Thank you.
I know time is short, so I'll skip the preliminaries. I just want to get right to it if I can.
Mr. Phillips, I appreciate, quite honestly, and I understand. You said right at the start that “we do not believe the government owes farmers a living”, but what struck me more was what you followed up with. And I share these values and beliefs in agriculture: that regulations, market access, a developing market, and research and innovation are the success in sustainable agriculture.
You talked about the export of value added and you mentioned $40 billion in exports in total. But on beef and pork, can you talk to me a bit about that? Maybe if I'm wrong and you want me to divert to when we had the livestock here...I know you're more about the grains. Maybe I'll skip that and ask you if you are talking about value added also. Is it strictly boxed meat, sort of...? Because we're likely not going to ship a live hog to the other side of the ocean, unless it's genetics.
The other part I would have, then, is that no access is really not trade. That's a good statement. Everybody should understand that. I'm concerned about the low-level presence, which you talked about. When I was on the agriculture committee, that became an issue in terms of markets, in terms of having shiploads go over and maybe get turned around because of.... How do you see those low level of presence talks going, from your perspective?