MIAMI BEACH - The “least
known international organization
in the world” may be criticized by
U.S. agricultural leaders for
failing to promote more trade, but
it has nearly 40 years of success in
stimulating trade between
countries, the group’s deputy
director-general said today.
William B. Kelly, a former U.S.
government trade official who
holds the No. 2 job in the Geneva
based General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), ad
dressed the annual meeting of the
National Council of Farmer
Cooperatives.
Conceding that GATT and other
trade negotiations “have not
benefitted agricultural trade to the
same extent as trade in the in
dustrial products,” Kelly noted
that it nevertheless has allowed a
tenfold increase in U.S. com gluten
feed exports to the European
Community and an increase of
nearly 25 times in soybeans and
products to the EC in the last 25
years.
What Kelly called the “major
deficiencies” in agricultural trade
rules negotiated by the govern
ments of major trading nations are
one of the principal reasons for
U.S. advocacy of a new round of
GATT official says rules of ag trading to be liberalized
negotiations expected this fall.
Kelly reported to the farmer
cooperative leaders, many of
whom are major agricultural
exporters, that a preparatory
committee holds its first formal
meeting next week in Geneva to
work on recommendations for the
negotiations to a meeting of trade
ministers in September.
Agricultural negotiations are
likely to begin next year.
“Progress in the liberalization of
agricultural trade is regarded as
an essential element” if the new
negotiations are to perserve the
international trading system,
Kelly said, but the prospects for
success are uncertain.
“lf domestic agricultural
programs continue to be given
priority over trade liberalization,”
he noted, “basic changes will be
extremely difficult.” However, in
better times “and a non-election
year, significant results are
possible, perhaps even probable.”
Kelly described the work of the
GATT Committee on Trade in
Agriculture for the past three
years in defining approaches to
negotiation of rules for trading in
farm products.
The committee has suggested
two approaches for one of the most
difficult issues whether and
under what circumstances
countries would be permitted to
continue subsidizing agricultural
exports.
One, Kelly said, would improve
GATT’s rules by achieving
agreement on how existing GATT
provisions are interpreted.
Because those provisions now are
subject to a wide difference in
Heflin says ag spending cuts
could be devastating
MIAMI BEACH - The Gramm-
Rudman deficit reduction bill
could become the “farm
assistance reduction bill,” Sen.
Howell T. Heflin (D-AL) warned
the National Council of Farmer
Cooperatives here.
Spending cuts required by
Gramm-Rudman, he said, could
have “a devastating effect on a
whole lot of programs. It might do
just what a lot of us fought to
prevent in the farm bill the
steady reduction of target prices.”
Heflin observed that, “Over
time, agriculture could face a lot of
cutting,” because the Gramm-
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interpretation, confrontations such domestic agricultural producers,
as those between the U.S. and the he suggested, they also worry
European Community over wheat about “the political acceptance by
flour and pasta have arisen. taxpayers of the increasingly huge
The other, perhaps more dif- economic burdens” of subsidizing
ficult to achieve, would “prohibit agricultural exports,
all export subsidies subject to That has, at least, led to the
carefully-defined exceptions.” recognition that “the present
While most countries are subject situation cries out for im
to political pressures to protect provement,” Kelly said.
Rudman bill has the same five
year span as the just-passed farm
bill.
“We may recognize that we will
need additional revenue,” he said.
But he added, “I hope that we can
adopt an alternative approach” to
the budget reduction mechanisms
now being implemented.
The government also needs to
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Heflin also urged more work on
market research for agricultural
products and greater research into
reducing costs of production for
farmers. “We also need an ex
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