08/07/06 American FB calls for Farm Bill extension

Farm and Ranch August 7, 2006 Because world trade negotiations, known as the Doha Round, have fallen into a coma, the nation's largest general farm organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, has refocused efforts on the Farm Bill. Stallman: "After the breakdown of the Doha negotiations we took a couple of days to assess where we needed to go for American agriculture and in the short term we've got a pretty clear direction. We need to extend the current Farm Bill for at least one year. That's American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman, who says the current Farm Bill will need some tweaking to comply with current World Trade Organization rules, but the extension is needed. Stallman: "The message the world sent to us was they were not yet ready to really open up markets and improve agricultural trade. They were not willing to allow imports into their markets. I think our message which needs to be sent very strongly, is okay, if you want to maintain an unlevel playing field, we're going to maintain our domestic supports to help our producers be competitive in that unlevel playing field." Stallman says Congress needs to get started on extension legislation. Stallman: "We're going to encourage our members to talk to their members of Congress and to the U.S. Senators to get them to cosponsor legislation to accomplish our goal." Meanwhile in the trade arena, Stallman says the U.S. needs to pursue an aggressive bilateral and regional trade negotiation strategy with partners who really want to open up markets and negotiate agreements with them. But to do that Stallman says there needs to be an extension or renewal of Trade Promotion Authority and Farm Bureau will work for that. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.