MR. HURST: Thank you. Thank you, members of the panel for spending the day here. It reaffirms what I've always thought to be a public servant: The most important attribute is the cast-iron bladder.

My name is Blake Hurst, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Missouri Farm Bureau, but also as a family farmer in northwest Missouri where my two brothers and I raise corn and soybeans, and my wife, Julie, and I have a commercial greenhouse business where we sell bedding plants in four different states, and I also raise a lot of summer plants, mums and asters. At least there were some this morning, and I assume the kids have watered them today, so we still are.

I thought you mentioned the crowd kind of leaving. I thought this might happen, so before I came up here to speak, I did make sure I had my car keys. My wife still is here with me, and I appreciate that.

Missouri Farm Bureau represents over 9,000 member families. Members produce almost every commodity you can imagine, and then some. Missouri depends on access to customers around the world for the sale of roughly 30 percent of those commodities.

Our organization recently had a series of listening posts around the states, six different meetings with about a thousand family farmers in attendance, and provided an opportunity to learn firsthand what's happening to our membership. And, of course, the picture is pretty grim.

Interestingly enough, we did not hear a lot of calls for abandoning the 1996 Farm Bill. Of course, a great deal of support, as Secretary Glickman mentioned earlier, some short-term help. Most farmers and ranchers understand how important foreign markets are to our future. A presidential candidate spent a lot of time in Iowa here three years ago, talked about how bad trade was for farmers, and he wanted to lead a group of peasants with pitchforks to Washington, D.C., but I'm afraid those pitchforks have been replaced by high loader scoop loaders that were made in Japan that were paid for by dollars earned in selling soybeans in the European Union. We are in a world market. We might as well accept that fact.

So we need to do some things. The World Trade Organization needs to do some things. Our objectives for the next round would include: We must address high tariffs, trade-distorting subsidies, and other trade practices in the new round of negotiations on agriculture. We support expediting action relative to agriculture during the next round of negotiations. We must be in negotiations early and conclude them quickly.

Second, we must support a single undertaking for the next round, and all negotiations conclude simultaneously. Format would prevent other countries from leaving the difficult agricultural negotiations until the bitter end. We believe a short time frame for the next round, coupled with a single undertaking approach will prevent long, drawn-out negotiations that have become too complicated to conclude expeditiously.

Third, we must call for the elimination of export subsidies by all WTO member countries. Our producers cannot compete against the mountain of spending by our primary competitors like the European Union.

Fourth, we believe that new negotiations must include recommitment to buying agreements to resolve sanitary and phytosanitary issues based on scientific principles in accordance with the WTO agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures. The provisions of the Uruguay Round are sound and do not need to be reopened.

Fifth, the next round should result in tariff equalization and increased market access by requiring U.S. trading partners to eliminate tariff barriers within specified timeframes. Our producers compete openly in their own domestic market with foreign competitors, but are shut out of export markets due to prohibitively high tariffs. We need to correct this imbalance for our farmers.

Sixth, we must impose disciplines on state trading enterprises that distort the flow of trade in world markets. Every effort should be made to craft an agreement that sheds light on the pricing practices of these state trading enterprises and ends their discriminatory practices. We've lost too many sales to third world countries due to noncompetitive, nontransparent operations of state trading enterprises.

Seven, we must ensure market access for biotechnology products produced from genetically modified organisms. And, again, going with this, we must end the use of all nontariff barriers to trade.

Finally, our negotiators must make changes to trading prices that would facilitate and shorten dispute resolutions for procedures and processes. The process for a WTO dispute settlement case typically runs three years, if the WTO ruling is implemented. We have seen both in EU banana and EU beef cases that compliance is not always assured, even if sanctions were placed. Our trading partners cannot be allowed to unilaterally weaken the very principles that we negotiated in the Uruguay Round Agreement.

Farm Bureau supports liberalization in global agricultural markets that will result in true reform of the current trading regime and bring about fair trade for our producers.

Thanks.