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Mr. PERO. I sell to the public direct and through a little publicity and little sympathy, perhaps, shall I say, asking for some support from the public. And we are able to sell hail-cut apples and banged fruit. It is not exactly good.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

Our next witness is Mr. Renouf. Give us your full name for the record.

STATEMENT OF HENRY RENOUF, BELCHERTOWN, MASS.

Mr. RENOUF. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is Henry Renouf. I am from Belchertown, Mass.

I used to have 75 head and I sold them in 1951, because it seemed a little too valuable for me to play around with. Luckily, I sold them at that time.

Unfortunately, I went into the poultry business as a substitute. So I sort of jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

I have a tree farm and I also sell hay. Also, I have a lot of friends in the dairy business. I am interested in that problem, though it has been so well covered that I shall not burden you too much about it. I think there has been less talk about a farm program than complaints about the problems of various commodities.

I came up here not to complain, but in the hope that perhaps a backwoods philosopher might come up with an original idea because he has not been submitted to so many older ideas. So I would like to discuss some of these.

I felt that a farm program meant we wanted to supply abundant food of top quality at low cost.

There has been a lot of talk about prices, but very little about cost. It seems to me that if the costs of a farmer are low he can sell food at a low price and make a profit. If his costs are high he can sell food at a high price and makes a loss.

It is not so much the price we have to worry about as it is the basic costs.

A national farm program has to consider a steady supply, which means that the producer must make a profit.

The concern of the Farm Bureau and a great many organizations about support, whether it is flexible support or a rigid support, is about like motherhood-I mean, you cannot be a little bit pregnanteither you are or you are not.

The support idea basically substitutes a false market.
The purpose of producing is for consumption.

The transfer of ownership which happens in the case of supports is not a market. It simply puts a burden, threat, a thunderhead over the entire situation. It scares farmers morally, even if it did not hurt them the other way.

So the whole idea of the Government taking ownership of vast amounts of produce and then holding it over the market is a threat, a moral danger.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your solution, let us get to that-let us not philosophize. How would you handle it? If you were in my place as a Senator, what would you propose to the Congress?

Mr. RENOUF. I would propose that you do not buy any more fooddo not buy commodities.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, cancel out the whole farm-support program?

Mr. RENOUF. No, sir. I said "buy." I did not say that you not protect.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you handle it?

should

Mr. RENOUF. Somebody mentioned here the matter of compensatory payments. I think he was sort of condemned, you might say guilt by association as being favorable to the Brannan plan. I think that was one of the programs offered by Brannan, but the Government can support a farmer as an emergency insurance step without buying his output.

The CHAIRMAN. I would be curious to know from you how you would handle this program-I mean, in any other manner than it is now being done with respect to the surpluses.

Mr. RENOUF. I would not handle it as a Government agency and spend close to $1 million a day in storing and moving commodities which I do not want.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you handle the surpluses, then? Let us put it that way. You say in one breath that you would support the farm program.

Mr. RENOUF. I suggest that the Government pay the farmer, if the farmer is in a disastrous situation. I would compare overproduction with a flood, with a drought.

We have in the New England States, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, disasters imposed upon us fruitgrowers, such as was mentioned, the hurricane damage. It is the same class of damage as overproduction, insufficient income, and no sale.

The CHAIRMAN. What would you want to do with the product? Mr. RENOUF. There is no product produced here that cannot be consumed at a price, I believe. I do not believe there is one single commodity produced in the United States of America today that could not be sold at a price, but it is the need for the Government to hold the thing that assumes that price and cost are synonymous. The CHAIRMAN. We have today in our bins about a year and a half supply of wheat. How would you handle that under your plan?

Mr. RENOUF. How would I handle wheat? I would not store wheat. I would not buy wheat.

The CHAIRMAN. You have 1,030 million bushels of wheat. What would you do with it?

Mr. RENOUF. We were addressed in a Farm Bureau meeting by a Dakota wheat farmer who said that he can make a profit on wheat at 85 cents, and it is supported at $2.18, if my memory is correct. The CHAIRMAN. Where is that person from?

Mr. RENOUF. From the Dakotas.

The CHAIRMAN. I am just from there. They say that they cannot do it. Is he living here now?

Mr. RENOUF. No, sir. I identified myself as coming from Massachusetts, so I have to quote this gentleman. I do not know whether he is correct. Those are the figures he stated.

The CHAIRMAN. He left the Dakotas?

Mr. RENOUF. He said he was not allowed to grow enough acreage of wheat to make a living any more.

The idea I would propose to take the conservation of our land and our resources as one unit. Nobody has spoken here of soil conserva

tion in this connection. An agricultural program should include this diverted acreage, not a soil-bank area where the rainfall is in excess of 25 or 30 inches. There if you abandon land or do not fertilize or crop it, it becomes poorer each year. Therefore, the soil-conservation program, the water-control program, or something of that sort would be a vastly better suggestion for our northeastern farmers. Also I believe in the ingenuity of the farmers.

I happen to have been born in China. When I was in China at the age of 2 I had 17 dairy cows serving as a 2-year-old child, and those 17 dairy cows were unable to supply enough milk.

The CHAIRMAN. For you?

Mr. RENOUF. For me alone. And my father finally sold those cows and sent to Montgomery, Ward & Co. and imported Carnation milk from the United States.

I believe that our technique is sufficient to compete with low labor of any country. If we cannot raise half as much rice per acre as a Chinaman, I think the Arkansas farmer should learn something about fertilizer and machinery.

I think the farm program should be based upon an optimistic outlook. The Government's role in it should be a matter of insurance and give the farmer a chance and he will make a great success of it. The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you very much.

Next is Mr. Stoddard.

Mr. STANTON. He filed a statement.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Henry A. Stoddard, Vermont State Grange, Bellow Falls, Vt., is as follows:)

My name is Henry A. Stoddard, and I represent the Vermont State Grange. I am sure that I represent the majority of 17,000 plus members of the order in Vermont.

We believe in the flexible-support price for milk products and so-called basic crops as the only plan that is workable at the present time. But we look forward to the day when through self-help the Government pricing program may be done away with entirely.

We feel the school-lunch and special school-milk programs should be continued. We object to the Government bringing large tracts of land into cultivation as long as production exceeds demand.

We believe in the appropriation of sufficient Federal funds to continue the work of the Soil Conservation Service to permit the continuance of this important work of protecting our vital soil and water resources.

The CHAIRMAN. Next we will hear from Mr. Ernest W. Dunklee.

STATEMENT OF ERNEST W. DUNKLEE, WINDHAM COUNTY FARM BUREAU, VERNON, VT.

Mr. DUNKLEE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I will not read all of the prepared statement but would like to select 2 or 3 statements to read.

The CHAIRMAN. The whole statement will be put in the record.

Mr. DUNKLEE. 1. General prices received by farmers in my area are not enough to take care of our increased costs and leave a reasonable income for labor involved.

2. Much has been said and will be said about milk prices. We want to go on record as favoring the continuation of the Federal milkmarketing orders in our area, with constant study, and changes as necessary, to keep them equitable with changing conditions.

3. We believe flexible price supports will in the long run prove more beneficial to farmers and the country as a whole than would rigid price supports.

The CHAIRMAN. Can that be done administratively without a change in the law?

Senator AIKEN. Yes. You do not have to do that to amend the milk order.

Mr. DUNKLEE. That is right. I have one statement touching on that.

4. We favor the continuation and expansion of research in agriculture, and especially in the field of marketing farm products.

Speaking for myself, I believe that such changes in legislation should be made as are necessary to permit producers under a Federal order to assess themselves for advertising purposes.

Production of surplus milk, and this is my opinion, in this area is not caused by low prices or Federal orders, but rather because the dairy farmer as an individual has no control over the proportion of his milk selling for class 2.

Many farmers would be willing and glad to decrease their production if their remaining product was sold at a fluid milk price.

Further, I believe our country is more secure with a program resulting in small surpluses and Government purchases than with a program of shortages and resulting ration.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Ernest W. Dunklee is as follows:)

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this Senate committee. My name is Ernest W. Dunklee. I am a farmer from Windham County Vt., I have a dairy herd of a little over 200 head of which about 125 are milk cows. I am treasurer of the town of Vernon and have served as a director or trustee of Windham County Farm Bureau for 33 years.

I am not a student of parity or of all the ills of agriculture today, but a few of my neighbors and I got together and would like to make the following statements:

1. General prices received by farmers in my area are not enough to take care · of our increased costs and leave a reasonable income for labor involved.

2. Much has been said, and will be said about milk prices. We want to go on record as favoring the continuation of the Federal milk marketing orders in our area, with constant study, and changes as necessary, to keep them equitable with changing conditions.

3. We believe flexible price supports will in the long run prove more beneficial to farmers and the country as a whole than would rigid price supports. 4. We favor the continuation and expansion of research in agriculture, and especially in the field of marketing farm products.

5. We wish to go on record as favoring the work of the Department in connection with extension education, the agricultural conservation program, the Soil Conservation Service, and Forestry Service. We believe strongly that the ACP program of cost sharing has meant that a lot more conservation work has been done in Vermont than would otherwise have been done. If there is any way

to make this program less restrictive and less complicated, that should be done. 6. We believe in the work of the animal disease eradication branch and recommend renewed support in the eradication of brucellosis. Thanks again for the opportunity to appear before this important and honorable committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

We will next hear from Mr. Roy Wood.

STATEMENT OF ROY W. WOOD, PITTSFORD, VT.

Mr. WOOD. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have been on the farm. since 1928. I am just speaking at the present time as an individual

farmer. I did not hear well this forenoon, but I do not think anybody touched the flood-control problem.

Of course, that is pretty close to us right here in New England. The CHAIRMAN. That is a subject that this committee has no jurisdiction over.

Mr. Wood. We will drop that, then.

The CHAIRMAN. Except the small watershed, if that is what you had in mind.

Mr. Wood. I think perhaps that is a method of controlling some of these floods. We had a Government survey in the Otter Creek Valley back a few years ago. The result was that it would do no good to dredge the creek unless we went back and stopped the freshet floods that brought the sediment down and filled the creek up.

The CHAIRMAN. Incidentally, while you are talking about flood control and this water conservation, et cetera, I am presently the chairman of a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee that handles all of the moneys for flood control and related projects. I found it strange that the people of the New England States somehow have not been over-enthusiastic for the programs that were authorized by the Corps of Engineers in order to protect you from floods here. I wondered if that attitude has changed.

Mr. Wood. At the time that this survey was made there was an estimated cost to the landowners somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 an acre, which was like buying their land over again and even more. For that reason the landowners were not interested.

The program at that time was dropped a good many years ago. At the present time, I wonder, as the war tension ceases, if the Army engineers could be put into this flood area to work out a program to hold back the floodwaters and stop some of the disaster and a continuation of it. There is a vast amount of money spent to rehabilitate and bring back the flooded areas and they are immediately flooded again.

On the forestry program that I have here, I think that possibly that could be a State problem or a joint Federal and State problem. I think probably that is the secret of some of our flood problems. The way we have taken the forests off our hillsides and left those hillsides unprotected for the floodwaters to come down into the valleys, causes me to wonder if we could not have an intensified program, a forestry program that would put forest trees back onto these hillsides.

Then we have another problem here in Vermont. As these hill farms are being bought up by city people who come in for a summer home, they generally abandon the land, and that land grows up into bush. I wonder if a forestry program would not be appropriate on that abandoned land.

Senator AIKEN. I have a bill in on that which would authorize Federal participation on the same basis that they are authorized to participate on soil water conservation. It has not come back to the committee with a report yet.

Mr. Wood. These forests in the future could be a great natural resource to New England.

In regard to what I have to say on these three other items, I represent the Dairymen's League. I was subdistrict president and represented about 955 producers that market their milk largely in New York. A few of us are marketing in Boston.

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