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A Peanut Farmer from Virginia on the Trans-Pacific Partnership:

February 26, 2016 at 5:00 AM ET by Secretary Tom Vilsack

Summary:

Listen to Paul Rogers, a peanut farmer from Virginia, and Dell Cotton, Executive Secretary of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association, tell their stories.

America’s farmers and ranchers are among the most productive in the world, and they depend on exports.

Roughly 20% percent of U.S. farm income comes from agricultural exports, and those exports help to support rural communities across the country.

However, foreign taxes on our agricultural exports are often very high, much higher than foreign taxes on other exports.

That's why the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the President's high-standard trade deal, will open foreign markets to U.S. food and agriculture, providing new and commercially meaningful market access and advancing regulations that are transparent and based on science.

This week, the American Farm Bureau Federation released a report showing that the TPP will bring an annual increase of:

$4.4 billion in net farm income
$297 million in soybean and products exports
$25 million in cotton exports
$90 million in rice exports
$735 million in fruit and nut exports
$419 million in vegetable exports
$1 billion in beef export
$940 million in pork exports
$169 million in poultry exports
$131 million in dairy exports

This report details the reason we've heard from farmers across America that the TPP will help their industry. In December for example, the White House and the USDA traveled to Wakefield, Virginia, to talk with a peanut farmer about the President's trade deal.

Listen to Paul Rogers, a peanut farmer from Virginia, and Dell Cotton, Executive Secretary of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association, tell their stories, and see photos of the visit to Rogers Farm here.