OCR Text |
Show Page 4 January February 1974 Utah Farm Bureau News Training features local affairs political education, county information work and the current farm supply situation. State Farm Bureau staff members conducting the sessions included Booth Wallentine, LeGrand Jarman, Jake Fuhriman, Neil Sumsion, El Shaffer and Tom Bingham. AH county leaders were welcome, but those specially invited were presidents, vice presidents, information directors, and members xf county political education and local affairs committees. Work of the Womens and Young Farmers & Ranchers committees was not discussed; those groups will attend a joint workshop in Salt Lake City, March Following are the towns where meetings were held and the counties included: Price Emery and Carbon Counties; Monticello San Juan County; Cedar Beaver, Iron and Washington City Counties; Panguitch Kane, Piute and Garfield Counties; Salina Sevier, Wayne, Millard and Sanpete Counties; Salt Lake City Salt Lake, Tooele and Summit Counties. Rich, Cache, and North and Logan Box South Elder Counties; Ogden Davis, Weber and Morgan Counties; Provo Utah, Juab and Wasatch Counties. A report of the content of the meetings will appear in the March issue of Utah Farm Bureau News. Some 150 county Farm Bureau leaders throughout Utah received intensive training in several areas of farm leadership at a series of multicounty meetings held from February 5-1- 5. Subjects discussed were local affairs. Adair joins insurance staff . 7-- Larry Adair 8. One sign of the coming change to metric measurements in the United States is this mileage sign built by a California bank. Photo courtesy Crocker Bank, San Francisco, Calif. THINK METRIC Here are basic metric units For most of us accustomed as we are to our pounds and ounces, our feet and inches, its hard to visualize the weight of a gram or the length of a meter. ; Mathematical formulas a gram is 0.035 ounce, etc arent especially helpful either. Whats really needed is some way to relate the metric measures to objects we all know. So here it is a layman's guide to the Mr. Larry Adair of Tropic, Utah, is the new Panguitch area insurance agent for Country Mutual Life and the Utah Farm Bureau Insurance Company, it has been announced by Junior Stewart, vice president, marketing, for CML. Because of his lengthy experience in Fleming lists top issues for agriculture in 1 974 insurance work, we are sure the people of his area will be glad to have Larry working with them, Stewart said in announcing the appointment. Adair replaces the late Champ Church, who passed away recently. Adair attended college at Southern in Utah State. He was a regional basketball and also participated in track and football. He spent four years in the U.S. Air Force and served a mission for the L.D.S. Church in the East Central States. He has served as a bishopric member and as a stake high counsellor. The new Farm Bureau insurance agent enjoys hunting and fishing. He and his wife, Judy, have two children, a son and a daughter, and provide a home for an Indian boy. Issues likely to loom large in 1974 for the nation's farmers involve the market system, international trade, federal budget reform, compensatory commodities payment programs under the new farm bill, land use planning, farm labor relations, transportation, social security, consumer protection, and welfare funding. These were listed by Roger Fleming, secretary-treasurof the American Farm Bureau Federation, in his recent report to the Federation. Fleming said the first occasion in 1974 when the market system issue probably will be center stage will be in with the upcoming decision conjunction on whether or not we are to have fuel rationing. all-st- ar er Wallentine produces network show opposition ur 630-stati- on of the protectionist forces and The current diversionary tactics of those injecting non-traforeign policy issues into the trade bill. In another challenge, Fleming who is director of the Federations Washington office, asked the members if they are prepared to support efforts to put an effective lid on federal spending through legislative action on budget reform. d federal farm When the program, with its concepts of target prices and direct payments to farmers from the federal treasury, was under consideration, Fleming pointed out that Farm Bureau wrote to all U. S. Senators criticizing it. AFBF told the lawmakers that the concept is wrong in principle and constitutes an open invitation to producers of all commodities to come to the public trough with adverse consequences to farmers, taxpayers, and consumers alike. Indicating that a showdown on land use planning legislation is imminent in 1974, Fleming asked, How can federal action be taken that doesn't seriously jeopardize private property rights? In speaking about current legislative activities in the area of consumer protection, Fleming said, After the economic dislocations produced during two and one-ha- lf years of price and we do really think that wage controls, government can protect us consumers as well as we can do the job ourselves? At the beginning of his address. de 1973-enacte- Utah Farm Bureaus executive vice president, Booth Wallentine, served as anchorman for a special radio program of American Farm Bureau convention highlights. The former Utah and Iowa Farm Bureau radio man is shown narrating the program put together in Atlantic City, N.J., recently for the complex half-hoMutual Broadcasting System. This is the fourth year Wallentine has produced and network. narrated the AFBF program for the one-thousand- th; one-hundred- Are we prepared to let relatively high prices encourage production and discourage consumption...or do we prefer price and wage controls, with to government-operate- d rationing distribute the resulting shortages of goods? Fleming asked. On international trade, Fleming asked Farm Bureau members if they are prepared to make it politically feasible for members of Congress to support trade expansion legislation by neutralizing metric system, expressed in terms of everyday items. For starters, keep in mind these three basic metric units the gram for weight, the meter for length and the liter for volume. Many weights and measures in the metric system derive from these. Area, for example, is measured in square meters or in hectares; speed in meters per second or in kilometers per hour. You should also learn that these three prefixes often get tacked on to the basic unit milli, meaning and kilo, one centi, thousand times. th; The gram about the weight of a paper clip. The kilogram slightly more than 2 pounds. The rftegagram (or metric ton) 200 pounds heavier than our ton. The meter a little longer than a yard. The millimeter the diameter of a paper clip. The centimeter the width of a paper clip. The kilometer somewhat farther mile. half a than The hectare about 214 acres. The liter a bit larger than a quart. five of them make a The milliliter teaspoon. The above metric units, along with those for time, . electricity and temperature, are what wed be mostly using if the United States were to become a metric nation. Time and electricity pose no conversion problems theyre the same as were using now. Metric temperatures are given in degrees Celsius with 0 the being freezing point of water and 100 the boiling point. If we were tp go metric, a 37 degree day would really be a scorcher nearly 99 degrees on our Fahrenheit thermometers. Fleming reviewed what he called some of the things we the people of the United States learned during year. First among the points was that wc learned what happens to prices when demand increases dramatically in relation to supplies available for the market. Another point learned, Fleming said, is That there is far less economic understanding than there needs to be about the causes and cures for inflation. There are only three approaches to the problem of inflation that make any economic sense, he pointed out: (1) Reduce demand through cuts in government spending or an increase in taxes, (2) Increase production, which is impossible under price controls, and (3) Some combination of the two.- this-pas- t |