By MEGGIE I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

PLYMOUTH, Ind. — In production agriculture, it often seems a distant connection between daily work on the farm and the trade of ag products and services abroad in countries like China and India.
During the Midwest Women in Ag conference on Feb. 5, Beth Bechdol, of Ice Miller, LLP in Indianapolis and past deputy director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, worked to bridge the gap between production agriculture and the importance of trade in a global marketplace.

“Trade is important today, but it’s fundamentally critical to the agriculture industry,” she said. “It may not affect our everyday life in your business, but we need to understand this in the big picture-sense.”

Bechdol went on to describe the world population and its affect locally on U.S. market demand.

“The world population is growing at rate of 80 million people per year,” she said. “And we’re seeing unprecedented reductions in under a dollar a day incomes in underdeveloped countries. And these are in countries that are not doing a good job investing in agriculture domestically.”

Bechdol said the biggest population growth is occurring in Asian countries such as China and India, which dominate new person growth at 56 percent. African nations follow closely behind at 32 percent new growth (of the 80 million people per year).

“We’re not bringing new mouths to feed in the U.S. and Europe, the places we’ve been traditionally comfortable in,” she stated, adding that by 2050, India will beat China in the top eight countries of the world.

Bechdol did not stray too far from mentioning the impact of the economic downturn in her presentation.

“We’re seeing unprecedented global economic downturn, the trend is 7 percent growth in the GDP (gross domestic product),” she said, describing extra GDP as the purchasing power and the disposable income of people across the globe. Starting to put things in perspective for the group, Bechdol said “as more people are in a position to buy new and different things,” trade for increase for U.S. domestic products.

She explained that 20 percent of the population suffers in the $1 a day poverty level and that with $1 more per day they will bring to buy more protein rather than just rice.

“This does a heck of a lot for health and provides a huge opportunity for our livestock industry,” Bechdol said starting to really make the connection “With $2 more per day, they will be able to purchase processed foods and with $10 more per day they will purchase packaged and processed foods at the level where they will walk into a grocery or farmers’ market and make definite purchasing decisions.”

So what does this mean for U.S. food demand abroad? “You can expect in 2050 that the demand for global food will double,” she said fully admitting her bias.

And subsequently, what does this have to do with trade, Bechdol proposed.

“In countries such as Bangledesh for instance, there is burgeoning population growth, and low amounts of investment into ag research. Also, food consumption is outpacing their production output. These type of countries are going to explode on all food needs to import and the U.S. will have the opportunity to rise to the opportunity,” she explained.

So how does the U.S. reach to meet this need, she went on to ponder. “We’ve got a lot of confusion right now with free trade, trying to do this collectiviely in the WTO (World Trade Organization), and we’ve got 151 countries at the table, which has proven to be a big challenge in itself,” Bechdol said. “In my opinion, we need to do this more unilaterally, us with Korea, us with China, India.”

And unfortunately, Bechdol hinted at the assumed uncertainity with the new administration.

“We’ve got new people in Washington (D.C.), new relationships, and we’re going to swim in a cloudy period for probably longer than we want,” she said. “Committees are getting together to discuss reopening NAFTA, which wuld carry a huge benefit for U.S.
agriculture. The president has a lot of people in his ear right now not advocating free trade for agriculture. They’re thinking about organized labor, environmental groups, there’s a lot of competing pressure out there.”

Bechdol said the benefits for U.S. agriculture are also coming in the shape that other countries “are doing screwy things, putting majorly expensive taxes on exporting their own goods. This will hurt their long-term competiveness because their own farmers can’t get products past government taxes.”

To put it in perspective, Bechdol urged the group of farm women to watch for trends and think about market volatility.

“I also encourage each of you to be involved in local farm organization and write to your legislators,” she said. “It’s going to affect the future of your children’s future.”