Advocate Summary

Issue:  US Farm Bill
Advocate:  Cargill – Bryan Edwardson 
Date of Interview: 6/7/02

Basic Background
Well most recently is the US Farm Bill which was just passed into law about a month ago, just monitoring that particular piece of legislation, it is a humungous amount of money from the perspective of our company just wanting to limit the government impact on production and planting to the extent practicable and try to assess what the bill will mean to our businesses. There’s also a lot of international trade ramifications so trying to sort through all that, that matrix of stuff. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
We generally stay behind the scenes, we are not one to go grab a microphone or a spot light very often, we will call people, rather than go see them, we are a company that draws a lot of criticism because we are so big, the strange phenomenon of small farmers versus big agribusiness sort of necessitates this strategy. So we basically keep to ourselves, sort of lurk in the shadows and try not to put our fingerprints on anything. We just monitor what’s go on, and then strategically…we like strategic strikes rather than continual barrages of information or advocacy. So we’ll wait till an opportunity presents itself to make a big difference, and take that opportunity rather than slogging away trying to make a regular contact all the time. 

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
We don’t get detailed [like legislative language] that’s a general statement, very very occasionally we will do that but it’s certainly an exception rather than the rule, but again it goes back to that notion about us not having our fingerprints on things. If someone found out that we were writing bill language they would freak out, that would be a bad thing. To the extent that we would do it we would do it in a matter that hopefully no one would find out. 

We generally, if we take materials in, it will be about something specific to our company, as a general statement, we won’t take materials in with us. If we right it we give it to the trade association to take in.

We work through our trade associations a lot, we have a trade association go and take a lot of the positions for us, there’s a million of them; the National Grain and Feed Association, the American Meat Institute, there are scads of trade associations in agriculture, but we’ll go have the trade associations take the more difficult, dangerous public view, and behind the scenes we’ll work individually with our core group of folks, who agree with us, are supportive of us, I mean they generally work specifically with us – “ok what do we do” so I think we have a real good relationship with even people that don’t necessarily agree with us. We’re sort of seen as being the best source of information about what will actually happen. So even people that don’t necessarily agree with us will quietly call us on the phone and say “look I know you may not like this but would you give us some sort of assessment of what this would do if we did this” and we’ll give them an honest answer. 
[Where there any specific things you talked about, about ramifications, with regard to the Farm Bill?]

One of the big ones is on labeling of imported meat. The United States doesn’t want Europe to label the export of biotechnology products, yet now we have passed a law that will label imported meat products. We were trying to point out the inconsistency there, trying to point out you know – if you label an imported meat product that has to be born and raised in the United States, then you have to have an entirely separate facility to process something from a foreign country. It is a very big logistical problem. That was one of the issues specifically where we actually did get involved in trying to suggest better ways to  write the provision, which didn’t go very far and we didn’t succeed, so it was not an example of a successful effort, but you, know that’s the way it goes.  There was another provision on livestock that would have prevented any meat processing companies like us from owning or controlling livestock longer than two weeks before they were to be processed, and it would have required us to divest of two entire businesses, it was very draconian, that was another example where by we were very actively involved in trying to educated directly those we thought might be willing to not go along with such an effort. 

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
None mentioned. 

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
A few, not very many, to be honest, John Bainer, Rep. Cal (Calvin) Dooley (D-CA), S. Richard Lugar (R-IN), S. Pat Roberts (R-KS), S. Chuck Hegel (R-NE). I used to work for one of them, not a very big group, again we focus on having a few key relationships rather than knowing everybody, too many people either don’t like us, or like us but don’t want to be seen liking us, so again, it’s sort of a mutual agreement, keep at arms length for appearances sake.  

Targets of Direct Lobbying
This primarily went through the Agriculture committees, so that was the focus of attention. Both Republicans and Democrats, it turned out that the Senate Democrats were the primary supporters, but there were some Republicans on that committee as well that supported it. The House, pretty much the entire conferees, both Republicans and Democrats, in fact literally every one of them opposed that measure, when it was all said and done, so that was an example of an effective strategy I guess. 

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
[Have you worked with other corporations outside of the trade associations?]
Yep, yeah, all of the companies like us, to the extent that we have issues that effect us they are going to effect them as well.

In the administration, some of the people at the US Department of Agriculture, JB Penn, in particular, both I and another guy here in the office have a real good relationship with one of the President’s top political advisers. So when something was really going wrong we could call him and say the world’s on fire you’re about to drive off a cliff, don’t do that, help. And you know, some lower level people at the white house too. 

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
Oh, boy. The environmental community was quite active, let’s see, advocates of food aid, private voluntary organizations associated with that, humanitarian groups, so on, consumer groups, bankers, insurance companies, the Environmental Working Group was heavily involved, the Independent Bankers Association of America, all the farm commodity groups, American Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union, again there’s a million of them, I could give you a humungous list, American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Cotton Council, and so on and so on and so on. That’ll give you a good idea though. 

The Environmental Working Group did a bunch of research and put out a website this past year, all of the subsidies that farmers have received in the past five years, by there name, and it was a really big deal, because there were a lot of farmers, who were being show to have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies from the government, and it was in the local paper, and it was a big deal to have it put that out there in the open and that particular group, has been a big advocate for not providing these subsidies to large farmers and so on, as unnecessary spending, that prompts overproduction which is bad for the environment. A lot of the other conservation groups, were interested in increasing funding for conservation programs which pretty much every single sector that could get an increase in funding, got an increase in funding, including conservation, wildlife groups, Ducks Unlimited, etc. wanted conservation reserve program increase, which idles land primarily in the Midwest, that pheasants and ducks and quail and so on like to live in. 

The rural bankers in particular, they supported the bill because it provides so much money to rural areas and rural America, so the loans that they are extending to farmers obviously – it’s just about risk free money. They are getting substantial money from the government so that the banks can continue to loan money so that the farmers can continue to farm. The problem though, is what if the money diminishes, or what if the money goes away. There is a huge inflation going on with respect to land values, it’s sort of a house of cards, you know and pull one of those little cards out and well the entire house will fall. There have been estimates that land values in the Midwest, for agriculture are inflated by 100 percent due to all of these subsidies that are being paid, so it’s a bit of a dangerous game. But so long as the money holds out, everything’s fine but if the money ever went down or diminished you’d see a dramatic drop off in land values which has serious ramifications for all sorts of things in rural areas, I mean property taxes are the foundations for school districts and hospitals everywhere, if land value declines by a third, and then property taxes decline by a third the economic ramifications would really be ugly. 

There was a little bit of controversy because the Canadian prime minister was going to have a meeting with the secretary of agriculture to discuss and try to convince the administration not to support aspects of this bill. That information got out and was very poorly received, that a foreign government was going to lobby against US farmers. So they basically waited till it was done and then said oh, by the way that stinks. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
What kind of arguments did we use, ok there’s an example, one of the things the Farm Bill did was increase the price that farmers received for growing these certain crops. Well if the price of that crop is low, which it has been for the past five years, and I guarantee you even more money for growing that crop what’s the net effect going to be? – they’re going to at least continue to grow whatever they’re growing if not grow more which is going to lower the price even further. So if the point is, we need to pay farmers, due to low prices, then why would you make prices worse, by raising that price guarantee. Which they did anyway, so that was one argument. Another argument was, again, the duplicity between the labeling stuff. Ten percent of the hogs raised in Iowa are imported as babies from Canada, under the new bill those ten percent are either going to have to stay in Canada and be raised there, or a separate new facility is going to have to be built in Iowa to process just the babies that are brought in to be raised in Iowa, which totally makes no sense, nobody would do that, so that’s another example. There’s probably a trade one to. There’s a new trade round to try to lower agricultural trade barriers, the United States has generally been supportive and the lead country driving toward that effort but this huge farm bill, in the eyes of everyone else around the world signals an abouit face, with respect to the notion of lowering trade barriers. So you know, we tried to point out, that if you really do want to lower trade barriers, you’re sending the exactly opposite signal, which may make it impossible for you to have a successful trade round. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
None mentioned. 

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned. 

Nature of the Opposition
Farm commodity groups in particular, they were arguing for the higher price guarantee that I mentioned, they were arguing for particularly, just very substantial amounts of subsidies those were the biggest things, and then on the meat side their argument primarily, was sort of categorized as populist, prairie populists, who generally view agri-business as the enemy of farmers and they sought to do things like, the country of origin labeling and the packer ownership ban, the rational was – if I can do something that hurts Cargill, then it will benefit farmers and ranchers. So that was another subset of opponents, and that was pretty much it. The political circumstances surrounding this legislation were very interesting because it was a humungous amount of money, $190 billion, and there are only like 300,000 full time primary profession farmers in the country, so it was very interesting to see Congress interested in providing that much money to such a small amount of people in the political scheme of things. But with Congress the majority so narrow in both the House and the Senate, there was a bidding war to curry the favor of those voters, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, were three of the key states in the Senate for example, to determine whether the Republicans win back the Senate or the Democrats keep the Senate. And so they spent an awful lot of money, trying to make sure that the farmers thought that they were really looking out for them. And the administration, if you look at the states that supported the president, again, these states are the recipients of the vast majority of the money, so it really turned into a cascade effect, where you know, you had a bidding war, and the price tag got very very huge. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
Arguments included in above. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
None mentioned. 

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
None mentioned. 

Described as a Partisan Issue
No, they worked with members from both sides of the aisle 

Venue(s) of Activity
Senate Agriculture Committee
House Agriculture Committee

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
The Farm Bill was passed into law but:

It’s a $190 billion dollars, that’s the cost of the bill. When the Congress began on the journey to write the bill, there was still a big surplus, okay, there was still a lot of money in the coffers Sept. 11th, economic slowdown, now the money’s gone. Yet then went ahead and spent this huge sum of money on the farm program. The really big question going forward is if we continue to run deficits, and the Congress begins to look for money to save, will they come back and say oh, you know what we’re probably going to have to take some of that money back. The response to the Farm Bill, in editorial pages and among the international community has been hugely, resoundingly almost unanimously negative. But again for political purposes for the November elections that was the overwhelming calculus of why do this. But again if the government runs out of money and they have to start finding it someplace, you have to wonder if they won’t comeback and say that might have been more than we can afford. But that may never happen it remains to seen. 

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Working to protect the interests of agribusiness as they were affected by the Farm Bill. 

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I grew up on a farm in northern Kansas, raised grain crops and pigs, my dad owned a grain elevator, so I grew up sort of in agriculture. I came to Washington, DC to do a masters program with no intention of staying, and have been here ever since I got my masters’ degree from American University in Russian international, comparative political science and agricultural trade. I got a job with then congressman Pat Roberts doing his agricultural trade and tax work right at the time when he became the chair of the house agriculture committee and it was time to write a new far bill. So I ended up helping write the Farm Bill before this one. Spent two years in the House and then he became a senator and I spent two years with him in the Senate, and then three and a half years ago, I signed on with Cargill. 

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Almost entirely in-house, we have trade associations right, but other than trade associations we do almost everything ourselves, we have a larger office than other companies like us, in order to mitigate the cost, and to be able to control exactly what goes on and what is said, and what strategies we use and so on. 

Oh, so what type of research do we do to find out the information that goes into the decision – I’m a constant internet surfer, I have certain sites I check multiple times a day Reuters, just constantly gathering information on what’s going on in the world. I have a cadre of sources outside of the government that help in that regard; journalists, consultants, you know whether you’re a client or not in this town, if you have information than you have a valuable commodity, and if you’ll trade your information for somebody else’s you don’t have to hire them, they will give you information in exchange for your information, without having to have a formal signed up commitment. Now, obviously you have to be able to give them something useful in order to be able to do that so it’s a two way street. 

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Four

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
We divide issues up sort of on a subgroup category, like I do grain, another guy does meat issues, another guy does industrial issues and the other person does trade. It overlaps at times. 
We have legal counsel, to the extent that there are legal issues we would either call a lawyer within the company at our corporate head quarters, occasionally we would get a group here in town involved but we try to avoid that to the extent humanly possible. I’m not a lawyer but I can write bill language, same applies to the others here, I guess we don’t find it necessary to hire a lawyer to write bill language, to give to somebody when they’re just going to change it anyway. 
The vast majority of it is run through here. 

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous