WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2016 - To maintain a competitive
agriculture, the next administration in Washington should adopt bipartisan
trade policy, reform immigration laws and pursue water and pesticide regulatory
policies that acknowledge the strategic importance of food, four experts told a
Farm Foundation Forum Tuesday in Washington.
Policymakers who take office next January need to forget
political campaign rhetoric and accept the fact that existing trade agreements
stand up to scrutiny with benefits that outweigh any cost, former trade
negotiator Craig Thorn, a partner at the DTB Associates consulting firm,
insisted. “Doing away with them would not solve problems that some claim and
could make them worse.”
One reason to continue to negotiate trade agreements, he
said, is that “the rest of the world is doing it.” Beginning in the early
1990s, “countries moved into negotiating bilateral agreements in a big way.
They are negotiating agreements right and left.” The European Union has 37
agreements with 93 countries, the United States 14 agreements with 20
countries, he said.
Bilateral negotiations do not make the World Trade
Organization irrelevant, Thorn said, if for no other reason than the sanitary
and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement that requires member countries to make
regulatory decisions based on science. However, the agreement needs better
enforcement, he said. “A lot of countries are in breach of the agreement.”
Thorn added, “For the health of our economy, and especially
the agricultural economy, we need more trade agreements.” The Trans-Pacific
Partnership should be ratified by Congress, he said. “It would be disastrous
for U.S. trade policy if TPP goes down.”
The next administration will be challenged to resist
European Union regulatory policies affecting agricultural chemicals, said Daniella
Taveau, a King & Spalding trade consultant and former U.S. trade
negotiator.
The EU’s approach “appears to be driven by politics, not
science,” she said. “The EU has a highly politicized environment, especially
when it comes to agriculture.”
Taveau said U.S. agriculture and the new administration
should be concerned by last year's decision by the International Agency for
Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is likely cancer-causing, a finding
rejected so far by both U.S. and EU regulators. “IARC appears to be heavily
influenced by activists,” she added.
The next administration could help agriculture if its
regulatory policies reflected the strategic importance of food production, said
Dan Keppen, executive director of the Oregon-based Family Farm Alliance, which
represents producers in 17 Western states.
It should “find ways to streamline regulatory hurdles” and “bring
the question of U.S. food security into any analysis of water policy,” he said.
“We would like to see a scenario that assumes that irrigated acreage will not
be diminished and may, in fact, need to be expanded.”
Keppen added, “We cannot continue to downplay or ignore the
negative implications of reallocating more agricultural water supplies in the West
for urban growth or environmental purposes.”
Ken Barbic, senior director of governmental affairs for
Western Growers Association, said he sees the possibility of comprehensive
immigration reform in the next Congress after this year's campaign rhetoric is
allowed to cool.
“U.S. agriculture operates in an internationally competitive
market and it depends on labor,” he said. “It is not difficult for production
to shift and shift easily. We have certain advantages but without labor you are
not competitive.”
Agriculture needs reform that deals with the current work
force and streamlines the legal immigration program for farm workers, he said.
After the election, he believes, there is “significant agreement on both sides
of the aisle. When you talk to members of Congress, there is actually less
disagreement than the political campaign would lead you to believe. Once we get
past the election we hope to see more of that common ground.”
#30
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