Saturday, January 23, 2021
OPINION
East Oregonian
A5
Keep momentum going on trade for wheat farmers
CHANDLER
GOULE
OTHER VIEWS
W
ith the United States bringing
in a new administration, one of
a different political party, some
changes in trade policy and strategy could
be expected. As the Biden administration
takes shape, the National Association of
Wheat Growers (NAWG) encourages it to
build upon the trade successes of the Trump
administration.
Additionally, NAWG stresses the impor-
tance of coalition-building in pursuing
solutions to trade disputes and to work
toward restoring a functional appeals
system at the World Trade Organization
(WTO).
Further, NAWG urges the Biden admin-
istration to advocate for wheat on the world
stage by continuing to support export
market development programs through the
annual budget process and to work collab-
oratively to reduce trade barriers. The U.S.
exports 50% of its wheat crop, making it
a priority for America’s farmers, which
should also mean a priority for the new
administration.
The Trump administration’s efforts
to renegotiate the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now known
as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement
(USMCA), proved to be beneficial for
wheat growers. Mexico has also consis-
tently been a top market for U.S. wheat
exports. Through NAFTA, the U.S. had
tariff-free access, which was maintained in
USMCA.
Additionally, USMCA made important
improvements to Canada’s grain grad-
ing system, which provides better treat-
ment of U.S. wheat being sold to Canadian
elevators, and it updated the sanitary and
phytosanitary (SPS) standards that were
modeled from the SPS requirements in the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Maintain-
ing tariff-free access and strengthening
science-based disciplines for SPS measures
with Mexico is essential to the U.S. wheat
industry. NAWG is counting on the Biden
administration to fully honor the intent of
the USMCA.
Another notable success garnered by
the Trump administration is the Phase 1
trade deal with China. In exchange for the
U.S. cutting some of its tariffs on Chinese
goods, China pledged to purchase more
American farm, energy and manufactured
goods. Retaliatory tariffs from China had a
significantly negative impact on farmers.
However, since the signing of the Phase
1 agreement with China, combined with the
market development efforts undertaken by
U.S. Wheat Associates (USW), U.S. wheat
sales to China have totaled more than 2.8
million tons, representing a near doubling
of our long-term average annual sales to
China.
Separately, trade and investment discus-
sions with Vietnam, a growing wheat
import market, resulted in securing a
reduced tariff rate for imported U.S. wheat.
Additionally, the bilateral agreement
with Japan negotiated by the Trump admin-
istration put the U.S. back onto a level play-
ing field with our competitors. The next
administration should continue to build
upon these market development actions.
Unfortunately, China continues to be a
bad actor in the trade arena and some coun-
tries are following suit. In 2019, the United
States won two WTO cases against China’s
tariff rate quota (TRQ) scheme and domes-
tic support policies. However, China has
yet to fully comply in either case.
Additionally, India and other develop-
ing countries have been on the same trend
of providing trade distorting subsidies that
far exceed WTO commitments. The Biden
administration should build on the China
domestic support case’s success to bring
other countries into compliance through
litigation.
American wheat farmers need a strong
voice on the world stage. There are many
opportunities for the Biden administration
to be an international advocate for wheat
and capitalize on new trade deals. For
instance, Brexit provides an opportunity
for change to wheat exports to the United
Kingdom, and hopefully wheat tariffs will
be fully eliminated in a final U.S.-U.K.
agreement.
Additionally, the U.S.-Kenya negotia-
tions could serve as a model for future Free
Trade Agreements (FTA) across Africa,
and a priority in these and future negotia-
tions should be to provide more favorable
tariffs and SPS provisions for U.S. sourced
wheat.
International trade is critical to U.S.
wheat growers, and our overseas customers
demand high quality wheat, which Amer-
ican farmers are proud to supply. NAWG
urges the Biden administration to continue
to work from the Trump administration’s
trade successes. Additionally, the new
administration must hold bad actors, like
China, to their commitments and make
them accountable for violating any WTO
rulings.
Further, NAWG asks the Biden adminis-
tration to be a strong advocate for wheat on
the international stage and to help find new
market opportunities for wheat.
———
Chandler Goule is CEO of the National
Association of Wheat Growers.
Effective and efficient climate policy that farmers can support
STEVE GHAN
KATHLEEN WALKER
OTHER VIEWS
W
hat if there was a simple and
powerful solution to climate
change that would benefit the
economy, avoid government growth, and
preserve personal freedom? What if that
solution would also grant a pass on agricul-
ture fuel?
Sound too good to be true? The Energy
Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,
introduced in the last Congress with 86
cosponsors, will be introduced again in
this Congress. If you’re concerned about
impacts of climate change on future gener-
ations of agriculture, it merits your consid-
eration.
This legislation is based on the carbon
fee and dividend concept. A steadily
increasing price on the carbon content of
fossil fuel is applied as close to the source
(mine, well, or import) as practical. That
price signal is passed on through the econ-
omy, raising the price of fossil fuel and
carbon-intensive products for utilities and
consumers.
After paying for the modest administra-
tive costs of this simple policy, the net reve-
nue is returned to the economy in the form
of equal monthly dividends to each legal
resident (those under 19 get half a share).
Dividend recipients are free to use it as
they wish. If they want to keep using their
gas guzzler, they can use their dividend to
pay more for gasoline. They can use it for
food if it costs more. With the increasing
price on carbon, many will use their divi-
dend to reduce their carbon use, for exam-
ple, by purchasing a new or used electric
vehicle. The market will provide more
carbon-free products.
The carbon fee on fuel used for agri-
culture would be refunded under this
legislation, like the highway fuel tax is
refunded when fuel is used for agriculture.
In addition, if the carbon emitted during
fertilizer production is sequestered perma-
nently underground, the carbon fee can be
refunded to the manufacturer.
The price on carbon is substantial,
increasing by $10 per ton CO2 emitted each
year (equivalent to about 10 cents per gallon
of gasoline), with national emissions reduc-
tion targets of 40% in 12 years and 90% by
2050.
The dividends are also substantial, rising
to more than $3,400 per year for a family
of four after 10 years. For 61% of house-
holds, their dividend in the first year would
exceed what they’d pay in carbon fees, and
for 85%, it would be at least 98% of their
carbon fees.
But what about China and India? To
discourage businesses from shifting oper-
ations to countries without an equivalent
price on carbon, this legislation includes
a border adjustment that adds a carbon
fee to imports from such countries, and
distributes the revenue from that fee to U.S.
exporters. This also motivates trading part-
ners, such as China and India, to implement
effective climate policies. Global carbon
emissions decline.
Economists love this climate policy
because it relies on market forces rather
than mandates to drive down emissions.
The market, not the government, picks the
winners.
Republicans will love the policy because
the government doesn’t keep the revenue.
Democrats will appreciate it because the
dividend means more to the poor than the
wealthy. (Note that neither the fee nor the
dividend depends on personal income.)
Farmers can support it because it’s
powerful enough to drive down most of
the greenhouse gas emissions driving
climate change, but waives most costs of
A lesson from a Kalahari Bushman girl
ANDREW
CLARK
A SLICE OF LIFE
H
ave you seen the movie “The Gods
Must Be Crazy”? If not, please do.
It is a wonderful film involving
the various tribes of people who inhabit
Southern Africa and how they relate to
each other. It is funny, touching — and
even a good romance too.
The central character is a man of the
San tribe, a group we know as Kalahari
Bushmen. The standard image of the San
is deep bush people in the Kalahari desert
of Botswana who live a basic lifestyle —
men with little loin cloths, bare-breasted
women, children with minimal clothing,
and a diet of dug-up roots, bushmeat, and
water from dewdrops. The San are an
isolated people in the Kalahari and have
clearly defined features that are unique to
their tribe, so a San is very easy to distin-
guish from other people.
I was on a job in Botswana dealing
with livestock disease problems and had
a weekend clear. The manager of the
bed-and-breakfast where I was staying
had a brother, a county counselor (a posi-
tion similar to our congressional repre-
sentative) — who offered to take me out
sight-seeing to a rhinoceros reserve.
The lunch entertainment at the little
restaurant turned out to be a black rhino
(the species known to be more danger-
ous) who came sauntering across the
lawn and went to the swimming pool for
a drink. He then took a nap in the shade,
another drink, a quick snack on a bush
and departed. Very curious behavior for
a rhino and this was interesting, but I’d
seen lots of rhinos in East Africa. But then
something happened that was a significant
lesson for me.
Our waitress at lunch was a young San
woman — that distinctive face was unmis-
takable — and my stereotype immediately
came to mind, but she was wearing a wait-
ress uniform. After lunch my host opened
his computer to show me something and
it balked — he could not make it work. As
our San waitress cleared our table she saw
his struggle with the computer and asked if
she could help. My stereotype of San leapt
into operation. What? A San girl fixing a
computer?
Frustrated, he handed the computer to
her. Really?
Click, click, click, click, click.
And then “There you are,” as she
handed the computer back to him with a
smile — fixed and working perfectly.
The lesson for me was about the imme-
diate stereotype into which I had cast that
young woman because of her obvious
tribal identity. It was ignorant and arro-
gant of me. History has moved along and
the San people no longer fit the movie
stereotype. Why couldn’t a modern San
have computer savvy? Why did I allow
myself to have that unconscious bias? Was
I demonstrating my own tribalism?
I had been working in Africa for about
15 years, and when I first went to Tanzania
in 1964 the ratio of Black people to white
people was about 40,000-to-1, so I was
entirely accustomed to being in a minority.
When I thought about this situation, I was
ashamed to admit that after years of expe-
rience working with Eastern Africans but
not Southern Africans, I had this pecu-
liar response based on a stereotype from
a movie as to what Southern African San
would be.
I should know better than that.
Currently, a major issue here in Amer-
ica is systemic racism. Indeed, it is truly
here — and a component of that systemic
racism is personal racism. A component of
personal racism is stereotypes, and those
stereotypes cripple us in how we relate
with the people who are trapped in our
self-imposed bias. If we accept stereo-
types developed from movies or not-nec-
essarily-true stories or violent television
programs, we do a disservice to both
ourselves and to the stereotyped persons
we meet. In that process we both are
wounded, and I myself had been caught in
that trap.
Can this be solved and the wounds
healed? Yes.
We can do it, but it takes effort and
thought and making alterations to our
perceptions and stereotypes and behav-
iors. We’ll all be better off when we do so,
all across the nation.
———
Dr. Andrew Clark is a livestock veteri-
narian with both domestic and international
work experience who lives in Pendleton.
the policy to farmers.
Studies of its impact on the econ-
omy conclude that jobs will shift from
carbon-intensive industries like fossil fuel
extraction and refinement to a wide variety
of carbon-lite industries, with a small net
overall gain in jobs.
While this legislation is powerful, it
is limited to emissions of CO2 and HFCs
(hydrofluorocarbons used as refrigerants).
Other legislation is needed to support
reductions in emissions of other import-
ant greenhouse gases, such as methane and
nitrous oxide, and to reward CO2 removal
and long-term storage. We’ve already writ-
ten about the Growing Climate Solutions
Act, which facilitates a market for seques-
tering carbon in soils and trees. Future
columns will address emissions of methane
and nitrous oxide.
You can be part of this solution to
climate change by communicating your
support for it. For more information, see
energyinnovationact.org.
———
Steve Ghan is a highly cited climate
scientist and leads the Tri-Cities Chapter of
the Citizens Climate Lobby. He meets with
mid-Columbia farmers to discuss agricul-
ture and climate change. Kathleen Walker
was raised by a hardworking Washington
state farmer.
Six helpful hints for
spelling, reading
SCOTT
SMITH
THE EDUCATION CORNER
W
ith the development of vaccines
for the coronavirus and distri-
bution underway, there may be
an end to distance learning just around
the corner. This said, there are still many
children struggling with their reading and
parents assisting their children with school-
ing. Learning to read is not the same for
everyone.
Reading text is a “human”-created skill
and not a natural skill for our brains to
process. Therefore, depending on acqui-
sition of a long spectrum of skills, some
children have no problems learning to read
while others struggle. To add to the confu-
sion, English is a blend of several different
languages and rules, making it even harder
to understand.
There are those few people in our coun-
try who spend their time studying our
language and all the rules that apply, yet
most of us do not aspire to be linguists.
Webster, back in the 1800s, brought us a
complete rule book of most of the words
and rules behind their spellings. There
was a time when teachers were expected
to know all those rules prior to starting to
teach.
Over the years we have relied on text-
book publishers to provide those rules
embedded in their curriculum. Many of
us do not always pick up on the rules or
remember them because the curriculum
moves on quickly. When challenged why
a word is spelled a certain way we dismiss
it and say something like “the English
language just has some odd spellings.” In
most cases, there is a reason behind that
spelling, whether it be from the root of the
word or the language the word was adopted
from.
Having kids read to adults is always
beneficial — well, most of the time. What
do we find ourselves saying to a child when
they come to a word they do not recognize?
The most popular response is “sound the
word out.” The only problem is that the only
English words that can easily be sounded
out are one-syllable, short vowel words. In
the English language you have to be able to
identify the vowel sounds in words, many
of which contain multiple letters, and then
you are able to blend the word and hope-
fully get the sounds close enough that you
are able to recognize the word from your
auditory vocabulary or lexicon.
No worries — here is some help. This
will be enough to get you by without having
to become a linguist. There are six basic
syllable rules that most English words
follow, or at least follow closely enough
that you can get an approximation, and then
recognize the word. The same six rules also
help with spelling.
Here they are — open syllable (go, me),
closed syllable (cat, fin), vowel team, “r”-
controlled (first, far, or), vowel/consonant/
silent “e” (same, case) and consonant “-le”
(little, able). Common blends, digraphs
and diphthongs can also cause confusion.
Blends are connected letters where you
can hear all the letter sounds. Digraphs
are a cluster of consonants that create a
new sound, and diphthongs are a cluster of
letters with at least one vowel. These are
the most commonly found word parts in
elementary texts. The letter “y” is some-
times considered a vowel but there is a
reason. English words don’t end in the letter
“i” so they use “y” (my, sky, by).
A great activity for students to do is sort
single syllable words into each of the above
groups. This allows them to work with
words along with looking for vowel sounds.
This activity only focuses on vowel sounds.
The objective is to identify the vowel sound
in each word or syllable, and then blend the
sounds together to get an approximation
close enough that they can recognize the
word or are able to spell the word closely
enough to be able to recognize it.
Happy word discovery.
———
Dr. Scott Smith is a Umatilla County
educator with 40-plus years of experience.
He taught at McNary Heights Elementary
School and then for Eastern Oregon Univer-
sity in their teacher education program at
Blue Mountain Community College. He
serves on the Decoding Dyslexia-OR board
as their parent/teacher liaison.