WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today released the latest episode of her podcast, ‘The Hotdish,’ featuring interviews with a North Dakota barley farmer and a former U.S. agricultural trade negotiator on the critical importance of trade to rural America.

Heitkamp first speaks with Ambassador Darci Vetter, the chief agricultural negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2014 to 2017. Vetter shared her in-depth knowledge of the importance of maintaining good trade relationships, and the opportunities that exist to improve existing agreements and enter in to new ones without harming U.S. farmers and rural communities.

Heitkamp then speaks with Doyle Lentz, a North Dakota farmer who grows barley, wheat, and soybeans on his family farm. Lentz discusses the challenges that farmers face in today’s economic and political climate, and the importance of maintaining strong trade relationship with Canada and Mexico to keep North Dakota farmers in business.

“The Hotdish” is available on iTunes and SoundCloud, as well as on Heitkamp’s Senate website. Click here to subscribe to “The Hotdish” on iTunes.  

“Trade is absolutely essential to the success of North Dakota farmers and ranchers, and to our rural economy at large,” Heitkamp said. “When 95 percent of consumers worldwide live outside of the United State, we have to export our goods to reach them – and that’s not possible without strong trade deals. I’ve been urging the administration to protect our relationships with Canada and Mexico, which are critically important to the success of North Dakota producers. The threat of withdrawal from NAFTA is already harming North Dakota farmers, so we must act quickly to bring certainty to rural America that the federal government won’t turn its back on their economic lifeline that is trade.”    

Heitkamp and Vetter discussed the successes of NAFTA, as well as potential areas it could be strengthened. 

“By and large, NAFTA has been incredibly positive for the United States, and certainly for U.S. agriculture,” Vetter said. “A broad swath of our agricultural products go north or south, pretty much without interruption. And if you think about all of the trade barriers out there, and the depth of cooperation we have with Canada and Mexico to solve those problems and allow trade to flow smoothly, that’s really pretty remarkable.”

Vetter also pointed to areas where NAFTA could be improved. “A lot of our trade happens in the digital economy, and there are no provisions in NAFTA that deal with digital trade and data flows and things that are important – and frankly even increasingly important to agriculture and small businesses who’d like to sell their products and services online,” Vetter said. 

But Vetter cautioned that the United States must tread carefully in the renegotiation or risk losing our competitive edge to other agriculture economies ready to take our place.

“25 years ago when we negotiated NAFTA, there weren’t many other countries who could take our place,” Vetter said. “And if you look at Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia, in beef and wheat and wine, they’re ready to fill that market. So I think perhaps we took our market share in Mexico for granted a bit, and we really can’t do that now.”

Doyle Lentz discussed the process of developing relationships with companies in Canada and Mexico who are potential buyers of North Dakota products, and the freedom he has to strike deals to sell goods across our borders because of NAFTA. But because of the uncertainty surrounding the Unite States’ commitment to remaining in NAFTA, he’s finding buyers are hesitant to lock in to long term deals, which is already hurting agriculture in North Dakota.

For farmers to break even and make a profit, trade is essential. “At least 25 percent of everything we grow in America is exported, and there’s no way you can tell producers that you’re going to have to cut back 25 percent,” Lentz said. “That’s the part of the crop that’s profit – if there is any.”

Trade has allowed North Dakota barley growers to expand in NAFTA markets, which has helped the craft beer industry succeed and take root at home in North Dakota. Heitkamp and Lentz discussed the burgeoning industry, which has encouraged farmers to experiment with new growth like hops.

 

“All of this is dependent on whether we can export, whether we can keep those farmers producing the barley and actually market their products,” Heitkamp said. 

“It really is. Without exports, we’re in big trouble,” Lentz said. 

Amid ongoing discussions to renegotiate NAFTA – and the administration’s refusal to take NAFTA withdrawal off the table – Heitkamp has repeatedly emphasized the important of robust trade partnerships to maintain and expand access for North Dakota’s farmers and ranchers. 

North Dakota is the ninth largest agriculture exporting state in the country, with $4.1 billion in commodities exported each year—and Canada and Mexico are the state’s two biggest foreign markets. For example, of North Dakota’s exports, 95 percent of its corn, 88 percent of its beef, 86 percent of its pork, and 100 percent of its poultry go to Canada and Mexico, according to a recent Farm Bureau report.

Heitkamp has long worked to expand and protect market access for North Dakota farmers and ranchers. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Heitkamp is committed to protecting crucial export promotion programs in the 2018 Farm Bill. The president’s budget would have slashed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s export promotion programs.

In January, Heitkamp outlined her agenda to protect and strengthen North Dakota’s agriculture and energy industries – which rely heavily on exporting their products abroad – in a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. As the latest round of NAFTA talks came to a close, Heitkamp pressed the administration to focus on the need for farmers and ranchers to export to survive. In a bipartisan letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Heitkamp urged the administration to protect agriculture in the renegotiation of NAFTA.

In 2015, Heitkamp called on then-U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to protect North Dakota grain growers from unfair treatment after a report she requested showed that Canada segregates North Dakota grain and offers unfair prices to U.S. producers at Canadian elevators.

Click here to read an op-ed Heitkamp wrote about the critical role of agriculture exports for North Dakota.

About The Hotdish:

Heitkamp kicked off her podcast last February with an episode on her efforts to combat human trafficking, interviewing anti-human trafficking leader Cindy McCain and North Dakota journalist Kevin Wallevand. Since then, Heitkamp’s podcast has covered a wide range of topics, including negotiations for the next Farm Bill, the role of moderates in Congress, U.S.-Russia relations, health care, her bipartisan bill that would promote carbon capture, the role of refugees and immigrants in our communities, the threat posed by North Korea, and tackling the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women, tax reform, and an update on her effort to combat human trafficking. 

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