Zippy on TPP

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall recently got together to discuss the benefit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for agriculture. Zippy discusses a study conducted by the AFBF: "We have spent a lot of time in the last few months studying the TPP agreement and we are very encouraged by what we are finding. We know that it is important to our agricultural community to be able to open up those markets and let them have access to those markets and those markets are growing so we know these numbers are going to grow in the time to come. We are expecting to see a $5.3 billion increase in agricultural exports and that means $4.4 billion in the pockets of our farmers across the country. We are really encouraged by that and we think it's going to be a positive for all commodities across the board. In the American Farm Bureau we represent all our commodities and we may have some commodity groups who may differ in their opinion of that but if you look at what happens to corn, corn may not be increased in exports but we will have a lot of increase in our protein products, beef, chicken and pork, and we are going to have to feed those animals with the corn we grow here in this country so it will mean a boost for our grain farmers. So this is a very positive report. We need to make sure this gets passed through Congress so we can help the farm economy across this country.