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Show Farm Secretary Praises Beet Sugar Industry Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson told a meeting of intermountain and western states sugar beet growers here that a "realistic" attitude by sugar producers pro-ducers has saved the industry from the "fantastic and indefensible" indefen-sible" surpluses of other farm commodities. Addressing some 700 sugar beet growers from several western west-ern states, including Utah, at the annual meeting of the California Cali-fornia Beet Growers Assn., Benson Ben-son declared that cooperation by Congress to revise the "outmoded" "out-moded" support programs for wheat, cotton, corn, rice, peanuts pea-nuts and tobacco is a critical necessity. "By next July," Benson said, "we will have more than 9 billion bil-lion dollars of surplus farm commodities com-modities in government inventory inven-tory and under loan. The cost of storage on these government stocks will be about 1 billion dollars a year. This is fantastic md indefensible." Noting that the United States beet sugar industry this year is celebrating the 80th anniversary "f its founding at Alvarado, Calif., Benson pointed out that beet sugar "operations have been realistic geared to market conditions." con-ditions." He paid special tribute to early-day Mormon pioneers who played an important role in the development of the industry in the intermountain area and related re-lated some early history of this saga of sugar. Benson told his audience that the sugar beet industry "is in a solid position. Production last year was about 15.3 million tons of sugar beets. This was about 30 per cent above the ten-year average and only slightly below the all-time high of 1957. Yields per acre in the past two years have been higher than ever before. be-fore. "But you are not burdened with surpluses as producers of some other crops are. Your industry in-dustry has done a good job of expanding production and markets mark-ets simultaneously." I |