that will help. We must hold production down in line with demand and let it bring a living price.

I own 22,000 acres of land, 5,000 agricultural and the other 17,000 is class No. 6 or grazing land. I have 11 tenants, all of whom live in modern houses which I have provided for them. They have electric lights and telephones. But they are going to be forced to curtail expenses to a degree that will materially lower their standard of living, thus creating dissatisfaction. None of them has bought a new car within the past 3 years and they buy fewer clothes each year.

Why not give the farmer a fair price for his commodities? He, in turn, will put it right back into circulation when he buys the many things he has to have. If we give our products to the processor, just how much would living costs be reduced? I doubt very much if it would be 5 percent.

As one example, I give you an exact accounting of a 320-acre farm owned and operated by Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Locke near Texline, Tex. This is an irrigated farm with 3 irrigation wells, with 3,000 feet of concrete pipe. Mr. Locke has operated this farm for 9 years. We consider him one of the best operators in the community. He is very conservative, keeps a strict cost record of his operations and is a hard worker. Every man has a desire to own his home, but in Mr. Locke's case, he would have been better off to rent than to buy and improve a farm.

Statement of income, 1955-320-acre irrigated farm

Gross receipts: Grain sorghum stored on farm (Government loan,

We, as farmers, are ready to accept all the controls that are necessary to insure that we receive a price which will enable us to have a standard of living comparable to that received in other professions.

We realize that the Government cannot store huge surpluses of any commodity, so if acreage controls are not enough in themselves, then let's work out a quota that will be flexible from year to year to the extent that surpluses can be controlled.

The acreages taken from production of any crop will not be used to produce any crop that will be harvested, but will be utilized for soil building. The extent of the soil-building practices carried out on this land will determine the amount of payments (ASC) which would be available on the remainder of the farm. As the ASC program is now operated for soil and water conservation, there is a discrimination against the acre and is based on the individual. This should be remedied to the point where each acre of land has to stand on its own merits. We have, at present, a soil classification program being put into effect which establishes the capability of all the soils. These capabilities are based on the best information and experience available, and although we realize that there will be modifications made in the present classifications, it seems that these should be made the basis for the expenditures of Federal funds.

We realize that continued payments of Federal funds on land that will never. under ordinary farming practices, be capable of supporting a decent standard of living, must be stopped and only that amount which the land can repay should be spent on that acre. If this calls for reorganizing our present setup to the point of having to say how each acre is to be used, then let's get started to work in that direction.

On land which is limited in capability, let's cut back on our spending and increase the amount spent on land which has high potentials. Our present program of water conservation has been limited to such an extent that it is almost impossible to work on a scale which is worthwhile, toward actual water

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conserved. Let's expand our watershed program to a point where the water which falls will remain close to the vicinity in which it falls.

Our irrigation water level is going down each year-if we don't make some effort to recharge our underground water supply, we will eventually run out.

In conclusion, I would like to personally thank each of you gentlemen for coming out here to hear what we have to say, and I sincerely hope that the facts we have placed before you will prove of some value in working out an equitable farm program.

Mr. WILLIS. Well, you take the average dry land Milo farm which would be about 800 acres I mean 800 pounds to the acre, that is a pretty good crop. I cannot make any money. You cannot farm any kind of a crop dry land for less than $60 or $70 an acre, could you? The CHAIRMAN. I do not know. I am sure we can do it a little cheaper than that at home. That would be a good profit for us. Mr. WILLIS. I am not talking about a profit.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand. Here is a farm, a man producing nothing but grain sorghum

Mr. WILLIS. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. It is no wonder he is in bad. Why cannot he diversify it? That has been our trouble in the South for a long time, trying a one-crop system of cotton, but we have learned from you folks how to grow a little cattle, and chickens, and things like that, to diversify it. Our farm people are doing better.

Mr. WILLIS. I am highly in favor of diversification.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. WILLIS. I have 11 tenants and I try to get them all to diversify and they do, more or less. We raise alfalfa and we raise hogs. We raise hogs for 13 cents a pound and do not know about the profit end of it.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what they are selling for. Your profit would be zero in that, too.

Mr. WILLIS. We pay $8 to $10 a day for farm labor. I do not know how we are going to continue to pay it.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you very much, sir.

All right, Mr. Barte.

STATEMENT OF LEE G. BARTE, SECRETARY-TREASURER, TIJEROS SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICT, ALBUQUERQUE, N. MEX.

Mr. BARTE. Mr. Chairman, I am a dairy farmer in the Albuquerque area and the topic that we wanted to bring before the Senate committee here was a discussion on conservation and flood-control measures. We received notification from your office that, due to the demand of time on this price-support problem that we would be asked to deal directly with the committee in Washington after the hearing is over; so that, with your permission, we will do that.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. That is, of course, a subject a little different. You have the law on the statute books now and an amendment to that but we are principally concerned here with the farm-support program. Mr. BARTE. We were under the impression before your tour started that you were going to discuss some of those things.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Some have asked me to discuss forestry. Of course, that is an important subject but if we try to cover the whole lot, why we may be able to do justice to only one sore spot.

Mr. BARTE. That is right. With your permission, we will do as advised.

The CHAIRMAN. If you have a statement to file now, I will be glad to receive it.

Mr. BARTE. No, sir; we do not have it at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, thank you.

We will next hear from Mr. Abbott.

Will you give us your name in full and your occupation?

STATEMENT OF H. S. CASEY ABBOTT, PHOENIX, ARIZ.

Mr. ABBOTT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am a farmer in Maricopa County, Ariz.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know my good friend, Carl Hayden? Mr. ABBOTT. Very well. He sends his regards to you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Proceed Mr. Abbott.

Mr. ABBOTT. I wish to thank you for the opportunity of appearing. I also wish to congratulate you on your efforts in making this countrywide tour. You are a very brave United States Senator.

The subject which I will cover, you may consider controversial, but for your information the statement which I am about to make ĺ gave to Senator Hayden and Seator Hayden said that it should be read in front of your committee.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, proceed.

Mr. ABBOTT. Relative to the present pronouncements on the part of Secretary Benson, stating that the farmer is not badly hurt, only caught in a price squeeze: The truth of the matter is that he is not able, or is reluctant, to make the proper moves to save the farmer from ultimate ruin.

Our foreign trade in farm products is in large part lost. Any attempted movement out of surplus is thwarted either by the State Department or the Department of Commerce-mainly by the former. Regardless of the condition found in the Department of Agriculture when this administration took over 3 years ago the sins of the previous administration against the farmer were few, and this administration had the opportunity to correct them, with the laws already available on the books.

What did they do? They have confiscated the foreign trade of the American farmers, and for supposedly security reasons given it to foreign lands.

Take the cotton problem as an illustration. Our ordinary exports, prewar, would run 7,500,000 bales annually. We are now exporting 3,500,000 bales. Thus under the policies established in Washington we have lost 4 million bales of exports each and eavery year.

Had this administration granted the same boons and supports to the farm business that they have to industry, we would have exported 12 million bales of cotton, and there would not be a bale left in the United States. Instead they have aided our so-called allies in the development of farmlands and the purchase of farm equipment no only to be self-sufficient but to take over the American farmer's export business.

Mexico alone is developing 750,000 acres between Mazatlan and Culiscan-all for cotton. The Central American countries are on the move and all with the same objective, to take over the American

foreign farm market. The void is there. Created by the timid policy of this administration of not exporting our surplus production in honest competition in foreign trade.

What is the answer? First, administer the law in the manner and to the objective intended by the Congress and stop playing national and international politics with it. Second, our foreign trade in farm products must be regained.

We used export subsidy at one time and no one complained. Are we so thinskinned that we today are unwilling to close our ears to the wails and threats of the land and industrial promoters in foreign lands who are in large part, with the aid of American capital, destroying the warp and woof of American agriculture? Use it againmake competition tough by offering our cotton and other products abroad in ever-increasing lots out of our storage-after all this is a must, for the Commodity Credit Corporation is only the temporary custodian of these products in the interest of the American farmer and was never supposed to be used as a permanent depository-certainly it will lower the foreign price of these products, but that will take the gravy out of the huge agricultural and complimentary developments going on throughout the world, and reduce them to a national basis. That is what we want and that we can live with.

Remember the slogan "Food will win the war"-well, whose food did it? The American farmer's production which for 5 long years fed the world. We had better keep that plant alive and in good working order.

This administration's policy which has been so destructive to American agriculture and yet deceiving to the American public must be stopped. They have permitted our production to become an economic loss. They have confiscated our foreign trade without compensation, supposedly for security reasons. They are continually reminding the public of the farm problm cost, and yet it has been created by themselves. If they insist upon piling up charges and costs by holding our products back from the legitimate market and then claiming it is all for security reasons, then in all honesty and decency let them place the costs where they belong-not against the farm program but directly in the appropriation for defense.

Third, only by a long-range plan, containing land rental of diverted acres plus an incentive rental program retiring temporarily excess land and creating a void to be filled out of surplus-in a loan program on basic crops at 90 percent of parity, with its crop allocation and acreage control features, plus an aggressive policy of export can we bring the farmer back to his proper place in our economy. Anything less, and he will be slowly squeezed to death between low prices and high costs, his purchasing power eliminated, his business destroyed and he himself driven into bankruptcy.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I am in full agreement with you in respect to the expansion of our food production abroad. As an illustration, I was in North Africa last year. With money that we had made available to the French, they used the counterpart funds to send tractors and what have you into North Africa, not very far from Rabat and Casablanca. There, in the space of only a couple of years, they have grown rice that is as fine as any we have produced. and they are growing cotton and wheat.