About a year and a half ago a young group of French farmers toured the U.S. and requested a presentation from the Kansas Wheat Commission. I saw this as a really great chance to tell our story, lay out our concerns, and also was interested in hearing their response. Kansas wheat farmers invest in the public wheat breeding program at Kansas State University, and we do this to continue to improve the quality of the wheat that we produce. This year, in fact, on behalf of Kansas farmers we'll put in approximately $1 million into the breeding programs and the research that's going on there on behalf of Kansas farmers. And yet the higher moisture, softer lower protein priced wheat receives a much higher price because of common agricultural policy support, and that in turn artificially encourages them to keep growing more of this stuff, and then they have to subsidize it. Right now we have a dollar a bushel in order to compete on world markets.

In the area of flour in the past 30 years but especially since the last trade market, U.S. commercial flour exports have dried up because of the subsidies that French and other European flour has. And because of European flour subsidies, the U.S. requires government subsidies in order to sell flour. And without flour subsidies, the U.S. doesn't sell the French flour. The U.S. has come from the top flour exporting country in the world after World War II to no commercial flour export sales this last year.

Now, Kansas is the largest flour milling state in the nation. And part of that is based on the proximity to ship flour out of the Gulf. And even though the domestic flour market is steady and I would say strong, we're slipping as a flour milling state, and it's affecting our industry.

Now, there's not much wheat glutin produced in the United States, but the largest wheat glutin plant is in Kansas, and I mentioned that because of the French, and that because they're allowed tariff protection on their starch industry in France, French wheat starch and wheat glutin are produced in overabundance, and then they dump the cheap glutin in the U.S. This was prior to the U.S. Administration action on the dumping, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your role in that.

The European wheat starch glutin system is so lucrative that some American companies have closed their glutin plants here and instead have invested in new plants near Paris.

Well, after this list of unfair trading practices, especially the subsidies and tariffs was aired to the French farmers, one of them with a puzzled look on his face said well, why should you be surprised. Our politicians told us that the deal was you in the U.S. can grow corn and we can grow wheat. And I looked around the room and the heads were basically nodding in agreement among the French. And I've often thought about that. And while we are here in the great corn and soybean growing state of Iowa, there are many parts in America that don't measure the topsoil in feet and that really can't grow corn very well, and quite honestly we people really didn't know that was the deal.

There will be more wheat people involved in the WTO groundwatching and participating, and we'll be available in sessions to a much greater degree, and we encourage you to utilize the wheat representatives that will be at the WTO rounds. And as we look forward to those rounds and in hearing that it's going to be 2004 before we have any results, I think there are some things we can do before then. We would like to see the U.S. Government use every tool at their disposal to help our markets and encourage the sale of U.S. wheat. The small cooperative programs such as Foreign Market Development and Market Access Promotion Program, that has already been mentioned should not be cut. The U.S. Government has a role in making sure that our products are accepted and respected in the world marketplace, and why not do that in cooperation with agricultural producers and processors, and it makes sense.

And in some markets the GSM credit guarantees are helpful. In some markets they're not, but it's an essential program. In some markets it would be very helpful to have wheat export subsidies. We absolutely need the export flour subsidies. If we do not have a believable export subsidy program, how in the world can we negotiate the end to European import subsidies in the next round? Thank you very much.