The CHAIRMAN. In other words, you would suggest that we put a premium on that portion of the crop which is salable and which is readily salable? Mr. SMITH. Not necessarily a premium. The CHAIRMAN. I mean that you would start off with the support price to encourage that? Mr. SMITH. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. And you would lower it so as to discourage the lower quality of cotton? Mr. SMITH. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. We have a bill pending on that and I am the author of it. How we will reach it I do not know. Mr. SMITH. That is my sentiment. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir. We will next hear from Mr. Jorgensen. Give us your name in full and your occupation, please, sir? STATEMENT OF WALTER 0. JORGENSEN, VICE PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF TEXAS SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICT SUPERVISORS, CEDAR HILL, TEX. Mr. JORGENSEN. Mr. Chairman and Senator Eastland, my name is Walter Jorgensen and I am a farmer and stockman of Cedar Hill, Tex. I depend on this for my entire income. I am also a supervisor of the Dalworth Soil Conservation District and a director and vice president of the Association of Texas Soil Conservation District Supervisors. Being a farmer and rancher, I am naturally interested in an adequate income for agricultural people, which is essential to a reasonable standard of living. I am also concerned with adequate farm income because of its effect on our basic resource-the soil. To illustrate, we have an increasing number of farmers who tell us "I cannot plant my cover crops this fall, or sod the waterways or build terraces because it is taking all I have to pay the grocery bill and other necessary expenses." Low farm income is one cause of many of our young farmers going out of farm business. They are the young men who have borrowed money to buy their livestock, equipment, or land. Some of them are now unable to make payments that will permit them to stay in business. The spread of sound soil and water conservation in the future is greatly dependent on these young farmers and ranchers who have their future before them. For these and other reasons the problem of price supports of basic commodities has a very great effect on soil and water conservation work. Watershed protection and flood-prevention work, as made possible by Public Law 566, has found a ready response in Texas with requests for assistance being made on almost 100 small watersheds. It is my hope and recommendation that the Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture provide the necessary appropriations and other facilities for speeding up this work. Too, I believe and recommend that this work be continued in the United States Department of Agriculture rather than being turned over to the Army engineers as recommended by the Hoover Commission. There are many reasons, too numerous to mention here, why this work should be continued in the United States Department of Agriculture. Some of these are the close tie-in between soil and water conservation work and upstream flood prevention. Farmer and rancher problems and conservation works cannot be separated from upstream flood prevention. Technical help to soil-conservation districts needs to be increased. We have five new soil-conservation districts in Texas who will need this technical assistance and many other districts now have too little technical help. The assistance of the United States Department of Agriculture should be strengthened and should not be put on a grantin-aid basis. I believe that the research work in soil and water conservation should be strengthened. This work is basic to our needs and the program has lagged too long. In the wind-erosion areas there is special need also for completion of soil surveys. Soil Conservation Service recommends the planting of certain lands to grass, but the farmer doing this can then be penalized by reduction in acreage of crop allotments under the ASC program. These conflicting policies should be resolved in the interest of a sound soil and water conservation program. I don't know what acreage control program the Congress will pass but I believe that any phase of this program that relates to soil and water conservation work should provide a maximum recognition of and cooperation with local farmer-rancher groups and leadership such as now exists in soil-conservation districts. This same principle should hold true with all soil and water activities of the United States Department of Agriculture. This recognition and cooperation should be strengthened. I am sure that you gentlemen, in your deliberations and decisions, will consider not only the present problems but the future needs of our rapidly growing population. These people are and will be fed by products grown on our farms and ranches. I appreciate the opportunity of presenting this testimony to this committee. I hope you will give adequate consideration to the necessity of sound soil and water conservation work and to soil-conservation districts as a medium through which local farmers, ranchers, and others can work together with local, State, and Federal Governments. The CHAIRMAN. We have quite a nice program on the statute books and I am glad to say that during the last session of Congress, we were able to improve it, as you know, and we are aware of what you are talking about. So far as I am personally concerned, I shall see to it that we try to get more aid along the lines just suggested. Mr. JORGENSEN. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you ever so much. Give us your full name and occupation. STATEMENT OF CHARLES A. STEWART, SECRETARY-GENERAL MANAGER, TEXAS & SOUTHWESTERN CATTLE RAISERS ASSOCIATION, FORT WORTH, TEX. Mr. STEWART. My name is Charles A. Stewart, secretary-general manager of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. The CHAIRMAN. You do not farm? Mr. STEWART. No, sir; I am not a farmer. I neither farm nor operate a ranch. The CHAIRMAN. Proceed. Mr. STEWART. While there is a multitude of problems plaguing the agricultural industry, I realize that time will not permit a consideration of all of them, but there is one suggested remedy which would bear so directly on the livestock industry that I want to bring it to the attention of your committee for your careful consideration in arriving at a solution of the farm problem. I refer to the suggestion we are hearing repeated frequently of a plan for the Federal Government to lease land and take it out of crop production, with the suggestion at least it could be used for the growing of livestock. If this was done, the effect would be to simply reduce one surplus crop to create another. Livestock is now in a cycle of surplus production which has caused drastic reduction in the price received by the producer and is fast reaching the point where the price wil lbe below the actual cost of production. As an example, the average price of prime steers on the Chicago market October 20, 1955, was $23.06, while on October 21, 1954, it was $28.02, a decline of $4.96 per hundred. Choice steers were $22.11 on October 20, 1955, as compared with $25.51 October 21, 1954, showing a decline of $3.40 per hundredweight. All grades averaged $22.07 October 20, 1955, as against $25.61 October 21, 1954, a decline of $3.54 per hundredweight. The average price per hundredweight received by farmers for all cattle in 1951 was $28.70, as against $16 in 1954, a decline of $12.70 per hundredweight. The number of cattle on farms has been on the increase for the past several years and it looks like that trend will continue for another year or so at least. The number of cattle and calves on farms in the United States, in 1951. 1952. 1953_ 82, 025, 000 | 1954. 94, 787, 000 95, 433, 000 That is an increase of around 13 million head in the 5-year period. I bring this to the attention of your committee so that you may see the position the livestock industry is in and the injustice of adopting any plan which will encourage or result in increased production in an industry which is already suffering from overproduction, with no prospect of early relief. The CHAIRMAN. We have heard considerable evidence, maybe it was mostly from the newspapers in Washington, that the cattle business is in good shape throughout the country. I noticed a decline of 12.7 from a high of 28.7 from 1951, to $16 in 1954. What is the current price that the farmer gets now? Mr. STEWART. I do not have the current prices. I had the price there for the year. The CHAIRMAN. What is it today, or yesterday, can you tell us? Mr. STEWART. But I do not have the average price. Those are the average prices over a year's period. I do not know of any daily average price. The CHAIRMAN. Would you say it is in excess of what it was in 1954? Mr. STEWART. No, it is lower. The CHAIRMAN. Lower? Mr. STEWART. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. That is contrary to what we hear. Mr. STEWART. Are you referring to the last figure that I gave, that the farmer received $12.70? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. STEWART. If you will notice that was the entire year 1954. Those figures compare with the figures for 1955-those have not yet been published by the Department of Agriculture, so I was unable to get it. The CHAIRMAN. Is it your judgment that the price in 1955 will average less than in 1954? Mr. STEWART. Very definitely, sir. The CHAIRMAN. So that the beef price then is not what they say it is; that they are going up and holding steady? Mr. STEWART. That is absolutely incorrect; over a period of time, they might go up and down some tomorrow, but for the year they are much lower. The CHAIRMAN. What has been the difference in the cost of a beefsteak, generally speaking, in this area in 1951 to what it is now? Mr. STEWART. My personal experience is that the better cuts of beef are just about as high today as they have been. The CHAIRMAN. You know, I have learned a lot from the farmers at these hearings. They would not mind so much a decline in the prices if consumers benefit, but they dislike to see the "in-between" get as much as they do. Mr. STEWART. That is true, and it has been a problem ever since I can remember. It has been thought, however, that the spread between what the producer gets and what the consumer pays has always been out of line and the answer, generally, has been and is now that labor costs and all of those costs absorb it just about as fast as the price of the live animal goes down. The CHAIRMAN. You know less than 5 years ago, the farmer got 53 cents out of every consumer dollar that was spent for food. Do you know what it is today? Mr. STEWART. No, I do not. The CHAIRMAN. Forty cents. That is one thing that makes it bad for the farmer and one thing we are trying to assist him in. What do you attribute this high increase in cattle population to from 1951 to 1955 and an increase of over 13 million head? Mr. STEWART. It is probably due to the fact of the high prices of cattle this year. You cannot turn on and cut off cattle production, and the history of it shows that it goes in cycles, from 7 to 10 years; when the cycle starts upward it continues from 7 to 10 years before it levels off. It is one of those cycles, but, apparently, during very prosperous times in the cattle industry they have not yet been able to get down in line. The CHAIRMAN. This cycle has been considerably on the increase in the past few years. Would you say that this increase has been due entirely to the farmers growing cattle, or have some doctors, dentists, lawyers, or other people with a lot of money been going into the business because they thought that they would make more money out of it? What effect do you think that that has had? Mr. STEWART. I would not be able to say the effect, but I do know there have been a great many people who are not cattlemen who have gone into the cattle business. I will say this, also, there are a great many of them that have gone out in the last year. The CHAIRMAN. They got stung, did they not? Mr. STEWART. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. I hope that the sting is still in them. It is now 5 minutes of 12 o'clock, and we have had 10 witnesses, we have heard 10 witnesses out of a total of 66 witnesses to be heard. I also notice on this program that I have before me that there is only one man here, as I see it, who is not a Texan. He is from Oklahoma. I believe he represents an industry that has not been talked about up until now. Mr. Glenn Gibson, are you present. Will you step forward and tell us about the honey situation? STATEMENT OF GLENN GIBSON, SECRETARY-TREASURER, OKLAHOMA BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION, MINCO, OKLA. Mr. GIBSON. My name is Glenn Gibson. I live in Minco, Okla. I own and operate 1,000 colonies of bees and a honey-packaging plant in western Oklahoma. I am the immediate past president of the American Bee Keeping Federation and secretary-treasurer of our Oklahoma State Association. The beekeeping industry has enjoyed the benefits of supports since 1950. The farm bill of 1949 provided mandatory supports on honey from 60 to 90 percent of parity. The present farm bill contains the same. We were not given a support because of our economic importance dollarwise, but to assure adequate pollination for more than 50 fruit and seed crops. Hence, controls have never entered into our picture. The Government has not purchased too much honey. Under 60 percent of parity, in 1950, they purchased 7.4 million pounds. In 1951, under 60 percent of parity, it was 17.7 million pounds. In 1952, under 70 percent of parity, they purchased 6.9 million pounds. In the marketing season of 1953-54 the Government purchased less than 500,000 pounds. None was delivered to the Commodity Credit Corporation in 1954-55. And we have every reason to believe that none will be delivered in the 1955-56 season. Then, after we got into this support program, the Government suggested, that is, the Department of Agriculture suggested that we commence promoting honey. They assisted us in this program in 1952–53. We have been working on this thing ever since, and each year this program is expanding. Another reason that we are enjoying a fair market today is that we have been exporting honey to foreign countries, and in the last 2 years it has been better than usual. And in the last couple of years we have had droughts spotted all over the country which has reduced our production about 20 million pounds. At the present time, honey is selling below our loan rate of 70 percent of parity. This support program, which probably is not the best thing in the world for us, has taught us that we must sell our honey ourselves, and |