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supports are like morphine. They don't solve anything. And the uninformed farmer who doesn't think it through and accepts it as a solution is just fooling himself.

Now, a support or any other program that continues to encourage surpluses beyond what can be reasonably used over a short period of time is just opium. It does no good to anybody, and it will eventually do a lot of harm to many, many people.

I am glad to have the opportunity to see so many of the people here that spend my money, and we have touched on taxes a little bit. It is germane to the farmer's problem. I want to say that Congress should take a firmer position in curbing the extravagance, wastefulness, and inefficiency of the Federal bureaucracy. Every citizen is well aware of these flagrant abuses, and billions could be cut from the tax burden with no loss of efficiency by businesslike administration. When I see our military leaders come out and say, "If you cut this out, you are going to damage our readiness to make war," I think of the Department of the Army engineers that runs the Knightsville Dam up there.

They have put buildings on that place that no farmer could hope to have. I am not sure but what they have gold-plated the doorknobs. It looks as though they were gold-plated, and they have a building up there for their caretaker to live in perfectly satisfactory, just as good as the home I live in, but they have got to junk it and spend 15 or 20 or 30 thousand dollars to buy a new one. Now, that is just one example. All citizens know those things and it is your job to back the administrator who has the guts to cut out that sort of thing. That will help our tax situation.

The PMA is another example of overexpanded bureaucracy. Its function and personnel should be curtailed and progressively eliminated. I am ashamed to have farmers come before this body and say, "I can't run my business without a handout from the Government." I take the handout; sure I take it. If I didn't, I would be at a disadvantage with my neighbors who do. But farmers ought to get a price for their product on the market that would pay for the costs of doing business, and not have to go to Government for part of it with their hands held out in a position that two generations ago no decent, self-respecting man would be caught in.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Thank you very much, Mr. McKinney. Without objection, a statement from Mr. Glenn Shaw on the turkey situation and a statement from Andrew Christy, from the Christy Poultry Farms, will be placed in and made a part of the record. Mr. ANDRESEN. The next witness is Mr. Cooke.

STATEMENT OF HARRY COOKE, DAIRYMAN FROM GREENFIELD,

MASS.

Mr. COOKE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Harry Cooke, of Greenfield, Mass. I am a dairy farmer with 200 head of registered Guernseys and Holsteins. At the same time I raise about 5,000 chickens per year. The milk is processed and retailed and the poultry and eggs are also sold on the retail routes in Greenfield.

38490-53-pt. 1--6

Of course at this moment the dairy situation here in New England is not bright. With a drop in price of milk since January and a rise in cost of nearly all farm supplies except grain and labor, the squeeze is on. To add to the situation, beef has dropped in half, so that many farmers have not sold their cows to the butcher but have kept them milking, thereby adding to the already large surplus.

The solution to the New England dairy problem, I feel, is that perhaps our solution might be that of agriculture all over the country. It seems to me that our agricultural program which was started in the early or midthirties was very essential and very helpful at that time. However, the same program has been extended, I believe, in a questionable direction because of this so-called unsettled times.

I have come to the conclusion that these so-called unsettled times are actually normal and to be expected. We have had them pretty regular since. The program of the thirties of subsidizing agriculture was necessary because the whole industry was bankrupt. However, the industry as a whole is fairly well off today, especially if compared to the thirties. In view of that fact, I feel that the Government should gradually discontinue all subsidies. I feel that the ACP program is strictly a subsidy. It should gradually reduce the high price supports and make more flexible support so that the most inefficient farmer will not be guaranteed a profit, also to cut down on spending caused by duplication of administrative effort.

My feeling is that the main effort of the Government should be directed toward having a greatly expanded program for research and education. I feel that research and education have fallen far behind the needs of the farmers because of lack of funds for State experiment stations and an extension service. For example, I give you the dairyman's fly problem. The Government recommended DDT. After a few years of use, they banned the use because of a residue that it left in both milk and meat.

Then the Government, through the extension service, recommended fast milking and in the next breath told farmers how to cure mastitis which was caused by fast milking. I maintain that if experiment stations had adequate funds they could have given information to the farmers. Today I feel we need a tremendous amount of research on marketing and transportation of all agricultural products. We need a tremendous amount of research on fertilizers and new types of seeds for the different soils.

Today there is a great deal of duplication of administrative work now handled by the PMA, the SCS, and Extension Service. I feel that all of this work could be handled by one office, thus eliminating expense. By eliminating the PMA subsidy and transferring this money to assist your experiment stations and extension service, I feel that administrative costs would be slashed and our taxpayers would be getting much more for their tax dollar.

Thank you very much.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Thank you, Mr. Cooke.
Mr. Theodore Gold.

STATEMENT OF THEODORE GOLD, WEST CORNWALL, CONN.

Mr. GOLD. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Theodore Gold. I have a dairy farm at West Cornwall, Conn., in Litchfield County, a farm which has belonged to ancestors and been passed by inheritance ever since it was cleared from the forest in 1738, where we have a herd of purebred Holsteins. We have had Holsteins there ever since the animals were imported by my grandfather in 1883.

I am a member and have been an officer of the Connecticut Dairymen's Association, the Connecticut Holstein Breeders, Litchfield County Farm Bureau, and so forth, and I think that through those contacts I have a fair picture of what some farmers think.

However, I am not appearing here for any organization, but am appearing purely in my own right as an individual farmer and citizen. Mr. ANDRESEN. We will be very glad to have you tell the committee what you think.

Mr. GOLD. I am not going to tell the committee very much because my philosophy of our Government is that when we send you fellows to Washington, it is with the idea that you are going to have information and the background that individuals can't have, and that we depend primarily on your judgment to tell us what we ought to think. On the other hand, that does not mean that we always agree with you. On most of this matter of policy, I am not going to try to say anything because I just don't know enough and haven't put time enough into it to do so. I do feel very strongly, though, that a lot of our thinking confuses short-range problems and personal problems with what should be a long-range and impersonal consideration. I would like to say that I was very much pleased with the statement you heard a few moments ago from Mr. McKinney in which he referred to the high rigid supports and morphine in the same breath, and I would like to say that I was brought up by my father and mother to be afraid of the drug habit. I am afraid of the drug habit when we get into the field of agricultural economics just as much as I am as a moral question.

In fact, I even think that perhaps some of our thinking on governmental policies and on economics, not just in the realm of agriculture but in general, has moral as well as economic implications that we ought to consider. However, to get down to what I really want to say to you, which will only take a moment, I do not think that any one of us has all the answers. I suspect, though, that each one of us may have some specific ideas perhaps on small details, that are worth considering.

I want to refer to just three comparatively small things, but which are part of the overall problem of agricultural legislation on the Federal level. Basically they are all connected with the background idea of research. I would like to agree with all that has been said here today of the fundamental value of research as part of the agricultural program of the country. I am speaking, of course, primarily as a dairyman, and in the realm of dairying I suppose that research would

fall into the broad fields of disease control, breeding, management, feeding, marketing, and so forth.

In those fields, one of the finest things in my opinion that the Department of Agriculture, through the Bureau of Dairy Industry, has done has been its support of our DHIA work, as a research project. It is more than that for the individual farmer, but from the viewpoint of the Department, it represents fundamental research in dairy cattle breeding. For a number of years the Bureau published a pamphlet annually of things proven through DHIA testing.

A couple of years ago that publication was eliminated as an economy measure. I am not at all sure that it was an economy measure necessarily imposed by Congress. It may have been a means of indicating that the cuts the Congress had imposed were hurting, and it may have been one of these cases where if you cut out a service that people want, then people will demand more money so that the service can be restored.

I am not demanding more money so that the service can be restored, but I am suggesting to this committee that when it considers strictly dairy matters, it consider seriously the possibility of having that particular service restored because there would be very general agreement on the part of those people interested in breeding better dairy cattle that it was one of the most worthwhile services that Washington performed for us.

Another specific item that I want to refer to is the question of a program for the control and elimination of brucellosis or Bang's disease. That is a public-health matter involving the consumer, because brucellosis is transmissible to humans, and it is a problem that is more than simply one of economy of production for the dairy farmer because of this public-health angle.

I feel that the intelligent appropriation and expenditure of relatively small sums for the control and eradication of this disease will not only benefit the dairy farmer economically, but will also be of benefit to the whole country. It is one of these things that can be sold. The man in the city has a program that does him some good as well as simply helping the rich farmer get richer-and I hope you realize that I said that with the intent of quotation marks around my statement.

Then on this matter of surplus-and the dairy industry certainly is supposed to be facing such a problem at present-it seems to me perfectly obvious that if we got too much butter or too much wheat or too much cotton, we have got to produce less of it or find new uses for it. I do not think-although I am heartily in favor of the advertising program that the Connecticut Milk Producers, of which I am a member, are conducting-that that is basically the answer because to simply sell more butter means that the consumer is going to fill himself with butter and use less of something else.

So basically we either have to produce less of the commodities that are in long supply, or else we have to find new uses for those products, completely new uses, not merely to replace cornstarch with potato starch, or lard with butter, but to find new uses.

That again comes back to research. I feel that if your committee can find ways and means of strengthening the research program of the Department of Agriculture, of the State land-grant colleges, and the experiment stations, that you can do more fundamentally to help agri

culture than you can by any shot in the arm with this morphine that has been referred to.

Thank you for your courtesy in listening to me.
Mr. ANDRESEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Gold.
George Argunimba.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE ARGUNIMBA

Mr. ARGUNIMBA. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I haven't a prepared statement, because I didn't know until last night I was going to be here. As a matter of fact, I am sorry that more folks didn't know about it. I called some of the leading farmers in my county and not a single one of them knew about it, and when I told them about it, they couldn't be here today.

First of all I would like to say a word on this subsidy business. The last speaker and other folks have spoken of the need for agricultural research. Fine, I am for it a hundred percent. On the other hand, the Government doesn't hand out money for research on automobile motors, for example, or let's say toothpaste. I believe that that is a form of subsidy. I am not opposed to it. Let's take this question of whether or not we should have lime fertilizer or technical assistance in conservation. That is ridiculous.

In my opinion if farmers have got enough money, they would go hire Stone & Webster. Therefore we subsidize technical assistance and we subsidize lime and fertilizer because the farmers in my county right now have only purchased 40 to 50 percent of the amount of fertilizer that they had at this time purchased a year ago. They have only used 55 percent of the amount of lime that they did a year ago because dairy income is at rockbottom. So essentially these are all subsidy programs because farmers are in general a depressed industry, as our economists have given us some reason to believe.

The question is: Which is a pure subsidy and which isn't? I don't want to argue that. I think it is all ridiculous. If farmers need some kind of assistance, why quibble about what it is. I just want to cover a couple of points that haven't been covered. First of all in this business of price supports, we have essentially heard nothing this morning about whether we want high or low.

I frankly am interested in which kind of supports we have. Most of our troubles in price support, it seems to me, have been because of the method of support. In other words, we have a loan purchase system of price supports which have piled up surpluses because they have supported the market price of a commodity and thereby of course curtailed consumption.

I know it is dangerous in any such hearings to mention what happened to the late Secretary's proposals, because he was almost lynched when he came out with them. But I am convinced that if we are honest with ourselves we will admit that the whole butter deal, the whole potato deal, are largely the result of methods of artificially supporting a high market price and curtailing consumption.

So I would propose that high or low, I am in favor of high support, because farmers should not be a depressed industry. But high or low, the method of support should not be by loan purchase, but rather by some type of payment to the farmer of the difference between a support level and a market level.

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