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Show Secretary of Agriculture Explains Serious Problem Facino U S Economy YOUR FARM PROBLEM By Ezra Taft Benson Secretary of Agriculture (First of a two-part series) This nation has a serious farm problem. It does not effect agriculture alone. It is everybody's problem. Today your government has approximately $5 billions of your money invested in farm commodities. com-modities. You own outright more than $2.3 billions worth of wheat, corn, utton and other surplus farm picaucts. You have outstanding loans on agricultural commodities commodi-ties totaling about the same daily. You are paying more than $14 millions each month just to store these surpluses. This bill is1 growing, too, as additional inventories in-ventories are accumulated by your government. The losses which your government govern-ment sustained in disposing of just a small portion of your holdings hold-ings during the first three months of this fiscal year amount to $57 millions. But, you ask, don't we have a fam program designed to insure agricultural prosperity and prevent pre-vent the very situation we find omselves in today? The answer is that we are operating op-erating under the same farm piogram we had last year and for several previous years. Actually we have strengthened it in several sev-eral important respects to permit per-mit farmers to take broader advantage ad-vantage of its provisions. Existing Exist-ing legislation binds us to a continuation con-tinuation of price supports at 90 per cent of parity on basic commodities com-modities through the 1954 crop year. Nevertheless, farm prices have declined steadily from the record peaks established under the impetus im-petus of the Korean war in February, Feb-ruary, 1951. During the 12 months before I became Secretary of Agriculture, Ag-riculture, the farm price parity ratio slid from 113 to 95 per cent. Since February of this year, p ices have been more stable than in 1952, averaging about 93 per cent of parity. This story of declining farm income and mounting agricultural agricultur-al surpluses is the best evidence that our present program is not functioning effectively. For more than a decade, our faimers have been producing under un-der pressure. To meet the wartime war-time needs of ourselves and our allies, they turned out record amounts of food and fiber between be-tween 1941 and 1946. with the end of the second World War, they were asked to provide the commodities required in the rehabilitation re-habilitation of Europe and other sections of the earth. Then came tne Korean war, with new and heavy demands for farm goods of all kinds. Suddenly this situation was radically altered. World food production pro-duction had been climbing since 1946. By 1952 this was exerting strong pressure In the market places. Our wheat exports dropped drop-ped by one-third in a single year, cotton by even more. Not only had importing nations Increased In-creased their own production, but they found that they could supply sup-ply their reduced needs at lower low-er prices from exporting countries coun-tries what had no farm price support programs. Just as many American consume! con-sume! s have turned from butter to less expensive spreads, so have other nations sought cheaper wheat, cotton and other products. pro-ducts. We have learned through sometimes some-times bitter experience that when the farmer is in trouble, there-is l.Kely to be trouble ahead for everybody. This year, net farm income is expected to be nearly $1 billion less than It was in 1952. And in 1952 it was more than $1 billion below the preceding pre-ceding year. While farm insome has been dropping, our total national na-tional income has actually increased. This disparity cannot continue in an economy such as ours. When the farmer can't buy the proaucts of industry, there are ce.-ti.in to be serious disloca-t'.ons. disloca-t'.ons. How we got into this situation is not as important, at the moment, mo-ment, as what we propose to do about it. I have outlined here some of the major problems facing fac-ing agriculture. In a subsequent article, I should like to discuss some of the possible solutions. |