MR. NEFF: My name is Frank Neff. I'm a retired faculty member from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. My area of specialization was in the field of social psychology. I did a fair amount of work in studying how people work together in groups. I've done research on organizations. I've done research and program development with various organizations, and have also worked in educational program evaluation.

I want to start out by saying that it seems to be, for many people, a given that there will be another round of negotiations. I would like to express to you the opinion of some people of this nation that this is not the time for a new round of negotiations, but rather a time for many of us to find out really what's been happening with the negotiations that have been happening in the past.

One of the people who preceded me said, in regard to farmers, we are part of this country. I think that that helps to differentiate, importantly, some of the concerns and some of the understandings and concepts that we have, because it seems to me that that differentiates the farmers from many of the multinational corporations that are very heavily involved in agriculture, because I think many of those should not be considered American corporations. They like to consider themselves global corporations. They like to consider themselves multinational corporations, and I think that's appropriate, and to recognize that they are not American corporations.

International trade agreements are supposed to be made to benefit the peoples of the nation making those agreements. Unfortunately, in the past several decades, U.S. negotiators have been making, perhaps forcing, agreements which increase the wealth and power of corporate leaders and other privileged elites while making destitute the lives of millions of citizens who do the actual work that provides the wealth.

The general agreement on trade and tariffs, the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the much-disputed multilateral agreement on investment, and many other such agreements are transferring authority from the people in their local communities, from their states and from their nation to those corporations.

The Zapatistas in southeastern Mexico took up arms when NAFTA went into effect because they believed that cheap corn from the United States would ruin them. Life for most Mexicans has been harder and more demeaning since NAFTA took effect. I haven't had the opportunity to see Neuvo Laredo and to see the nice-looking plants, the plants that are down there, modern, new, and I also talked to the people who were working with those plants and who get paid 75 cents an hour.

In the United States corporate farming is dominating agriculture. The policy of the federal government seems to be to support that corporate domination and the transformation of agriculture into a factory system which bankrupts productive farmers and ranchers while enriching agribusiness and providing no cheaper food to the consumer. Pork has been the most recent and the most prominent example.

In a report to the National Farmers Union by Dr. William Heffernan, University of Missouri, Columbia, the extensive consolidation in the food and agricultural system is documented. Already, corporations such as Cargill, Monsanto, Continental, ConAgra, Novartis, IBP, and ADM have established control in beef packing, feedlots, pork productions, pork packing, broilers, turkeys, feed plants, elevator companies, flour milling, dry corn milling, wet corn milling, soybean crushing, and ethanol production activities.

Jumping to the last couple of sentences: It is beyond time to stop making such agreements and have public examination of those policies. Experts such as Robert Stumberg and Charles McMillion have explained the damages that are being created by such agreements. Their analyses need to be shared with the people in the countries involved in these agreements, and the people can tell their legislators what policies they want, which will make corporations serve the people, instead of making people serve the corporations.

Thank you.