Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

Let me submit to you a situation, and you can think about whether it is real or something that I just dreamed up.

As I’m sure you are aware, the U.S. is a member of the World Trade…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

President Obama has set an ambitious goal of doubling our exports and creating 2 million jobs in the next 5 years. That’s very encouraging. We need to do something about jobs with a…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

Just for a moment, let’s look back at 2009. We have to acknowledge that it was a tough year but appears to be getting better. Did the federal government do what needed to be done? History…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. I know these aren’t the best of times here in the good ole USA, but everything is relative and compared to many other places in the world – I guess…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

Six months ago, here is what I said in my commentary –

“I don’t think sending thousands more U.S. troops into Afghanistan is a good idea. Every country that has ever tried to get…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you. And now for today’s commentary— I read a very interesting article in the Washington Post last week. There is a lesson to be learned if you think about it. The headlines read, “In Venezuela, Land “Rescue” Hopes Unmet.”…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country. The American farmer takes a lot of pride in that we not only provide the safest, most abundant supply of food to our citizens but also, we run a trade surplus in farm exports. We export almost 30% of what we produce. To facilitate export trade, we have entered into a series of bilateral free trade agreements. Up until a few months ago, President Bush had the authority to negotiate trade agreements, bring them to the Congress which could approve them…

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Hello everybody out there in farm country.

Here we are on the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack. General Petraeus has reported on the effectiveness of the troop surge in Iraq. Politicians argue and squabble over just about every challenge that our nation faces. If you listen to the national press reporting, you would gather that nothing is going right. We're headed toward certain oblivion. It may be they arc right. We can't seem to stabilize the warring factions in Iraq. We can't win…

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For years, I have advocated normalizing relations with Cuba. I went there with an Ag delegation 4 or 5 years ago. We have tried to get our politicians (both parties) to wake up to reality. Cuba is no threat to us. The 40-year embargo against Cuba is a relic of distant history.

In the meantime, we have fought a war with Viet Nam. And now, we trade, have an Ambassador stationed in Hanoi, and do business with our old enemy. Turn to China, where our doors are open for business, so much so that…

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I picked up the paper today and headlines tell the whole story. "Pessimism Looms as Trade Talks Set to Reopen." Things could change but the Doha Trade Talks appear to be dead.

Should we be surprised? I'm all for lowering trade barriers, but the process is a two-way street. On another page in the paper, I see where sales of General Motors cars fell 4% and Ford collapsed 9%. But -- Toyota is up 11.7%. Toyota makes a great car and we can't get enough of them. At the same time, the Japanese are…

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