Page 77 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

The USW “will work with specific private mills to make recommendations on how to produce

the right types of flour for these markets, and with bakers to demonstrate how to evaluate their
flour and produce better quality end products more efficiently,” the spokesman said.

The World

U.S. farmers and ranchers depend
too much on China to buy their
soybeans, sorghum, cherries,
oranges, almonds and cheese. That
has increasingly become the
message from Trump
administration officials like
Agriculture Secretary Sonny
Perdue as the ongoing trade war
with China heated up.

“I’m concerned that we have Chuck Conner, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives

become too dependent on a major
customer there that doesn’t have our best national interests in there thinking,” Perdue told
reporters earlier this year as Chinese retaliatory tariffs — responses to U.S. tariffs — cut off a

wide swath of U.S. ag exports.

But that kind of thinking makes no sense, according to Chuck Conner, CEO of the National
Council of Farmer Cooperatives and a former USDA deputy secretary during the George W.
Bush administration.

“I’m not buying into the notion that somehow we have to diversify the Chinese market or any
other market that is substantial for us because that implies that somehow we put all of our
resources into developing that market,” Conner told Agri-Pulse. “The Chinese market
developed not because we pushed to develop it on this end as much as it is the demand was
there and we are going to sell where there’s demand. You’re never going to have a U.S.
exporter say, ‘You represent too big of a share of our market. Go get your soybeans
somewhere else.’”

But regardless of the reason, U.S. farmers and ranchers are reaching into every corner of the
globe to sell their crops to everyone who can buy them.

“Wherever you’re adding more people, we’ll be selling more to them,” USDA’s McKinney
told Agri-Pulse.

And while most U.S. farm groups looking to expand global markets would readily agree with
that sentiment, they also agree that much more needs to be done to convince those foreign
nations that the impulse to protect their producers from imports can be the worst thing for them
in the long run.

Schultz points to Mexico as a prime example: “You look at Mexico pre-NAFTA and post-

NAFTA. Their livestock industry is now four times larger. After NAFTA they had access to feed
grains and they could grow without limit. Open trade doesn’t kill industry. It helps (industry)
grow.”

www.Agri-Pulse.com 75