Vilsack In Japan

Vilsack in Japan. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack is back from his trip to Japan where beef trade was a main part of his discussions. Vilsack's visit is the first to Japan by a U.S. agriculture secretary since 2001. VILSACK: We had a candid and frank conversation with Minister Akamatsu about the long standing concerns about beef trade. We indicated a willingness to take a look at a more flexible position than we had articulated in the past. He felt that we were still operating on sort of parallel paths and that in order for us to work towards getting on the same path we needed to have work groups meet and go through some of the technical issues that have to be resolved in order to get us to reopening this market. So we committed to sending a team to Japan at some point in the near future in the hopes that we can work through our differences and at some point in time, hopefully sooner rather than later, we get to a point where the market is reopened. Of course not all the conversation was on the beef issue and the Secretaries schedule was a full one. During the 4-day trip, Vilsack delivered the keynote address at the "Partners in Agriculture Global Food Security Symposium" and participated in a town hall with Japanese students. Vilsack also attended the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 'hog lift' which led to a lasting friendship between the people of Yamanashi prefecture and the state of Iowa. VILSACK: We talked about the responsibility that Japan and the United States have jointly to lead a global effort directed a food and security among developing nations and under-developed nations. We feel the moral responsibility to deal with the fact that there are somewhere between 800-million and a billion people who are malnourished, many of them who are children. That needs to be addressed and President Obama provided leadership last year in the G8 meeting and the G20 summit making a commitment of $3.5 billion dollars – U.S. dollars towards this effort. Japan essentially matched that with a $3 billion dollar commitment so we are obviously focused on that. There was also some conversations about issues involving specialty crops which we have some disagreements on, trying to work through those. An opportunity to talk about the APEC meeting which will be taking place in Japan in the fall, the first ever meeting of APEC on food security will take place in Japan and the United States will be hosting a similar APEC meeting next year. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.