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JIM GRANSBERY
The Montana Grain Growers Association invited the enemy into its camp Friday night.
Robert Rose, a D.C. attorney hired by the European Union to lobby its concerns with U.S. congressmen about the impending farm bill, came to dinner with his take on how "mutually beneficial measures might level the playing field" in international grain production and sales - familiar buzz words to Montana wheat and barley producers.
Rose was sparing no insult to his hosts as he ticked off all the good things the EU had accomplished in the venue of "free trade and market access," while the Americans were keeping their markets closed and getting rich on government subsidies and favorable tax policies.
Rose was a ruse.
But several minutes had passed before the crowd realized the bloom was off: They'd been had.
Bob Ross, a humor speaker from Carlsbad, Calif., in conspiracy with Richard Owen, the MGGA's executive vice president, lightened the atmosphere as officers closed the annual convention held this year in Billings in conjunction with the Montana Stockgrowers Association. Several hundred livestock and grain producers spent four days dissecting the educational, economic and political forces that affect the state's largest natural resource industry.
Ross then entertained the audience with a string of one liners.
With a motto of "I'm healthy; I'm happy; I'm here for fun," Ross explained how humor can be used effectively to reduce tension and confrontation.
"Remember a child laughs a hundred times a day because they are open to the wonderment of the world," he said. "As we get older, we lose that humor from childhood."
He wanted everyone to retrieve it.
But as any good satirist, Ross's speech posing as Rose was filled with kernels of truth that will come into play this week in Hong Kong as the 148 members of the World Trade Organization gather to hammer out a framework to increase the market access of developing countries to the developed industrial states. Similar efforts in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun, Mexico, in 2003 ended in riots and collapse.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, who addressed the joint conventions Thursday, said "That is not a pattern for Hong Kong."
Regardless of whether the United States commits to more open markets and lower farm subsidies, especially export subsidies, at the WTO, the reality of the federal debt and budget deficit means U.S. farmers will be in for the fight of their lives in 2006-07 as the next farm bill is written.
The details of that were outlined for the grain growers on Thursday morning by Jim Wiesemeyer, an agricultural analyst and journalist, who warned them the debate in the House and Senate would be a "battle royal."
That is something Montana's grain producers are familiar with.
Friday night, they honored several of the past presidents of the organization, which held its first convention 50 years ago. The organization was founded for the purpose of waging those in 1955. The MGGA over the years provided numerous ideas that found their way into federal law and farm bill legislation.
Keith Schott, of Broadview, gave a heartfelt good-bye and thank-you for the past year as he served as MGGA president. Jon Stoner, of Havre, succeeds him for 2006.
Contact Jim Gransbery at jgransbery@billingsgazette.com or 657-1288.
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