MR. HAMIL: Thank you. For the record, my name is Ron Hamil and I'm Executive Vice-President of the Gulf Citrus Growers Association. As you heard Andy LaVigne mention, we are in southwest Florida and we are probably amongst the most vulnerable to any changes that could be made regarding the trade policy and further reduction of the tariff.

I represent about 180 citrus growers and about 150,000 acres of citrus there in southwest Florida. On behalf of those growers, we certainly echo our colleagues and commend Mr. Crawford for hosting this session and appreciate you all from the US Trade Office, Ambassador Esserman and Issi Siddiqui for being here, and also the representative from the State Department.

Growers in southwest Florida represent Florida's southernmost citrus. We produce about 22 percent of the current crop here in Florida. We're a 5-county region and we account for about a billion dollar economic impact to southwest Florida. Hendry County, which is kind of the heart of our citrus industry in the southwest, has more citrus and more orange trees than any other county in the state of Florida.

As I think Mr. Sparks mentioned, the industry is recovering from freezes, and much of that movement has occurred in southwest Florida. Many of the growers have moved south and joined some of the area's pioneers and planted new citrus groves. These new plants obviously take a lot of capital to put in. I will say that our members employ the latest technology, including advanced water conservative low volume irrigation and on-site retention areas to produce citrus. In addition, our groves are managed using the most progressive, state-of-the-art cultivating practices and in accordance with the volumes and realms of rules and regulations required by our county, state and federal laws.

Between 85 and 88 percent of our crop are processed oranges that go into juice and compete head-to-head with Brazil, Mexico and other citrus-producing countries. They are competing and vying in the U.S. market, a market which we feel Florida growers helped to create, and as Mr. Sparks said, have invested billions of dollars of their own money in building.

While our primary market here is in the U.S. with its high consumption of orange juice, due to these investments our competitors, including the world's largest citrus juice producer, Brazil, primarily grows for export and for export into the U.S. They are attempting again to negotiate reduced tariffs. I can say unequivocally that any reduction in that tariff would have a devastating impact on our industry here in southwest Florida.

While Gulf Citrus supports the concept of fair trade, we feel that any further tariff reduction on citrus and citrus products particularly from Brazil beyond those already negotiated would be totally unfair to our growers.

I'd like to ask a question of what is fair. Is it fair that our Florida citrus growers are required to meet increasingly stringent local, state and federal rules and regulations related to water and the environment and our world competitors are not? Is it fair that our citrus growers are faced with state and federal laws related to wages, health care and welfare for its farm workers and our competitors, including the world's biggest orange producer, Brazil, are not? And is it fair that although in previously negotiated trade agreements that the U.S. has opened its markets and doors to foreign produce and citrus, and to our knowledge not the first shipment of Florida citrus has been allowed in a country such as Mexico?

In our grower's mind the answer to these questions on international trade do not translate to fair trade to our growers. We feel U.S. trade policies should not continue to adversely affect domestic producers who face ever-increasing volumes of regulations as well as global competition.

We feel that although the current import tariff on products from countries which do not incur the same environmental, water, welfare and tax vouchers as Florida growers does not totally come from the increased costs of producing our citrus over our competitors from offshore, it does serve as somewhat an equalizing factor and it must be maintained in its present form.

Any further reductions beyond those made in the Uruguay Round would certainly spell disaster for citrus growers in the Gulf region. Devastation to our industry in southwest Florida would certainly have tremendous economic disaster on our local world communities -- our people, our other allied industries.

So again, on behalf of Gulf Citrus, we sincerely appreciate you all beginning these first Rounds here in Florida. This is a big step forward. Commissioner, we commend you on that and we certainly do appreciate you all being here and look forward to working with you on this next Round. Thank you.

(Applause.)