News Release:

Immigration, finances dominate Farm Bureau trade discussions

Members of the state’s largest farm organization met with officials from the Embassy of Canada and the Embassy of Mexico Nov. 26 to discuss agricultural trade issues during the 2007 Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention in Chantilly.

“Nationwide, Canada and Mexico, economically and agriculturally are our top two trading partners. Both have concerns about what we send into their country and we have concerns about what they send back,” explained Wilmer Stoneman, associate director of governmental relations for VFBF. “That’s the reason we’re visiting those two embassies—to educate our members more about working with those two counties.”

Immigration was on the minds of farmers during talks with Froylan Gracia, the Embassy of Mexico’s counselor for agricultural affairs.

“The position of the Mexican government is that we would like to see some kind of immigration deal with rights for the people that are in the United States now,” Gracia said. “Mexico will provide any support the United States needs in order to deal with the immigration issue because it is an issue that affects both of us.”

Gracia also discussed Mexico’s desire to compete with the U.S. on a level playing field, the progress of Mexico’s conservation programs and the importance of working together to face challenges of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We want to educate people about how important the U.S. and Mexican markets are for each other,” Gracia said. “We are strategic partners not only on trade and energy issues, but also labor and trade issues. We are trying to enhance the relationship between the United States and Mexico and make people conscious of the importance of this relationship.”

Farmers agreed with Gracia that the U.S. and Mexico should work closer together on trade as well as immigration issues.

“I was pleased to here that Mexico is willing to support policies that are developed by the United States to control our borders,” said Hunter Richardson, a corn, soybean, wheat and barley producer in King and Queen County. “When we have this immigration issue, it also puts a burden on their workforce in Mexico. It’s a problem that affects everyone.”

At the Canadian embassy, Virginia farmers learned about how strong a financial relationship they already had with consumers in that country. While trade disputes between Canada and the U.S. over wheat, timber and even potatoes have been in the headlines recently, trade relations have been strong between the two countries for decades.

“We have the world’s largest trading relationship, and free trade between our countries has worked very well,” said Chris Leggett, Canadian agricultural counselor. In 2006, trade between Canada and Virginia supported 197,000 U.S. jobs, Leggett said.

Leggett spoke of a laundry list of economic ties between Canada and the U.S., and Canada and Virginia farmers. Among them was that agricultural imports from Canada to Virginia totaled $124.5 million in 2006, with boneless pork products accounting for 41 percent of the sales.

“It was real interesting to see how similar Canada and the U.S. are in producing food, and how much they trade with us,” said M.L. Everett Jr., a member of the VFBF board of directors from Southampton County. A wheat and cotton producer himself, Everett wanted to know if Canadian wheat growers would be expanding production this winter since market prices are so high for wheat right now.

“I was told their wheat acreage probably will remain constant despite higher world wheat prices, since they face the same increases in input costs that we do—higher fuel, fertilizer and pesticide costs,” Everett said. “But they also don’t have the dry weather problems we face in the southeastern U.S. this year.”

Virginia agricultural exports to Canada that same year totaled $55.7 million. Canada is Virginia’s top foreign market.

China is the top food exporter in the world, followed by the U.S. Canada ranks fourth.

With 148,000 members in 88 county Farm Bureaus, VFBF is Virginia’s largest farm organization. Farm Bureau is a non-governmental, nonpartisan, voluntary organization that supports its members through legislative lobbying, leadership programs, commodity marketing and risk management services, insurance products and other benefits.