Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

To the Editor: This summer, livestock producers across this nation lost a $900 million sales opportunity. That opportunity was lost as a result of the failure of the House of Representatives to approve the Colombia trade agreement.

The House needed do nothing at all to secure this market for American farmers, it would have taken effect automatically, but House leadership changed the procedural rules to disallow the agreement to take effect and, further, waived a 90-day time limit on a up-or-down vote.

The end result of this maneuver was to deny the agreement without having to vote it down and take responsibility for that action. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used an alleged problem between the Colombia government and that country's trade unions as an excuse for the action. I wonder why our Speaker of the House is concerning herself with governing the Colombians when there are still a few untended problems here.

This trade issue comes at a time when livestock producers in this country are dealing with high feed costs, and the only thing floating our boat are exports. We are told that the Colombia agreement is not a big deal compared to upcoming deals with South Korea. Koreans riot in the streets every time their market is opened to American produce, and their government looks for any excuse to shut down their market to us.

Personally, I would rather have a few trade agreements with allies like Colombia that are steady and dependable than a big deal with a country like South Korea, which could put hundreds of American livestock producers out of business every time they stop imports from us. Every time you get a chance, let your representatives know we need the Colombia market opened to us.

- Oscar T. Wenholm Jr.

Raymond, S.D.

Comments »

Roberto Diaz wrote on Oct 20, 2008 1:00 AM:

" Right. Colombia imports most of its wheat, barley, lentils and peas from Argentina and Canada. Its apples, pears, and peaches from Chile. We could import them all from the States if we had the FTA. "

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