SEC. MIKE JOHANNS: Thank you, JB, thank you very much for that very nice introduction. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Washington. As JB mentioned, last year I had the pleasure of traveling to Africa to attend this forum in Dakar, Senegal. And during that meeting I met some of you. Today I am very, very pleased to welcome you to the United States.

I do hope you enjoy your time here as much as I enjoyed my trip in Senegal. I had the chance to see a beautiful country for the first time, learn about a new culture, and participate in a very productive AGOA forum.

AGOA is important because it helps build the framework for valuable commercial relationships that will prove vital to the health and to the growth of our economies. I firmly believe that open economies and free markets pave a road to prosperity for all of our nations.

Free trade is an engine of economic growth. It is the best means for reducing hunger, alleviating poverty, raising the standard of living, and creating stability.

AGOA also represents the United States' commitment to Africa, where our goals include reducing trade barriers, increasing exports, and creating jobs.

Last year's forum in Dakar was beneficial to AGOA's development, and I hope that this year's forum will be equally as productive. I do want you to know that at the USDA we're listening to your concerns and doing all we can to further progress.

Last year some of you shared with me that the U.S. system for approving fresh horticultural products was way too slow and too complex. I listened to your concerns. I thought your concerns were valid. When I returned I asked our Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS as we call it, to see what we could do to improve the system for you.

I am happy to tell you that APHIS has now proposed new procedures to shorten the regulatory approval time for some products that would be new to the United States market. Certainly APHIS must go through a very detailed process that we call "rulemaking" to approve any new imports or regulatory decisions. Because rulemaking is very lengthy and complex, we are changing our procedures so that rulemaking can be avoided in certain situations.

This simplifies and quickens the process for approving new imports while still allowing public participation in the rulemaking process.

Significant changes include establishing the framework so that we can authorize certain imports without going through the entire rulemaking process. We're also establishing a similar system that would allow us to approve pest-free areas without rulemaking.

We're also eliminating redundant and outdated requirements in an effort to simplify the entire process. Once in place, the new regulations will streamline the approval process. As I said, these changes are a direct result of your suggestions last year; and I believe that they will simplify your exports into the United States.

At USDA we're doing a number of things in Africa, including food aid, research, emergency responses for issues such as avian influenza, and technical assistance, which includes agricultural training.

Our most extensive technical assistance program is strengthening plant health systems and pest risk assessments. As you know, before your countries can export fresh ag products, you must be able to meet international phytosanitary standards. These standards are not only important for exports, they also will help protect your own crops from foreign pests and diseases.

That's why we're pursuing an innovative effort to help African countries meet the challenge of exporting their products. We've made significant progress on this front in the last year.

For example, South Africa exports clementines to the United States at a value of $6 million annually. These exports were recently threatened by an insect pest when it was discovered in South Africa. But USDA and South African plant health authorities were able to cooperate to quickly identify an acceptable method of dealing with the pest and, most importantly, to resume imports.

Currently a number of African products are in the rulemaking process for export into the United States. These include baby corn and baby carrots from Zambia, which were approved with a final rule just recently on May 24.

Table grapes from Namibia, peas from Kenya, and okra, eggplant, and mangoes from Ghana are all at various stages of the approval process. We've also sent a team to East Africa recently to expedite the pest risk assessments on passion fruit.

But the success of our project cannot be measured only in terms of the number of pest risk assessments which we have completed to increase Africa's export ability. We have also provided training for officials from nine countries in subjects such as developing formal procedures for surveying and detecting plant pests, creating national standards for a computerized plant pest database, developing information systems that can be accessed on the Internet, and training national pest risk assessment teams in their own countries.

Effective plant health systems are crucial because they will facilitate trade with your neighbors, which could prove even more valuable than exports into the United States.

In order to provide a broader range of long-lasting benefits, our plant health program will expand in the next year from our previous focus on pest risk assessments. We will also concentrate on national plant health systems with more capacity-building at the national level.

Additionally, our Food Safety and Inspection Service will assist in looking at potential meat exports and related food safety issues. These measures will help trade at the regional level in addition to further opening the American market and international markets.

It will take time, but eventually our goal is for a highly trained and an efficient, independent regulatory agency in Africa to facilitate your agricultural trade and to protect your own national crops. I know that cotton is one crop that has great importance to the economies and cultures of some African countries.

Last year we followed up on meetings with West African Ministers of Agriculture by conducting a training program in cotton classing and standards, as well as programs in soils management, which addressed the soil fertility and erosion problems in cotton-producing areas. We plan to conduct more training this year, and I look forward to making more progress in these areas.

Another way we are helping to build trade capacity in AGOA nations is by training African marketing experts in the United States so they can learn about the complexities of our market and better determine which of their exports can be competitive here.

We've also helped countries find innovative ways to help with trade, sustainable agriculture, food security, and natural resource problems. We've conducted training programs in food safety, destructive insect pest control, agriculture biotechnology, plant breeding, and controlling Foot and Mouth Disease in cattle and swine.

We will continue working with participants from a large number of African countries this year to build the agricultural economy and trade capacity. Some topics that we hope to address include border inspection and control, storage of fruits and vegetables, and avian influenza.

Other future plans include helping to develop a national agricultural statistics program in Madagascar that will support agricultural exports. Last year I announced that USDA would organize a trade mission to the Southern African region. It took place this past fall, and I'm happy to say it was well-attended by both U.S. and South African companies.

In fact it was so successful that today I would like to use this opportunity to announce another trade mission and investment mission into East Africa. My hope is that this will have high participation and will increase sales from East African countries in the same manner that last year's mission did for Southern Africa.

We're also planning to increase our staff delegation in Africa in the coming year. In August we will open a new USDA Foreign Ag Service Office in Dakar. We're adding an additional staff member to our South Africa office, and we're hoping to add another staff member to our Kenya office down the road.

Also I'm pleased to note that one of USDA's most capable officials has been selected by President Bush to serve as the new Ambassador to South Africa. Under Secretary Eric Bost will assume this new post very soon.

Ladies and gentlemen, our commitment to Africa remains strong. And I hope to continue to grow and develop our partnerships as time goes on. I've just gone through some of the commitments to your countries. And now I'd like to ask something of you. I'm asking that you renew your efforts in terms of cooperation with us. I'm asking that you increase your efforts of cooperation amongst yourselves. I'm asking for your advice, your counsel, and I'm asking for your dedication of resources to trade capacity-building activities.

We are truly making a difference. We will continue to make progress in our efforts, but we must continue working hard and, most importantly, we must continue to work together. We share a common goal: to provide a high standard of living for our people. One way to do this is by producing high quality agricultural products for both domestic consumption and international exportation.

Trade helps. Aid can help. But they are not enough alone. We also need to build a long-term trade capacity through education and better technology. And we need international policy that encourages free trade and open trade.

Lest we forget, that is one of the primary reasons we embarked on the Doha Round of negotiations in the World Trade Organization. I will be candid with you -- I can be candid with friends. I'm disappointed that we haven't made sufficient progress at this point. But I remain confident that we can achieve a successful resolution of this round with innovative thinking and compromise by all parties.

I'll be speaking on this subject more this afternoon at a roundtable discussion, but let me say this now: I was in the talks on the Doha Round when a minister from Africa explained the importance of these negotiations far more powerfully than I ever could. He said to the room: "If this fails, I know what you will do. You'll all go out and you'll enter into bilateral agreements. You will work to make sure a bilateral strategy is in place." And then he said, "But who will enter into a bilateral agreement with my country? Quite honestly, what can we offer?"

What a profoundly insightful statement. That's why success in the Doha Round is so terrifically important . Of course I want to further open markets for American agriculture products. As Secretary of Agriculture, that's part of my job just like it's part of yours. But there's so much more at stake. There's the well-being of an entire continent of people that we must consider as we negotiate these free trade policies. We must be statesmen seeking the greater good.

That is why I'm so strongly committed to the success of these negotiations. I hope to hear your thoughts on this subject this afternoon. African countries have, can, and must play an important role in this process.

AGOA and the WTO talks are important because they significantly impact agriculture in your countries. And that not only increases trade and rural income, but also helps to create a political and an economic environment where individual freedom and economic prosperity are the rule, not the exception.

Thank you for being here to take part in these important discussions. I hope that we can continue this dialogue at the roundtable this afternoon. I'll look forward to hearing your concerns, your opinions, your hopes, and dreams for the future.

Thank you very much.