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National Grange 



I am Robert E. Barrow, the duly-elected Master of the National Grange, which 

 has offices at 1616 H St., NW, Washington, DC The National Grange represents 

 approximately 300,000 farmers and other residents of rural America in over 4,000 

 local communities across the United States. 



The central problem for every free market economy is to keep supply and demand 

 in balance. Agriculture has been struggling with supply and demand, in spite of pro- 

 duction control programs, for over 60 years, and no end is in sight unless we have 

 a structural increase in demand. 



Agriculture needs new customers and new markets in order to grow and prosper. 

 Where can we find them? For starters, we can look south to Mexico; then beyond 

 to Central and South America. 



The National Grange has followed the development of the North American Free 

 Trade Agreement (NAFTA) since its inception more than 2 years ago. As a member 

 of the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee on Trade, I have personally been in- 

 volved in the events that led up to the three Heads of State initiating the Agree- 

 ment in the late summer of 1992. 



The voting delegates to the National Grange's 126th Annual Convention strongly 

 supported the NAFTA. In 1991, in the early stages of the negotiations between the 

 United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Grange adopted the following resolution: 



The National Grange supports the efforts of the United States, Mexico, and 

 Canada to reach a North American Free Trade Agreement. To provide pro- 

 tection to the producers of import-sensitive commodities, we recommend the 

 following: 



1. The U.S. -Canadian agreement phases out tariffs over a 10-year period, 

 but many of the U.S. domestically produced and processed products will 

 vigorously compete in the U.S. market with products that are produced and 

 processed in Mexico. The United States tariff phase-out period should be for 

 a longer period of time than 10 years, and the commodity coverage under 

 the General System of Preference should be terminated. 



2. The NAFTA should also provide for a temporary "snap back" restora- 

 tion of tariffs during the peak harvesting season or during times of import 

 surges of agricultural commodities that are above the trend line for that 

 commodity. 



3. In addition to these two general provisions that would apply to all 

 commodities, there are some products that may need to have special ar- 

 rangements made to help their industries adjust over a longer period of 

 time to a free trading environment. 



4. We recommend: a) establishment of minimum technical standards re- 

 garding pesticide use, quality control, and disease control; b) protection of 

 intellectual property rights, including plant variety trademarks and brand 

 names; c) strong so-called country-of-origin protection that would protect 

 U.S. producers and processors from competition from transshipment of 

 Third Country products into the United States via Mexico's NAFTA provi- 

 sions; and d) elimination of Mexico's import licenses that greatly reduce the 

 amount of goods that are available for export and the product registration 

 rules that make it time consuming and costly to gain access to Mexico's 

 consumer markets. We have determined that the agreed-to NAFTA meets 

 the National Grange's primary recommendation; therefore, we firmly sup- 

 port its approval by the U.S. Congress. 



Following the negotiations in August of 1992, the National Grange met in Novem- 

 ber, 1992 in Denver, Colorado for its 126th Annual Convention. At that time, the 

 voting delegates reaffirmed the above policy and adopted the following: 



The Grange must continue to support expanding trade on a mutually bene- 

 ficial basis. The success of the North American Free Trade Agreement 

 (NAFTA) will be instrumental in accomplishing some of these objectives 

 and the Grange should give it strong support. The Grange believes that the 

 NAFTA, on the whole, will be beneficial to the economic growth of the Unit- 

 ed States, Canada, and Mexico. The greater economic activity will be be- 

 tween the United States and Mexico because the majority of the NAFTA's 

 provisions have already been implemented under the U.S. -Canada Free 

 Trade Agreement. This is particularly true for agriculture because Canada 

 chose not to enter into most of the agricultural negotiations in the NAFTA, 

 so U.S. farmers will benefit most from increased farm trade. 



