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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A few years ago, I did a couple of radio commentaries on irradiation as an effective way to make our food supply safer. I even bought some irradiated hamburger at the supermarket in support of the cause. But, in the end, irradiation never got off the ground. Irradiation just scared people. They were afraid they would glow in the dark.

Alright, that didn't work. And we still have deadly outbreaks of food-borne disease. In 1998, listeria in hot dogs killed 21 people. In 1999, salmonella orange…

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National Agriculture Day is March 20 and the whole week, March 19th through the 25th, is National Agriculture Week.

We had an Ag Day celebration here in D.C. last week at the Capitol, and the National Press Club and I want to extend a special thank you to our Ag Day sponsoring partners ADM and John Deere.

Let's acknowledge the breathtaking contribution this basic industry has made and makes every day to our country and the world.

Today's average farm is 417 acres compared to 147 acres in 1900.…

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There seems to be an overload of destabilizing things going on -- the War in Iraq, fighting in Afghanistan, Iran wants nuclear weapons, oil prices threaten to surge to new heights, and on and on.

As unsettling as all of thee developments are, it appears to me that they will finally push us to do something about our (as President Bush said) "addiction to oil."

Even after the gas lines ofthe 70's, President Carter couldn't break our addiction. President Nixon also tried and failed. We almost look…

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Today, I want to say a few things about bird flu. In the last 2 or 3 months, the national media has sounded the alarm about a possible bird flu pandemic. O.K. There is some risk. Anything can happen. But, to me, our biggest risk is if the problem becomes even more widespread in Asia, they will destroy their chickens and will no longer find it necessary to buy our corn or soybean meal for feed. That's our greatest risk. The next concern that I have is if the press were able to frighten our own…

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Is there another baseless, politically motivated food scare brewing? A little over a month ago, the Chicago Tribune began writing stories designed to scare the public about the deadly risk of mercury in our seafood -- in swordfish, and salmon, and walleye and orange roughy, and even canned tuna. It reminds me of other scares orchestrated by environmentalists, vegetarians, tree huggers, and Green Peace types. How valid was the Alar apple risk that just about put Washington apple growers out of…

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It was Art Linkletter that said, "Kids say the darndest things." Well, they aren't kids, however sometimes they can be a little childish. Forty presidential cabinet members gathered for lunch at the Blair House and made their annual predictions

For 25 years we have had a Holiday Cabinet Secretaries Lunch. The first luncheon, 25 years ago, only had six of us in attendance, all members of the Reagan Cabinet including Vice President George Bush.

After 3 or 4 years, the job of hosting the…

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"Merry Christmas" or should I say, "Happy Holidays." Of course, it's more natural for me to say "Merry Christmas." After all we're celebrating the birth of Christ. But some people of different faiths don't celebrate Christmas. When I grew up there was no debate. We had our Christmas tree, exchanged presents, went to church and sang Christmas Carols. In our little one-room country school, we sang "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night." A children's play with baby Jesus in a manger was perfectly…

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We complain a lot about trade protectionism on the part of other countries but we are not without blame. Also, experience shows that our protectionism seems to boomerang right back on us. Remember when President Bush imposed duties on imported steel. In response, the Russians stopped buying our chicken, and poultry prices collapsed. So did pork. Just too much protein. The American farmer ended up paying the price.

Here we go again. Since we still have on the books and use a terrible law known as…

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The vision of what the 2007 farm bill and the DOHA Trade Agreement might look like is more clouded than ever.

To start the ball rolling, Trade Ambassador Rob Portman said the U.S. was willing to cut our trade distorting domestic subsidies by 60%. For those of us in farming, that offer made us sit up in alarm. But if market access is great, it might work.

Well, that's when France spoke up and put the European Union on notice that France would not accept the kind of market access that we would…

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