STATEMENTS OF VERNON H. ADEE, AMERICAN BEEKEEPING FEDERATION, HADDAM, KANS.; AND E. H. ADEE, NEBRASKA DIRECTOR, AMERICAN BEEKEEPING FEDERATION, SUTHERLAND, NEBR.

Mr. VERNON H. ADEE. I am a beekeeper and want to talk about price supports for honey.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. ADEE. Senator Ellender and members of the committee, Senator Carlson, it is generally recognized that bees are vitally essential to the production of legume seeds and various fruit and vegetable crops by all our agricultural authorities. Without bees to perform this service the production of various fruits, vegetable and legume seeds would be in exceeding short supply. Due to the indiscriminate use of spray materials and to the destruction of the nesting places in intensive cultivation of our farmlands, our wild natural pollinators have been destroyed. As a result honeybees are the only pollinators available that can be raised in sufficient numbers to perform this service of pollination.

It is impossible for beekeepers to receive little if any pay for this service due to the beekeepers' inability to control the flight of the bee except in a few isolated areas. Therefore the beekeeper must depend on the amount he receives from the honey produced to stay in business and thereby keep bees available for pollination.

The present price-support program, though beneficial, is inadequate. Many beekeepers are going out of business. The United States Department of Agriculture reported recently that there was 4 percent less colonies of bees in the United States in 1955 than in 1954. State of Kansas had 3,000 less colonies the past year. This trend has been going on for a good many years and if kept up will detrimentally affect the national welfare.

The

The beekeepers' equipment has been deteriorating for many years and is not being replaced by new material. Many beekeepers forced to sell are doing so at 25 percent to 50 percent of the price of new equipment. Most of this equipment is not being purchased by new beekeepers but is being purchased by other beekeepers to replace old wornout equipment. The present beekeeping industry is being carried on mainly by older men for at present the income from beekeeping is not sufficient to attract young men. The present flexible pricesupport program has been inadequate to remedy these conditions.

Because of the vitally essential part that bees have in the national welfare in the production of essential foods and crops, we, the beekeepers of Kansas and Nebraska, do respectfully request that honey be classed as a basic commodity and have the same basic support as other basic crops.

We believe bees are a basic need because they affect not one small segment of the country but lack of bees affects over 50 crops that are essential to the health and economy of the country as a whole. Just to mention a few, all melon and vine crops, all small fruits such as the strawberry, raspberry, cranberry, citrus fruits, and all other fruits. Many vegetable seeds, such as onions and carrots and last but not least, the legume seeds which furnish our protein feeds and are our recognized soil builders.

In order to conserve the time of your committee, we have condensed this as much as possible and are presenting it in a joint statement from the beekeepers of Kansas and Nebraska.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

You may proceed.

Mr. E. H. ADEE. I am E. H. Adee, Nebraska director of the American Beekeeping Federation, and in order to save your time we have given this as a joint report.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you ever so much, sir.

The next is Mr. Josserand.

STATEMENT OF GUY JOSSERAND, DODGE CITY, KANS.

Mr. JOSSERAND. I am Guy Josserand. I am a farmer and stockman living at Dodge City, Kans.

I haven't a prepared statement. In fact, until Senator Schoeppel requested it I had no thought of appearing here to make a statement. Perhaps he told you I am one of the farmers who had an opportunity to study agricultural economy of 35 foreign countries. I was one of the group that went around Southern Europe and made a study of the agricultural economy of 10 countries: England, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Switzerland, and Germany. You know when any group starts out to study anything or look at any sight they are like the six blind men who went to see the elephant. They all see it and maybe in a different light. You are probably familiar with the report of the trade missions submitted to the Secretary of Agriculture in June last year.

That report was the composite of all opinions and the things I have to say now are my own. They are not the trade missions' opinion but they are my own personal conclusions that have been arrived at from what I saw.

This whole picture to me is not as dark as we have heard it pictured here this morning, as we see it in the press, or as we think of it generally. We are in the adjustment that comes after every war and there is just one answer to it, and that is markets and when you get into markets you have competition of your competitors at home and abroad and there is where we can solve I think much of our problem.

We don't have at this time, or haven't had since before the war any one outside of Government pushing the marketing of our products throughout the world, and you know and I know that Government can't merchandise where there is a profit and loss accounting to be made.

Every commodity that has a marketing problem has to do it itself. In other words, the best investment that we as farmers can make today whether producing wheat or milk or corn is to see that the marketing machinery is set up and financed and we will have to do part of it ourselves, to vigorously merchandise our products in the world markets.

You can't convince me as a dumb farmer that as long as there are a billion people in the world who go to bed hungry that there isn't a potential market, and I emphasize the word "potential," for our food products.

Not only in the foreign countries is that true, but our American people are not on the type of diet that they could be. We can invest

the consumption of much of our high protein foods here in the United States; 85 to 90 percent of our market is within our own shores and we haven't done as good a job as we could do in that.

You talk to any dentist or doctor today and he will tell you of the children from intelligent families and not necessarily low income families whose children are coming into their offices at 15 years of age with their permanent teeth in a terrible state of decay because they are not fed the proper food to produce strong bodies.

That happens here. It is not the fault of the Government that that is the case. It is lack of education along those lines, it is maybe too much income in some cases. But the child sits around with a Čoke or 7-Up, if I may name them, or a soft drink

The CHAIRMAN. Or bubble gum.

Mr. JOSSERAND. Yes, instead of a glass of milk or slice of good bread like mother used to take out of the oven filled with butter, that I can remember. She never saw a vitamin or ammino acid that I know of, she never mentioned it, but she knew what it took to build strong teeth and strong bodies. Andy Schoeppel's and Andy Carlson's mothers did the same thing. So much for our own American market.

Now on the foreign end of it you have got tremendous complications, you have got many countries, dictatorship countries, very conscious of what happens, they have complete control, as a young Spaniard told me in Spain. He said "We can use all of your surpluses you have got in the United States to bring the diet of our people up to a caloric diet of 2,000 calories a day if you will just show us how we can pay for it." In the same day in talking to a Spaniard in government, he said "If we took your surpluses as a gift and raised the diet of these people and raised their standards of living for 2 or 3 years and then wouldn't keep it up, we would have revolution on our hands." There are two points of view.

But somewhere with an emphatic and energetic and dynamic. merchandising and sales program we can get through. I think I saw that in Barcelona when I spoke to this Spaniard. I saw so many Italian scooters running around a neat little wagon they use there that I said, "Don't you buy any scooters except Italian?" And he said, "Well, Franco's son-in-law has the importation concession on those, so use your own judgment."

Now we

The CHAIRMAN. I wonder if you could confine yourself to ways and means of solving this problem and not talking about abroad. We have other witnesses to hear.

Mr. JOSSERAND. I think the first thing is to find some way for us to finance marketing programs controlled by the commodity. Ninety percent of that has to be done by ourselves as producers. I don't know whether you can help on that or not, but you can at least help in the educational field.

A vigorous marketing program is the solution to our troubles. We are not going to get out of this price squeeze entirely by controlling production. Maybe we can make our acreage production a little more concrete by quit fooling ourselves, saying what we mean and stop taking out of one crop and putting in another.

That shoe will fit tight and we won't like it, but we are not getting anywhere with taking it out of one crop and putting it in another.

The soil-bank idea is fine. It will do some good. The trouble with it is that the tendency may be to, for the landlord to squeeze the tenant out because after all that land is eliminated from the cost of production.

I simply state those things that I firmly believe we can find the market, and I just want to throw that ray of hope in. I think that is all I have to say at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator YOUNG. It is not only finding a market, but a question of changing our international policy. For the past several years we have refused to sell food to Russia or satellite countries, and did you find in traveling around, particularly Eastern Europe, those countries would like to buy food from us?

Mr. JOSSERAND. The thing we ran on to very much was the fear in much of Europe that they had to stay friendly to Russia or to the source of supply nearer them because our products were on this side of the ocean, and in time of war their shores were blockaded. The Portuguese said "We were just as hungry during the war because you couldn't get your wheat to us and your food to us. "We need some warehouses in Europe closer to the market. We need storage around the Mediterranean. We need storage in Hamburg and Bremen, the great gateway to the European market.

I think we should trade with the Soviets. I think the world has gotten so small that you can't pick your customers and pick your friends. In fact, you don't shoot people as a rule that you trade with. That is the cause of most of your disturbances, lack of trade between countries.

Senator YOUNG. I agree we could greatly increase our exports to Russia and satellite countries and I don't think we serve any good purpose by refusing to sell them.

Mr. JOSSERAND. The world has gotten so much smaller we haven't realized it. You don't shoot your customers, the people you trade with. Senator YOUNG. I was in Hungary about a month ago and at that time the Hungarian Government wanted to buy wheat from the United States. I think they offered to pay 25 percent down and the rest on time, but we refused to sell them.

Mr. JOSSERAND. I think also we should explore this nonperishable strategic material situation. We have squandered $285 billion of our grandchildren's money, squandered a lot of their natural resources put here by nature, and food is a perishable strategic material. We can keep the product of our farms high, trade it for materials that are nonperishable that are just as strategic as food, tin, copper and a lot we don't produce. We have stockpiled some of that. That is an out that we can trade. Strategic food material surpluses for nonperishable strategic materials. It is a big job.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.
Will you give your name in full?

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE K. FIBER, McDONALD, KANS.

Mr. FIBER. I am Clarence K. Fiber, McDonald, Kansas. I operate a farm in northwest part of Kansas. It is highly adapted to the production of wheat. I will discuss just the things I have seen that have taken place in the last 25 or 30 years in my community.

The first farmer in that section of Kansas was C. R. Payne. At the time that I arrived at McDonald he farmed 4 half sections, total 1,280 acres. On this farm he practiced summer fallow and he has summer fallowed one half section, I would say that the one half section has been in summer fallow rotation close to 50 years. And this farm today can plant or seed less than 380 acres out of a possible 1,280 tillable acres.

Mr. Payne has passed on and it is in his heirs and they are operating that farm under these conditions. He definitely, and I definitely, am interested in what has happened to his acres. We feel, and I have seen the definite shift that the wheat acres from the western wheatgrowing areas to the eastern or central part of the United States. I was on, I farmed 1,600 acres of cultivated ground myself. I am in the cattle business. I was on the cattle-purchasing deal a short time at Burwell, Nebr.

There were farmers from every part of the Corn Belt. The farmer sitting next to me was from 70 miles south of Indianapolis, he thought cattle was too high at 22 to 25 cents. I said can't you feed your corn? It is less than $1 a bushel. He said "yes," that is what we want to do. I said if you don't think you can make a profit at 25, why don't you sell it. He said in our county there are 11 corn farmers in compliance. I said how about the wheat program. He said practically all of them or a good part of them were in wheat compliance.

Now in the county in which Mr. Bayne lives and in which I live, Mr. Bayne and myself and the other parties being typical have complied all through this program. I have farmed since 1930. In our area there were 29 farmers overseeded in 1954. In 1955, 412. This year they estimate it would be 75 percent. I personally have been in the program every year until the last 2 years and when my acres have been cut as Mr. Carlson or Senator Carlson stated this morning to the mere point of 500 acres out of 1,600 cultivated, I have 1,100 acres that I don't know what to do with.

Every year that we have had a program I have diverted or planted some sorghum for cattle feed and alfalfa where I think it is adaptable. Every year that there was not a program I tried to work into the wheat production as much as I could. And every year that I have farmed since 1930 I have lost money in the production of sorghums or other crops other than wheat except one.

Now what can we do with our diverted acres? I have personally 1,100 acres to divert to something. I have seen my neighbors follow that same practice of diverting to sorghum and corn, which is unadapted to our particular area, with the same result. I have fed cattle, I have bought my neighbor's corn, but mostly milo, to feed cattle. I have made a profit every year. I paid income tax every year. But the main reason I think I have done it is I followed the crop that is adapted to my area and unless we get back on to the crop that is adapted to our area I think our agriculture is going to slip in our area.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you suggesting that your wheat acreage be increased and other States that are now planting it, that have shifted to wheat, be curtailed?

Mr. FIBER. I certainly am advocating that the wheat acreage be returned to the area that it is adapted to and the corn acres be planted where they are adapted. Now, I made