09/14/07 Farm bill, trade and immigration on agend for spuds in D.C.

Farm and Ranch September 14, 2007 Representatives of the Washington State Potato Commission have been in Washington D. C. this week. Commission executive director Chris Voigt says they were making the rounds at the state's congressional delegation and then joining up with the organization Fresh United. Voigt: "Which is a national association of all the specialty crop producers in the country. And again we are going to the Hill. And with that group we are going to primarily talk again about farm bill but we are going to spend a considerable amount of time on immigration reform also." With the House having passed a farm bill Voigt says their attention was being focused on getting the Senate to include specialty crop provisions in its version of the legislation. Voigt: "The House actually approved a good bill. I think it is a step in the right direction. It allocates a lot of mandatory funding for research, for protecting our borders, for getting highly nutritious food products into the school system, and helps us opening markets. We hope to repeat that on the Senate side and increase some of the funding on the Senate side." Finally, Voigt says there was another major item on the agenda. Voigt: "We are going to spend a fair amount of time also talking about the four free trade agreements that are before Congress; Peru, Panama, Columbia and South Korea." The Potato Commission says approval of those FTAs is needed to maintain and expand markets. That's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report. Brought to you in part by the Washington State Potato Commission. Nutrition today! Good health tomorrow! I'm Bob Hoff on the Northwest Ag Information Network.