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NASDA CEO optimistic about China, concerned about EU

The CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture says he is optimistic China and the United States can keep a civil trading relationship.

“They need our products,” says McKinney. “They like and want our products and I’d hate for this to turn into something from the 1970s where there was a grain embargo or something like that.”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will be in China this week and is expected to talk areas of potential cooperation between the two countries. But McKinney says the European Union is as much or more of a threat to global agriculture than China.

“If they are to eliminate half of the pesticide arsenal. If they are to remove any and all use of antibiotics of livestock, that’s not right and then, I think they’re trying to mandate 25% of arable land organic.”

He says there’s nothing wrong with organic, but markets should dictate those decisions instead of the government. Brownfield interviewed McKinney during the Missouri Farm Bureau’s Commodity Conference.