Farm Leaders Push Importance of Trade Agreements

How important is trade to farmers? A House Ag Subcommittee heard testimony from many in the ag industry about what trade means and what they’d like to see going forward.

Wesley Spurlock with the National Corn Growers Association said, “We need our new administration, as they go in and they work to rewrite NAFTA and bring it up to a newer level, we need that trade, we need to be out talking to Japan, to the Koreas, to the world to improve these deals and move this demand at that level.”

Ron Moore with the American Soybean Association said he supported the TPP and hopes it can influence future deals.

“We continue to hope that as the administration goes towards making bilateral agreements, they will use the agricultural benefits and the language in the TPP as a template as they go forward. We want to make sure as they modernize the NAFTA agreement that those benefits that agriculture has had over the last 20-some years are still in place.”