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NAFTA action alert at Illinois Farm Bureau meeting

A call to action to keep the North American Free Trade Agreement was answered at the opening of the Illinois Farm Bureau annual meeting in Chicago. Illinois Farm Bureau President Rich Guebert asked members to get out their cellphones and text the acronym “NAFTA” , “I’m very proud of our members who responded with text messages. Got over 11-hundred responses in a short period of time where out members contacted their legislator in Washington, D.C. and told them how important

Guebert says the reality is, commodity prices are below the cost of production, and the U.S. pulling out of NAFTA, as threatened by President Trump, is not the answer, “And if we draw from, let’s say, NAFTA…this trade agreement, where’s that going to send commodity prices? I can only feel that they’re going to go lower.”

Guebert says at a time when farmers are buying inputs, paying taxes, paying last year’s operating loans and making machinery commitments, “We need every dime we can get our hands on.”