103 



Question: How has the Long-Term Trade Strategy been implemented by FAS and how 

 do existing agricultural export programs fit within the National Export Strategy of the 

 TPCC? I spent a good deal of time on FAS and the National Export Strategy in my 

 opening remarks. FAS is the agency that can be held up as a 40-year successful, "one- 

 stop shop" for a national export program for its sector. 



Regarding the Long-Term Trade Strategy, as I suggested earlier in my comments, the 

 government can best serve as a purveyor of information, a facilitator, and a market 

 access advocate for the U.S. private sector that wants to and needs to export. In doing 

 so, the government and its agencies need have modem enough technological and 

 personnel capabilities to support the millions of communications and transactions that 

 make up a competitive private market export program. The main emphasis should be 

 on providing information to help the private sector plan, not on developing a 

 government grand plan for the private sector. 



Mr. Chairman, I would like to mention that the U.S. government and FAS are being 

 reorganized or even "reinvented". In FAS's case, much of its market development 

 work is carried out through the Market Development Cooperators and the private 

 sector participants they represent. To my knowledge, neither the U.S. Agricultural 

 Development Council (USAEDC), its members or the private sector companies were 

 consulted by the agency or those reinventing FAS. If the U.S. government truly 

 desires a successful National Export Strategy, it cannot hope to do so by leaving the 

 private sector ~ i.e. the people who actually export ~ in the cold. From what I read of 

 the testimony before the House Committee on Small Business, the actual export 

 community was minimally consulted in the National Export Strategy report 

 development as well. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, the National Cotton Council of 

 America and its exporting members greatly appreciates this opportunity to testify 

 before this Committee today and to have input into this process. 



Mr. Chairman, I would like to conclude my remarks with a somewhat lengthy quote 

 from a book entitled Manufacturing Matters (Basic Books, Inc., 1987) by Stephen S. 

 Cohen and John Zysman, a book that was in part supported through the Office of 

 Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress: 



"Agriculture has by no means become an activity of the past, something easily 

 and perhaps advantageously sloughed off To the embarrassment of those who 

 view the persistent cultivation of large quantities of soy beans, tomatoes, or 

 corn to be incompatible with the image of a high-tech future, agriculture has 

 sustained, over the long term, the highest rate of productivity increase of any 

 sector. Total output has increased steadily, and the sector has been a vital 

 generator of broadly diffused wealth and technical innovation. New 



