you didn't have China becoming an exporter instead of an importer -- I think China exports a lot of their goods at the risk of their own people. I don't think they have any regard for their own people. All they're needing is some currency, and that's the only way they can get it is to export.

I feel like that possibly -- you know, corn is one of the major exporting items along with wheat. Probably it would be, but with the major growth and the production of corn around the United States - the weather has been sufficiently good - that we just overproduced. I won't say that Freedom to Farm has been our major problem, it just hasn't answered our problem.

And I know that there are countries that have their subsidies - Europe and all of those that have their subsidies - and if you look at our expenditures last year as far as farm program expenditures, we spent about 30 billion dollars thatcame to us. But we're still in dire need for it.

So see, money coming down from the government is not what we're needing. We're needing to sell that product at a profit and let that money flow back through the economy.

MR. GALVIN: Appreciate it.

MR. GLOVER: Thank you, Tim.