Farming has bright future under Trump administration
Charles H. Featherstone/The Columbia Basin Herald Jay Lehr, right, the keynote speaker at the Washington-Oregon Potato Conference in Kennewick, talks with Andy Hickman, an account executive with Kimball Midwest, a supplier of industrial parts and equipment.
KENNEWICK — Jay Lehr isn’t opposed to free trade.
In fact, he knows that American farmers, like the potato growers gathered here from around Washington and Oregon for the 2017 Potato Conference, need foreign markets, and the growth potential those markets provide.
But Lehr, who says he has been advising President Trump on science and agriculture, said that a big multilateral trade deal like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which President Donald Trump recently announced the U.S. was withdrawing from, isn’t it.
“Most folks in ag thought the TPP would be good, but most have not read it,” said Lehr, the keynote speaker at this year’s Washington-Oregon Potato Conference.
“The TPP is like Obamacare. It’s thousands of pages kept in a locked room and members of Congress are not allowed to take notes when they read it. And that’s because there are over 50 sweetheart deals for supporters of the past president,” he said.
Free trade is simple, Lehr said to a standing-room-only crowd at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick.
“I’ll buy your stuff and won’t put a tariff on it if you buy my stuff and won’t put a tariff on it,” Lehr said. “It’s that simple. You don’t need a thousand pages.”
Growing, processing, and marketing potatoes are responsible for $7.3 billion of economic activity in Washington and over 35,000 jobs — much of that the result of robust international trade — according to the Washington Potato Commission.
Lehr, science director at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, said he is incredibly excited by the new Trump administration, and believes that President Trump will dramatically reduce federal regulations “of all kinds” — including regulations that make it difficult for farmers to grow food and increase yields.
“It will end the ability to take away tools like pesticides and insecticides that are under attack by anti-ag zealots,” he said.
Lehr, who said he is the last scientist living who helped found the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the early 1970s, also said he has given the Trump Administration a five-year plan to eliminate the EPA and hand all of its regulatory power over to the states.
Farmers appreciate their environmental responsibility, Lehr said, because they breathe the air they work in and drink water from their own wells. Because of this, Lehr also said most farmers realize that to make a living, they need to grow more while using less.
“We’re growing three times more food on less land than we did a generation ago, using less and less to grow more. That’s part of the story (of agriculture) we have to tell,” Lehr said.
“You aren’t telling that story,” he said, telling his audience they have become too reliant on trade groups and lobbyists to inform America about what they do.
Lehr was serious in his admonition to potato farmers that they needed to be their own best promoters.
“You have to dedicate a couple of hours each month telling your story to every non-farmer you meet,” he said.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.