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Show land reform throat The threat of land reform lurks be- , hind proposed federal regulations 11m it - ! tag the size of farms Irrigated with water from federal projects to 160 acres, a Utah j farm leader testified this week before a 1 ; U. S. House of Representatives subcommit tee In Denver. C. Booth Wallentlne, executive vice-president vice-president of the Utah Farm Bureau Fed-I Fed-I eration (UFBF), urged Water and Power j subcommittee members of the House Inter - N ior committee to "deny this tool to those ' would-be land reformers who would have us replace a proven system for producing abundant abun-dant food with a system that has brought abject proverty to other countries." In 1902, when the Reclamation Act was passed, 160 acres was a lot of ground for a man to till with his horse and plow, Wallentlne said. But today, he added 160 acres is not an economic unit. The 75-year-old language of the law "has become a tool In the hands of those who would restructure re-structure land ownership in America today," the farm leader revealed. "The real issue here is the ability of farmers to produce food and fiber in an adequate supply at a fair price to consumers," con-sumers," Wallentlne pointed out. "Acreage "Acre-age limitations in any form are counterproductive counter-productive to this goal." One announced objective of the Department Depart-ment of Interior regulations, he said Is to distribute widely the benefits from publicly public-ly supported reclamation because interest-! interest-! free money and low-priced water are In volved. But he claimed. "It Is the consumers con-sumers of America who have benefited from the Bureau of Reclamation projects. No nation of people has ever been so well-fed at such a low percentage of their take-home take-home pay. "To be consistent, this line of thinking think-ing should be extended to all other federal projects," Wallentlne continued. "Trucking "Truck-ing companies and airlines should then be restricted to 160 trucks or airplanes because be-cause they use federally supported highways and airports. Newspapers would have to be limited to 160 copies of each issue because they use a federally subsudlzed postal service." ser-vice." Wallentlne cautioned that the shotgun approach of the proposed regulations goes far beyond restricting- "a few giant corporate cor-porate farms" that apparently are the chief target of the rules. He pointed out that more than 99 percent of all U. S. farms are family farms and that many of them would be hurt badly by the 160 -acre limit. Another threat Inherent in the regulations, regula-tions, said the Farm Bureau officer, Is "the notion that the Secretary of Interior should decide the value of private property prop-erty and how and to whom it will be sold." This Is totally foreign to the American - system of free enterprise, he said, referring refer-ring to one of the rules requiring approval by the federal government of the buyer and sale price for any "surplus" land over the 160 acres. Farm Bureau policy favors legislation removing the 160-acre limit, Wallentlne said in explaining that Farm Bureau represents rep-resents about 80 percent of all farmers belonging to general farm organizations. |