The region's sugar beet industry shouldn't fear a trade agreement that calls for increasing imports of the sweetener from Latin America, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Thursday.

During meetings on a Cass County farm and on the North Dakota State University campus, Johanns pulled two packets of sugar from his pocket and held them high.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement would allow six Latin American countries to sell two small packets of sugar - about a tablespoon full - to U.S. consumers once a week, Johanns said.

"This amount of sugar is so small that I don't see an impact," Johanns told the media and a group of farmers and agriculture officials who gathered at the Carl Peterson farm near Harwood.

The United States is on pace to soon import more agriculture products than it exports, and the North American Free Trade Agreement hasn't helped, said Marcy Svenningsen, a small-grains farmer from Valley City, N.D.

"So why should we back CAFTA?" Svenningsen asked Johanns during a town hall meeting at NDSU's Festival Concert Hall.

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic already have nearly unfettered access to the U.S. market. The trade accord would "level the playing field" by eliminating tariffs that block U.S. exports of wheat, beef and other goods to the CAFTA countries, Johanns said.

North Dakota farmers rely on export sales more than most of the nation's farmers, selling 47 percent of their farm goods in other countries, said Johanns, who was governor of Nebraska before becoming agriculture secretary in January.

About 27 percent of the nation's farm commodities are exported, he said.

"This makes sense," Johanns said of CAFTA. "This is exactly what farmers and ranchers in the U.S. say we need."

David Roche, president and CEO of the Wahpeton, N.D.-based Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative, said sugar producers are unfairly characterized as "economic isolationists," when the United States already imports 16 percent of the nation's sugar supply.

"We see CAFTA as a real problem," Roche said.

It's not just CAFTA that worries the region's sugar beet farmers, said Nick Sinner, executive director of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico's duty-free access to the U.S. sugar market will increase by 276,000 tons in 2008. Meanwhile, 21 other countries are lining up in hopes of landing a similar trade agreement afforded the CAFTA countries, Sinner said after the meeting at NDSU.

"The concern is if CAFTA is the template, the sugar industry is lost," North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said.

North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven called Johanns a strong advocate for farmers.

"Obviously, there are issues where we have challenges and there are disagreements," Hoeven said. "We don't support CAFTA."

Johanns also discussed - and often defended - the Bush administration's position on the Canadian beef ban and proposed cuts to the agriculture budget.

Bush proposes cutting $5.7 billion in agriculture spending over 10 years to help lower the deficit.

"Agriculture took its cuts in the last farm bill," Hope, N.D., farmer Randy Richards said. "We already took our licks for the betterment of the country."

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