MR. HESTER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Adin Hester and I'm the president of the Olive Growers Council of California, a statewide organization of family farmers producing olives for the black ripe canning industry. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for listening to our trials and tribulations. We recognize we're a small industry, rather insignificant in the total picture of things, but we also want to inform you that there is some real pain that's happening down on the farm.

California is the only commercial producing olive State in the nation with about 37,000 acres, which incidentally is down from about 43,000 a few years ago. The average grower has 25 to 30 acres, so it's truly a small family farm operation. Unfortunately, by the virtue of our small nature, many of our growers are being discriminated against as the industry has gone through tremendous consolidation thanks, in part, to a heavy influx of imports coming from off shore.

Why has this happened? In our opinion, it's because we have a seriously flawed international trade policy, a trade policy that does not take into consideration the downside impact of what they may negotiate and how it may impact small specialty growers in California.

It's apparent that the Government is either not aware or really doesn't care about the dilemma that we're in. Ted Koppel presented a special not too long ago that aired, unfortunately at 11:30 at night, that was entitled "Silent Surrender" that spoke to the economic cancer that has destroyed American agriculture. With all due respect, I was disappointed when Secretary Glickman, interviewed for the program, suggested that the economic pain was not so much in California but more in the midwest. That simply is not true.

I don't have a clue as to why farm communities in this country have a problem getting our message to Washington. But there's one reason that we deal with the international trade problem and that's because the U.S. market is a good one for foreign producers. Their governments recognize the benefit of our market. They also recognize the benefit of a highly desirable U.S. dollar. Even the quote, "most honorable European Union," has subsidies in place that were supposed to have gone away a long time ago. And there shouldn't be supports. And we believe in a free market system, but our trade partners continue to provide subsidies that damage the small family farm operation.

You sit here and you listen to our concerns and problems and I pray that you hear what we have to say.

I must also comment on NAFTA. NAFTA was supposedly an economic trade miracle for the American producer. Unfortunately, it has been the reverse for the olive industry. Thanks to cheap labor and expansive amounts of land, a lot of olives are being planted in Mexico. And the other thing we're concerned about is whether or not NAFTA properly addressed the trade -- or the trans-shipping problem, because as we see it, Italy and Spain are currently spending a lot of money planting olives in Mexico just south of our border.

And we're also very concerned about the problem with the olive fruit fly that has come into being, because now we see it in southern California and we have lot of fresh olives moving from Mexico through the central valley into northern California.

And that is a major concern.

ACTING CO-MODERATOR VILLARREAL: Mr. Hester, thank you very much for your comments.

MR. HESTER: Thank you.