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Western States Water Council Water Resources Committee Minutes Washington, D.C. March 28, 2006 . bring their countries out of poverty. Those barriers are doomed to be taken down, and I think the U.S. will benefit from that overall. We can compete on a level playing field. Bill Hume: What about U.S. agricultural subsidies? Mark Rey: The fate of our own commodities and subsidy programs are dependent upon trade negotiations. I believe that most of our commodity groups are going to say that it would be improvident to eliminate our programs, if our European partners are not willing to do so. With regard to the aging American work force and the distinction between ag processes, there is no difference. It isn't a solution to say the way we will deal with the ag losses is to corporatize the operations. The corporations are competing for the same workers. It is the age of the work force that is employed in ag production right now that is an issue. Stephen Bernath: As a result of the last Farm Bill, there has been a big microscope turned up on Clean Water Act Section 319 funding at OMB. The Farm Bill was supposed to help solve ag related water quality issues. Would you like to comment on that? Mark Rey: Current lobbyists enjoy advantages from the conventional way farm bills have been written, . with as little interference from the Administration or other jurisdictions as possible. The disadvantage is that before the ink is dry on a farm bill, everyone who was excluded or tangentially involved starts looking at what was created as the answer to their problem. We are working to avoid redundancy. Question: What is the outlook for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)? Rey: I think it is a mix and it will continue on. Comment: We have an initiative in our country for the Landsat program. Do you use this information? Rey: Yea, we have been and we are. We use landsat for many analyses. We have programs that we can allow farmers to plug into a model. NA TIONAL DROUGHT PREPAREDNESS ACT: WHY HASN'T IT.P ASSED? Jack Stults briefly reported That WGAlWSWC efforts go back to the mid-1990s. WGA picked up on the fact there was no policy on drought. The Act has several components in dealing with drought policy for the nation. First, drought is natural and reoccurs at some point, and the nation should have a preparedness policy. The second part is the creation of an integrated platform that makes information accessible. The Act has had several introductions into Congress. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida and Rep. Rehberg from Montana, as well as Senator max Baucus of Montana and now Senator Domenici of New Mexico. It has never moved forward. There was some indecision about which federal agency should be responsible.. 14