MR. WHISENHUNT: It's a delight to be here and to have the opportunity to speak to this distinguished crowd, and, Mr. Secretary, we're delighted that you're interested enough in agriculture and especially throughout the country, not just from the perspective you get sometimes within the beltway, but if you get out and come and travel the country here and have the opportunity to give you some of the thoughts and perspectives. I come from a part of the State of Arkansas that because of terrible weather conditions for the last several years, many of our farmers are either not farming this year or still have not received (inaudible) and they're trying to get by on getting a crop in the ground and hoping. Yet when we look at the prices, it would take a double bumper crop in many of them to break even much less gain any ground. For those of us who work in the leadership role, we see that opening the world market is feeding those people that need it and building that pricing structure to where we will be able to survive and, to live and to share in prosperity that our country has; that it's worth our time and effort to come and speak to you to bring you some thoughts.

I have presented a paper and I want to commend my good friend from Tennessee and Louisiana Farm Bureau, they're writer just copied my writer, not completely, but almost to the letter. But I won't go into all of it. I would like to make a few personal observations and read to you a few things that we've said and not prolong the testimony.

On the second page we see that agriculture is one of the few industries that consistently runs in trade services having boasted a positive trade every year since 1960. We feel that U.S. agriculture must get to the negotiating table in a meaningful way to ensure the situation continues. The ability of our agriculture community and the entire trade maintain a share of the global market depends upon many factors including obtaining strong trade agreements that are properly enforced. I think that from the layman's perspective this is one of the weaknesses that we have found and the rounds of the Uruguay and also NAFTA that many times those negotiations and the agreements have not been properly enforced and not been (inaudible) especially (inaudible). Many of our people throughout the South -- well, throughout the country that have depended upon markets for their perishable goods and then we have an influx from outside and by the time the negotiations are reached many of the individual farmers have lost everything and they're at a loss to recoup many of them, simply because of the time frame that's involved. I think this has been addressed. Enhancing the administration's ability to negotiate. Of course, this is something that we as a nation are going to have to give negotiating authority to our administration. We're going to be a meaningful participator in this next round. Elimination of sanction. Now I didn't have it here, but as I look at the number of sanctions that have been placed upon our products throughout the world in the last six or eight years in a number of countries in light of the fact that Fair Act promised that where there was a reduction of value and of profitability to the farmer concerning his commodities that are affected by sanctions, these continued to be there.

I, together with the president of American Farm Bureau trade group went to Cuba recently and what we found was that those people desperately need food. They're still under rations. They would love to buy American products. And because of the difference in trade, for instance, in rice we buy with the same hard currency 30 percent more American rice than the rice they're buying. We can't sell it to them and we need so desperately to help our families, not only in rice, but in corn and wheat and soybeans. So anything that we can do until we get these sanctions lifted and get it to where that especially in food and medicine that we're going to be at a disadvantage and then make the changes in the WTO despite settlement process as I mentioned in making timely resolutions. I want to skip because much of this is repetitious. At present our market is the most open in the world. As we look at the tariffs that are imposed upon goods that are coming in they're usually three to five percent. On the other hand, most of the places that where we try to sell it run anywhere from 20 to 50 percent, sometimes even 100. We can't sit idly by while our competitors trade openly in our market but deny us access to their's. I remember so well in the 80's when my wife was invited to go with the Secretary of Guam to Japan and I recall visiting a Japanese rice farmer with seven acres of rice. He invited us to have refreshments in his million dollar home. I made the comment that I had 134 hundred acres of rice that year and I could hardly break even. The difference was I was getting about four to five cents for my rice a pound and he was getting 96. Then I remember going back in '92 I think when the great American food fair in Tokyo and for the first time they allowed us to put out some samples for viewing of rice. And it was almost like we were announcing that we were ready to drop another bomb, the concern and the media attention that was given to it.

As we talked to the business people they wanted to open the markets but the political and the farmer strategy was that we have a good thing and we're not going to turn it loose. We always have that. We have it in this country of those areas that are protected to a point that we do not want to face reality, make changes. One Japanese rice farmer said I can make more in tomatoes than I can in rice, but I just like to grow rice. I suggested when they said this is part of our culture, I said, well, some of our oil makers in Detroit kind of felt like it was part of their culture, but we didn't charge ten times for their cars coming in here to protect. So these are the types of attitudes that you find throughout the world, not only overseas but in some instances here. As a leader in a general farm organization we have to look at all, all of the situation, the overall good of all when we negotiate.

I have heard that there is quite a concern in the (inaudible) we talked about last night that we had to include certain provisions and certain guarantees before we go into negotiations. One them was labor, another was environment and then we hear so many times social issues involved.

I submit to you, sir, and to the panel that even though these are worthwhile objectives, when we're talking about world trade, we're talking about feeding, clothing and building prosperity and the quality of life throughout the world. You'll never get an even playing field when it relates to labor issues, to environmental issues and to anatomical human rights or social issues. These should be addressed but it should not be a condition upon which we negotiate that we might trade. Out of it will come a better understanding of how we deal with these. As an example, one of the concerns has been the destruction of the rain forest, the stripping bear of the land throughout the world to feed the world. We in our country have put because of prosperity, because of markets that we have the money that's available to buy it that we have progressed at a tremendous rate in the last 50 or 60 years.

As a personal example, I remember we kind of prided in ourselves each spring how many times we put a tractor piece of tillage equipment over a field before we got it planted and we had to get it so beautiful. This year our crop, for the most part, is planted in last year's stomach, beautiful crops. We've done it by developing the best technology, planting equipment and providing those plant protection of production tools, such as round up ready beans and cotton, BT corn. These are called genetically modified organisms. And I think we have an education to do. It seems that many people in our country think that these are some terrible little things that are setting inside of and they're going to explode some day and reveal some terrible thing there. But I would tell you that every living individual here in life is a result of biogenetic modification, the difference between the (inaudible) created a new modified organism and the plants that we planted, the animals that we raised has resulted in a long and a very domain scientific basis used for researchers to develop the green revolution, hybrid corn, lean hogs, kinds of beef cattle and the chickens that we have are all the result of genetic modification. Before where it took years, today our science has found a shortcut. We're the beneficiaries. If we can get the message to the world, then we will sell to them and we'll trade with them with the finest products that's ever been known to man. I will let you read the rest of my statement at your leisure. Thank you, sir.