Are attitudes towards exports changing?

Washington Ag Today May 28, 2010 According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, Washington state is the third largest exporter of food and agricultural products in the United States. So government export and trade policy is important.

For decades government officials have been saying that exports are the main hope for our increasingly productive farmers and ranchers. But is that changing?

Miller: “I do not view the export market as the great panacea for America‘s farmers and ranchers.” “I think it is important not to think that exports are necessarily going to save us.”

That first voice was Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Miller. The second voice Dr. Daryl Ray, an analyst from the University of Tennessee who told a U.S. House panel recently, that yes we have been told that exports would lead to a golden age for U.S. farmers.

Ray: “But over the last 20 years it really hasn‘t happened. In fact, if you take the total tonnage of the three major crops, wheat, corn soybeans, we are actually exporting the same amount today is we did in 1980.”

So it hasn’t been a cure-all for agriculture, but as Undersecretary Jim Miller put it;

Miller: “It is extremely important.”

Washington’s top exports are wheat, fresh fruits and vegetables, processed foods, meat, dairy products, wine and hops.

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I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Ne