Page 75 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

Last year, the U.S. hit India with steel and aluminum tariffs, prompting retaliation on U.S. apples

and lentils. And earlier this month the U.S. Trade Representative, claiming India was failing to
provide the U.S. “equitable and reasonable access” to its markets, announced it was terminating
the country’s designation under the Generalized System of Preferences program, which allows

some exports to enter the U.S. duty-free.

But USDA Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Ted McKinney, who has
led two ag trade delegations to India, says he’s still optimistic that the country will eventually be
opened wide to U.S. farm goods. U.S. poultry and cotton exporters are equally optimistic.

“We expect India to be a tremendous market,” USAPEEC President Jim Sumner told Agri-
Pulse. “Not only are we seeing a rising middle class, we’re seeing a westernization of their
food consumption patterns.”

Sumner says recent outbreaks of avian influenza have bolstered his expectations that the country
will need U.S. supplies, but he also stressed that the threat of avian influenza isn’t isolated to
India. The poultry sectors in all developing countries are at great risk, a situation he says could
put massive strains on producers in just a handful of countries (mostly the U.S. and Brazil) to
supply more and more chicken, turkey and eggs in the years to come.

“Whenever you have countries that have huge populations in dense areas, people are going
to try to grow their own poultry in their backyards and you’re going to have a biosecurity
problem that’s going to support the spread of diseases,” Sumner said. “It could come down
to a couple of countries 20 years from now that have to supply the world.”

If that happens, he stressed, the world is going to have to move beyond concerns over production
practices in large operations.

“We're going to have to use every tool that is available,” he said. “We can’t be worried about
genetically modified this or genetically modified that. We’ll need to use every trick in the book
for us to even begin to consider feeding the global population in 20 years.”

Perhaps also driving some of the optimism about India’s future are the few successes already in
cracking the country’s massive demand. India, until the U.S. hit it last year with steel and
aluminum tariffs, was the second largest export market for U.S. apples. The country is also a
major importer of products like ethanol. India was the third largest foreign market for U.S.
ethanol last year, buying about 157 million gallons of the corn-based fuel, according to the
Renewable Fuels Association.

Mexico

While India may hold massive market potential for U.S. commodities like poultry and ethanol,
California Citrus Mutual President Joel Nelson says he doesn’t see a future for citrus. The

country has been open to U.S. oranges for 20 years, but U.S. sales have never amounted to much
and likely never will due to the country’s refusal to budge on seemingly intractable bureaucracy

and sanitary and phytosanitary barriers.

The biggest push with an eye to the far future for citrus exporters, Nelson told Agri-Pulse, is
Mexico. The closest foreign neighbor for California farmers is also one of the least penetrated,

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