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Show Page From the i Chairman by Barbara Whitbeck Americans still have the cheapest and best Food in the world. Be thankful for it! What can you do - To Stretch your Food Buying Dollars? Look for bargains, cut out snack Foods, Spend less on convenience foods, separate food items from house hold items Plan meals ahead and shop for only items needed. Todays food prices are the result of Inflation not the cause of it. Inflation has been caused by excessive deficit spending by the Federal Government and ex- pansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Board. On the consumer front the cry of the house wife is heard in the super markets, prices are going up, up, up. Strangely the farmer is getting blamed. Im getting a little tired or repeated newspaper head lines and T.V. commentator reports of higher food costs. Its about time the consuming public paid more for food. They have been paying more for other items ova the years. Any one who has had a plumber, electrician or a hospital bill, bought a new car, boat & camper the past few months knows what I mean. The consumer is more aware of food price changes, because they buy it 2 or 3 times a week (and have to pay cash). Items on time payments, that take a good portion of their income receive little concern. The grocery bill gets credit for many items that are not food at all. I had the opportunity last week of going over an order of grocerys that Mrs. Consumer was moaning about. She had spent $63.41 for groceries - We took the items one by one in eatable and non food: One carton cigarettes, large bottle aspirin, 3 rolls paper towels, kleenex, 8 cans dog food (It was a good brand) 2 pkgs. light bulbs, legs (stockings) Clorox, Bold, cooking bgs, contact, scrubbing brush, bottle fantastic, her grocery bill of $63.41 revealed a different picture. I then showed her a bill for fixing a sweet water tank $8.50 an hour from time he left his office, 20c a mile. Then I gave her our Farm Bureau sheet that was given to you gals at the recent work shop. How to write your Congressman - I explained that the real problem is inflation and the only way to fight it is not with silly boycotts that get so much attention and sentiment but lacking in constructive in- May, UTAH FARM BUREAU NEWS 4 Other interesting material was presented and discussed including a view of drugs by Ralph Harper director of Narcotics Task Force. Each county or district could greatly benefit from a similar Agriculture, A Metropolitan Cinderella program. NOTE: Terence L. Day, assistant agricultural research editor at Washington State University, has And finally a couple of quotes from a young Colorado farm wife as reported in Newsweek Magazine: How many of you realize what it takes the cattleman to raise just one steer in order to put a roast, a steak or hamburger on your table? Have you ever though about it? Ill bet not. Because as a house-wif- e you have become too involved with just yourself. Youve become so that you dont even realize that there is another side to the story. I get so angry with the city people and their attitude toward the American farmer. I have heard formation. Stopping excessive several people observe in the last deficit spending by the government few months that they Dont need the farmer. Is this the attitude of is the first order of business. The Pen is our best weapons. We the whole country? Is this the have a challenge, - boycotting is attitude of the President? Ive not the answer, We must get these always thought agriculture was the people to join us and combine our backbone of a nation. Well, I wish efforts to get to the real cause of somebody would inform Mr. Nixon Inflation. just what this means. What has he Excessive Government Deficit done for us? Hes certainly not doing the farmers of this country Spending any favors. This hullabaloo over higher America, youve never been so atfood misinformed about something in prices for only directs tention away from the root cause. all your lives. Our husbands work Utah County held its Ladys day hard for what weve got - and dont at the Brigham Young University you ever forget it! Now for the first April 27 - Ernest Wilkinson Center time in years the American farmer under the capable direction of is making a little profit on beef, Cumorah Holdaway - There were pork or lamb and Mr. Nixon puts a 80 women in attendance - all enceiling on them! Wake up, thused and ready to paint up the America, to your fellow man. Be mail box, Improve Farm image proud to associate with your with a Farm Beautification American farmer, as we are proud to associate with you. project. self-center-ed written an article entitled Agriculture, A Metropolitan Cinderella? Important points from the. article follow: . . . Never in the worlds history have so many been so dependent upon so few, or so ignorant of their situation, as Americans today. More than 95 percent of the nations people are depenitent upon the less than 5 percent who man the nations farms. Agriculture is a metropolitan Cinderella who labors hard for urban America, but who works without appreciation because there is a knowledge chasm left unbridged by modern journalism, or inadequately bridged at best. inaccurate myth in America today is the high food prices legend believed by almost every consumer and promulgated by nearly every newspaper and television station in America. Why does almost everyone think food is expensive? Because todays media news SIGNS as much beef), less kitchen That vital informational link, the drudgery, and more meals farm beat, has been plowed under or sent out to graze on the south Americas food bill in 1971 was urban on most newspapers forty $118 billion - a whopping $51.7 today. billion less than it would be if A news executive recently Americans still paid 23 percent of explained his papers abandoned their income for food as they did in -- farm beat: We dont have very many farmers in our circulation area any more.' . . . Journalism celebrates city streets whereon we riot, but scorns agriculture whereby we prosper; it reports which movie star is living out of wedlock with whom, but does not tell us about our source of food. Todays newspapers may not have very many farmer subscribers, but their readers all have one thing in common: they eat. And as long as they do, newspapers should take a vital, intelligent 1950. That is $51.7 billion which Americans spent for second cars, trail bikes, boats, stereophonic sound systems, fancy furniture, summer cottages, dishwashers, color television, and a host of other consumer goods. Instead of complaining about high food prices, we Americans should be on our knees giving thanks for our share of the $51.7 billion a year the nation saves on groceries. It is the very substance of our high standard of interest in agriculture. Editors dont expect an living. It would be tragic for aerospace editor to write for America to learn the hard way that aerospace employes. They dont all of the social reform and antiask science writers to write for poverty programs in the world will scientists, nor education writers to be of no benefit if Americas unslant articles to educators. paralleled agricultural miracle is Political writers arent asked to permitted to wither. For modern write for politicians, and tranagriculture is not a permanent sportation writers dont write for miracle which can be ignored once truck drivers. achieved. It is a miracle which So why should farm writers must be repeated every year. write for farmers? They shouldnt. But the moment America goes about They should write on a legislation, binge of anti-faragriculture, for city folk. But all too much of the little farm writing capriciously banning vital today is of small value or interest agricultural chemicals, wildly to urbanites because it does not put slashing farm programs, and agriculture in terms they can abritrarily 1 siding against farmers on nationa issues; the nation will understand. The reasons for strong farm be sowing the seeds of wretbeats are manifold, but paramount chedness for the cities as well as are reader interest and public for the farms. . . . of farm beats to interest. Readers are interested in farm news that is written for them, report agriculture for city and nowhere is the need for farm audiences, to give America more editors to serve the public interest balanced reporting on issues more apparent than in the hubbub touching the farm, would be a small price to pay for prosperity over food prices. The most prevalent and most insurance. ... m BECOME LAW Re-creati- BEAT THE RUSH GET YOURS EARLY AT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING Farm Bureau Offices: 232 South Main 924 24th Street, Suite 4 Logan Ogden ... ... ... Tremonton 147 West Main Salt Lake. . .629 East 4th South Provo 45 West 300 North Richfield 165 North Main Delta 288 W. Main Monticello 342 West Center ) V Intermountain Farmers Plants: Roosevelt . . . 192 North 3rd Price .... 240 West 1st North East jollar-.ipa- v your taxi .... 597 West 2nd North ... 698 East 400 South Manti St. George County Farm Bureau President . . . Remainder of State. AVAILABLE AT COST FARM BUREAU SERVICE TO MEMBERS fails to understand miserably to and report it acagriculture a is It digression, but you curately. wont believe that food is cheap unless we document it, so lets digress. . . . Its an unpopular story, but our great agricultural progress has reduced food costs by 30 percent during the past 21 years. As a bonus, Americans also get a greater variety of food, a higher standard of eating (including twice ... SMV 1973 that Statement Debatable j s&i HARD PAN |