INTERVIEW WITH SANFORD BISHOP AT GA. PEANUT FARM SHOW [0:00-3:07]

Well, we had a tough year in 2009, we've had tremendous weather challenges, we've had trade challenges, we've had economic challenges, and it's been really, really tough. My heart goes out to farmers because they are really gamblers in a sense, because they've got to depend on so many things that are beyond their control, but they're hardworking and they do a great job in producing the best food and fiber anywhere in the industrial as well, the most economical, the highest quality in the safest. And so we've got to do everything that we can possibly do to make sure that they continue to do that. Now, with respect to next year, I'm expecting that we will try to work hard to get the trade issues worked out so that we can export the agriculture that we produce here in Southwest Georgia and Georgia and in the United States. There have been some difficulties with China, for example, and a few other countries that have been restricting access to our products. We're working on that because it's got to happen. The pecan industry, for example, the peanut industry, need to be able to have access to other markets just as we give access to their markets. What we ultimately want for American farmers and for Georgia farmers is for a level playing field. We need a level playing field and if they have it, we've got some of the best, some of the brightest, some of the most creative and ingenious farmers anywhere in the world. And we just want them to have a fair shake because they can compete and they can compete well and they will do well. We are there to work and to serve the American people and we're going to do our dead level best to do that. It's just like cap and trade that is so controversial and so difficult. Climate change is really how it's properly identified. It's been a really, really tough time trying to deal with that controversial issue. As the bill was developed in the house, it was not agriculture friendly. And so Colin Peters and the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and a number of us in the Blue Dog Coalition fought to stop that bill to block it until some concessions were made and some agriculture friendly provisions were put in there. We were not able to get it to our satisfaction but we got a lot of things that would give some relief from the burdensome aspects of the bill to American agriculture and to Georgia agriculture. That was good. But we also knew that if we could get it out of the house, away from some of the people who had drafted it and into the Senate, that there were people in the Senate who were much more reasonable and whose views were much more consistent with ours. And so it's in the Senate and I suspect that if it comes out of the Senate, it will have to be changed to be much more friendly to South Eastern agriculture, which the original bill that went from the house was not.