Volume 8, Number 4 - May 25, 2002

The agenda for the June meeting was enhanced last week with word that Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., (D-Tennessee) will be addressing our group. We’ve added a luncheon on Tuesday to accommodate his schedule. Congressman Ford has met with our group before, at the Memphis meeting in August, 1997, and since that time has gained national prominence. He was the keynote speaker for the 2000 Democratic convention.

The FGIS Advisory Committee met in Memphis May 15-16, during which GIPSA Deputy Administrator David Shipman laid out his vision for the future of his agency, and official grain inspection. He will present his views to our association at the June meeting in DC. Among the highlights are: requesting authorization from Congress (in 2003) to eliminate boundaries between official inspection agencies, eliminating many FGIS field offices as the FGIS workforce retires, moving towards centralized monitoring and supervision of all graders, allowing official agencies to compete for inbound business in export locations, and contracting some of the export technician functions.

Bert Farrish, former president of Columbia Grain Inc., has been named USDA’s deputy administrator of commodity operations at the Farm Service Agency, effective June 3. Some of you may be familiar with him through his roles as chairman of North American Export Grain Association’s Grades and Inspections Committee, member of the FGIS Advisory Committee, treasurer of GEAPS, and active role in the National Grain and Feed Association. Among his new duties, he will be in control of the federal warehouse program. That program has been controversial among our membership because of the perceived misuse of warehouse certificates for trading purposes, in some cases being used to serve the same purpose as official white certificates.

AAGIWA consultant and former GIPSA Administrator Jim Baker made a gallant run to represent Arkansas’s 2 nd congressional district, but was unable to prevail against the Democratic incumbent, Vic Snyder. The final tally shows Baker receiving 19,607 votes out of 73,555 cast. Mr. Baker would have been an excellent representative for Arkansas and for American agriculture, and we can only hope that he will seek other opportunities to serve his state and his nation.