Good morning, Board of Directors.
As all of you know, from 2000 to 2007,
the US lost four million acres in cultural land
to development.
It is really the size of Massachusetts.
And although there are federal policies targeted
to combat this loss of farmland, they
are not nearly enough to deal with this problem
we have here at home.
And so I'll speak about three things.
Firstly, what I intend to find out
on my upcoming trips to EU, Japan, and Australia,
who I intend to find out this information from.
Secondly, what opportunities I see in these trips
for cross-contextual learning.
And thirdly, what challenges I anticipate
translating this learning to ideas and strategies
that are really useful for us here in the US.
So firstly, in these regions we intend
to focus on three critical issues drawn from the problems
here at home.
We termed the three Ps--
place, policies, and people.
So firstly, this very strong geographical notion of place
and a battle for it.
The US is losing its finest land to development,
and we want to fight out in these regions
how they view the trade-off between development
and farmland protection, or if it even exists
for them in the first place.
Secondly, we want to find out what policies these regions
have to combat the development of farmland into other uses
and that impact on performance, and thirdly, the people.
We want to find out the cultural institutions
the cultural mindsets to our buttressing cases and policies,
essentially what the stakeholders of these farming
communities are responding to the policies that
are being developed.
So who do we intend to find out this affirmation from?
We intend to look for stakeholders' business
industry that are driving the interaction between farmland
and development.
And they will inform us most about the issues of place.
We also intend to talk to the chairpersons and culture
committees in EU member states, as well as officials in pockets
of every culture in Japan, Australia,
to find out about their experiences, that challenges,
and their successes when dealing with farmland protection
policies.
We also plan to look at the people
to whom these effects of policies
are filtering down to the members of the farming
community.
Who through their individually unique stories,
as opposed to just policy memos and big data
will inform us most about issues of people.
We need these three pieces together
to find out what was intended, what is happening,
and what it really should be.
So the next idea I'll would like to talk about
would be the why I want to visit these three countries,
what opportunities there are.
Is it really necessary and valuable endeavor?
And I would say yes because these three regions are
similar enough to the US to raise
the possibility of opportunities for learning,
and yet different enough to guarantee these opportunities
for learning.
So the US the EU, Japan, Australia,
they are like the US next industrialized nations.
If you look beyond the broad similarities of wealth, power,
development levels, inference, a whole host differences appear.
They are located in different parts of the world--
the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and the Southern Hemisphere--
there are different geographies, histories, neighborhoods,
contexts, and ideologies.
And these differences drive cross-contextual learning
for two reasons.
Firstly, they greatly reduce the learning curve
for looking at the effects of different policies
by providing a test bed with exposed results as well.
So instead of sitting up with all of us debating the merits
and demerits of increased intervention in farming
policies, we need only look at Japan--
highest-producing support levels among OECD countries,
overly protective subsidies that have
driven average annual household income
levels 25% to 30% higher than the national average
in Australia, the second lowest producer support
levels of OECD countries and where
a strong adherence to market-oriented policies
has actually created a different result from Japan.
And secondly, these countries also
provide us with different ideas that we might not
have considered before.
For example, the European Union's common agriculture
policy contracts with farmers for the provision
of ecological services, which is alternative to the traditional
notion here in US where farmland policy is essentially
meant to protect land for productive purposes.
So essentially, exposure to these new ideas
would provide us a bigger toolkit
to develop more robust strategies
for farmland protection here in the US.
But with these great opportunities
also come great challenges in two forms, essentially--
differences in institutions and differences in cultural.
So differences in institutions like political systems, laws--
they essentially make policies not all but irrelevant
to the United States in a certain vein.
In European Union, they have a greater acceptance
of regional-international treaties and conventions.
And this has implications for trying
to transplant policies across the Atlantic and culture.
We cannot underestimate the influx of culture, history,
and policies.
For example, after all, in Japan,
the reason for the high levels of producer support can be
traced back to the memories shortage that occurred after
World War II, something that cannot be said of the US.
So what may be popular in my country
may be wildly unpopular in another.
So what we intend to do on our trip
is not to be transplanters of these policies back to the US.
We intend to be translators where we take the spirit
and not let letter of these policies
and combine it with the our understanding of the realities
here in the US to develop a selection of ideas
that circumvent differences in institutions and account
for differences in culture.
That said, even in the US, the institutions
do change and cultures do evolve [INAUDIBLE] at a much
lower rate.
And even within a country, cultures do vary very widely.
So even ideas that seem improbable for now
should not be discarded, but kept for future reference
so whenever the time comes, we are ready to implement them.
So in conclusion, my trips will have great [INAUDIBLE]
opportunities, but also affront with challenges,
but an appreciation that points that differences in countries
are the drivers of learning, and not similarities, and also
an appreciation that policy-learning observations
are just a start to create a translation effort
should allow us to reap the full benefits of our trips.
Thank you for attending.