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Show Secretary of Agriculture Explains Serious Problem Facing U S Economy YOUR FARM PROBLEM By Ezra Taft Benson Secretary of Agriculture 'Second of a two part series) Any effective solution of today's to-day's farm problem must provide methods for reducing our huge' stockpile of agricultural commodities com-modities and at the same time prevent further burdensome accumulations. ac-cumulations. Getting rid of these surpluses j is onlv half of our problem. Even il we were able to bring them down to manageable proportions, pro-portions, we would soon acquire new hoards of wheat, corn, cotton cot-ton and butter under the existing exist-ing system of price supports. We already have approximately approximate-ly $2.3 billions tied up in loans oil larm commodities, in addition to an equal amount invested in goods which we own outright $.) billions in all. Our present program does not encourage the production shifts which are required to meet the changing market demands for various commodities. Of course, we could destroy some of our surpluses. Remember Remem-ber the government's potato fiasco fi-asco of a few years ago? Or we might plow under every third row of cotton and kill little pigs. Remember the mid-19.')0s? Actually, we would not even consider such wasteful practices. We are attempting to move surpius food and fiber into foreign for-eign markets. World prices, how- ever, are well below the figures ;.t which we acquired these eom-, eom-, modifies under out price sup-i sup-i port operations. This means that : we will be forced to take substantial sub-stantial losses on whatever we ; s.'l1 abroad. i At the some time, we must .void outright dumping, which v.-.tuld disrupt normal trade channels chan-nels and bring down upon Us the wratn of other friendly countries. coun-tries. Tnere are these other alternatives: alterna-tives: We can make a real ef-oil ef-oil to move surpluses out of warehouses and into stomachs by iromoting greater public con-! con-! sumption of some commodities. We can push forward in our re-j search program to uncover new ' uses for farm goods. We can! throw our entire weight behind! plans for expanding present for-i eign markets and finding new ! out lets overseas. j Such methods, while they will no) produce results as quickly as dumping or destroying food," offer of-fer a far sounder approach to our basic problems. Along these lines, J can report that our promotional pro-motional campaign, undertaken with the meat industry and foinl s'ores, is producing real results. We are consuming beef this year at the rate of 75 pounds per person, per-son, the highest in our historv. i- . . . . rami expons nave turned up-wa:d up-wa:d since July 1, reflecting our emphasis upon expanding trade. Continued high employment at home, with national income at recoid levels, means a strong demand de-mand for farm goods in the United Unit-ed States. Our population is growing at a rate of more than 2,000.000 per year, which means that bv 1975 there will bo 200,000,000 Americans. Our future farm problems prob-lems may involve questions of shortages, rather than surpluses. We cannot wait for an expanding expand-ing population to solve our immediate im-mediate troubles, however. We need an Interim program to encourage en-courage shifts to other crops. We must halt build-ups of government gov-ernment stockpiles now. Oui urgent need is for a price support program which can be adjusted in terms of production produc-tion ana demand. One which will effectively reduce surpluses, with i minimum of government controls. con-trols. That is our immediate goal. Such a program will be offered to Congress by this adminstration la January. |