Copyright Prairie Grains Magazine
February 2001

Association Perspectives:

An open letter to USDA Secretary Nominee Ann Veneman

We congratulate you on being nominated to become the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the distinction of becoming the first woman to oversee the food and fiber security of this great country. We look forward to Congressional confirmation of your nomination, and to the timely appointment of well-qualified, dedicated professionals to assist you in the endeavors of the ag department.

We are guardedly pleased with your trade background. We understand that during your tenure as secretary of California’s ag department from 1995 to 1999, you coordinated numerous trade missions to Asia and Latin America, and developed an aggressive promotional program for California commodities. We hope this export interest and aggressiveness carries through to your appointment at USDA, and that historic advancements, such as American wheat sales to Cuba, occur during your administration.

However, we understand that in your various positions with USDA from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, you were actively involved in negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. We view these agreements as unfinished business in need of improvement, particularly as they pertain to grain trading policies. We remain concerned by price distortions of the Canadian Wheat Board and the disparate high subsidies of the European Union. And we need your assurance that American wheat and barley won’t be negotiated away in future agreements. We hope you maintain strong communications with the U.S. Trade Representative (and in fact, would ask for your support in maintaining a permanent position for an agricultural trade ambassador in the U.S. Trade Office).

Of course, one of the key issues during your first year as Secretary will be the drafting of a new farm bill, and the handling of domestic farm support this year. We urge you to confer with NAWG leaders about its proposal for a counter-cyclical payment that would be triggered when crop prices fall below a certain level. More immediate, however, is the need for federal assistance this year to help producers weather what looks to be another growing season of poor crop prices, compounded by higher energy costs and the scheduled reduction of transition payments under the 1996 Farm Bill.

We would urge you to place risk management on your agenda. The Crop Insurance Reform Act approved by Congress last year is a good first step to improved, more affordable coverage, but there are still problems. For one, it doesn’t adequately address quality losses suffered in the marketplace.

Biotechnology will be a benchmark issue during your tenure in office. We hope that your administration will take an active role in assuring consumers at home and abroad about genetically-engineered ag products, and that these products are managed according to their wishes. 

Another form of technology is important to us too. Our rural areas need high-speed, affordable connections to be competitive with urban areas, so in many ways, enabling computer and Internet technology in the early part of this century is just as important to rural development as electrification in the early part of the last century.  Also important to rural development: initiatives focused on enhancing the value of the agricultural commodities that we produce.

We don’t grow near the crops they do in California (and we don’t have quite the same growing season either), but we do grow specialty crops such as hard red spring wheat, sugarbeets, malting barley, sunflower, durum wheat, and canola here in the Northern Plains. We have a unique growing region with unique challenges—among them, a long distance to markets; a shared border with Canada, which produces competing crops under a different system; production problems such as Fusarium head blight or scab; and an often limited choice of products to treat pest problems in our crops, compounded by similar, sometimes cheaper products used in Canada that are inaccessible to us.

We wish you all the best, and invite you to have a firsthand look at our agricultural landscape and our issues soon, by traveling to the Northern Plains for a face-to-face visit with producers.

“Association Perspectives” represents the views of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, South Dakota Wheat Inc., Minnesota Barley Growers Association, and the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, which publishes Prairie Grains along with the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council.