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Environmental Responsibility. Support for curbing pollution 

 from agricultural activities is growing. So is the 

 recognition that broad initiatives such as the Conservation 

 Reserve Program cannot effectively target fragile lands or 

 address the most pressing environmental issues. 



There have been significant strides, however, that hold 

 potential for maximizing productive use of inputs and 

 minimizing losses to the environment. These suggest a two- 

 tracked approach to carefully target lands that should be 

 withdrawn from row cropping -- and to pay for it with public 

 funds — and to use productive land better and more carefully 

 — and achieve it by realigning incentives to reward producers 

 for environmentally sound, yet productive, practices. 



Technological Leadership. The ability of U.S. agriculture to 

 sustain its competitive advantage lies in its ability to 

 develop more productive technologies and to diffuse them 

 rapidly through a highly educated producer base. There is 

 therefore, a significant public role to be played in financing 

 basic research to enhance agricultural productivity to improve 

 profitability and to make needed products accessible to more 

 people. Another is to find new uses for basic materials, 

 creating new job opportunities. There is also a 

 public/private partnership to be forged to sustain and improve 

 the dissemination of information throughout the agricultural 

 community. 



Export policy. An explicit export policy fits within the 

 policy matrix I have described. Technological leadership, for 

 example, is a part of an export policy because it will expand 

 export opportunities by lowering costs, expanding marketings 

 and opening new uses. Environmental responsibility in a 

 global context also supports exports and trade because it 

 means using American resources and knowledge to feed people 

 without overtaxing fragile lands or less advanced cropping 

 practices elsewhere. Economic opportunity initiatives support 

 exports by fostering a healthy, diversified, growing rural 

 economy. 



The implicit export policy described above will feed market 

 growth even more rapidly, if it is reinforced by some explicit 

 export policy initiatives as well. The rationale for such an 

 export focus rests on several considerations: 



o that U.S. productivity is growing at twice the rate of 

 domestic consumption; markets are needed for these goods, 

 access to them opened and development accelerated. 



o that U.S. agriculture is cost-competitive in a broad 

 range of products; those underlying advantages should be 

 rewarded in a global marketplace. 



