MS. PETERSON: Good afternoon. I'm glad that you people are here to listen to the people. I'm going to talk about a few miscellaneous things.

We do need food choices, because people who have illnesses need nonradiated food, and that's hard to obtain. I've seen grapes that I've taken home that are still like the day I bought them a month later, and when food is radiated, that kills the enzymes that are needed for proper health.

My granddaughter needs organic food in order to stay better with her allergies; otherwise, her glands swell up and she coughs and has other problems. But if she's on organic food, she has good health. We do need nonhormone meat for those who desire. It's not just Europeans. There are quite a few people in my community that have nonhormone meat and eat organic foods.

As stated earlier today, we have 25 percent of the world's number 1 and 2 land. Now we are bringing factories and work in the factories -- worker homes to live on this land. Like they expect Cedar Rapids to double in size in just a few years. This land is something that should be kept for farming, I feel, because it has a lot of rich soil there that can make good food.

Just last fall a large company was giving a lot of pressure to my nephew to build another big hog operation when the prices of hogs were at that terrific low. This large company was doing the same as these airplane companies are in Des Moines, where they charge a low price in order to drive out the small producer, and that's what these large companies are trying to do with small producers of different products.

The U.S. is subsidizing the spending of money for knowledge for other countries to grow more food. We're sending money over there all the time to build more roads and more storage so that they can have more food. In reality, I think that is a good thing, but please don't use our agriculture for a block for industry. Let the people grow in each country what they need, instead of using our land to grow corn and beans that you're sending overseas that are used and deposited in their soils. You're taking our minerals and sending them to other countries. Each country eventually should be able to grow their own and we should have a set-aside, whatever it needs, to keep the supply in balance with the need, and we need that right now.

One way we could help would be to have more gasohol, more diesel fuel and let the oil stay in the ground for the future when we don't have enough extra beans to make the oil. It's better to have a reserve.

Let's see, there's just -- we need also when these countries -- companies, these large multinational companies import products from other lands, that they don't raise the basic salary of those people every year at least 5 percent. They should have to pay a tax. That's a way instead of taking us down, let's take them up, and that would be -- if they had a tax, that would be a good incentive for them to raise the wages of these poor people so they can buy our products and we won't have to force-feed them with it.

The LDP that we have right now, that comes from the taxpayers, and it's a very poor policy. I hope you can do something about it.

Seemed like there was one other thing, but let's not just use exports as a Band-Aid. Let's try to get everything working the way it should be, like these people have talked about people being the driving force instead of these large multinational companies who don't need the money at all. Let's raise wages for those poor people overseas. Let's limit production instead of spending taxpayers' dollars to get rid of what excess that we don't need. Let's increase those other countries to grow their own and be self-sufficient like we are. Let them be proud. Thanks for listening.