DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES EIGHTY-NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION v. 43 pt. I SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND RELATED JAMIE L. WHITTEN, Mississippi, Chairman WILLIAM H. NATCHER, Kentucky W. R. HULL, JR., Missouri ROBERT H. MICHEL, Illinois Ross P. POPE, Staff Assistant to the Subcommittee PART 1 BUDGET FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE 45-763 Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1965 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS GEORGE H. MAHON, Texas, Chairman ALBERT THOMAS, Texas EDWARD P. BOLAND, Massachusetts GEORGE E. SHIPLEY, Illinois JOHN M. SLACK, JR., West Virginia ROBERT N. GIAIMO, Connecticut JULIA BUTLER HANSEN, Washington CHARLES S. JOELSON, New Jersey JOSEPH P. ADDABBO, New York JOHN J. MCFALL, California W. R. HULL, JR., Missouri D. R. (BILLY) MATTHEWS, Florida FRANK T. BOW, Ohio CHARLES R. JONAS, North Carolina WILLIAM E. MINSHALL, Illinois KENNETH SPRANKLE, Clerk and Staff Director (II) DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1966 FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1965. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE WITNESSES HON. ORVILLE L. FREEMAN, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Mr. WHITTEN. Gentlemen, the committee will come to order. This is the first regular meeting we have had of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture to consider the 1966 budget for the Department of Agriculture. I would like at this point to welcome to the subcommittee our friends and colleagues who have just recently become members of the subcommittee. Bill Hull, of Missouri, succeeds Mr. Cannon as the Representative from Missouri on the Appropriations Committee. We are glad to have him on this subcommittee in which Mr. Cannon took so much pride over the years. As I perhaps mentioned earlier, Mr. Cannon retained the subcommittee chairmanship for many years after he was chairman of the full committee. We are also glad to have Tom Morris, of New Mexico, join us here, as well as our colleague and friend, Odin Langen. All three of these men have been actively interested in the consumer and the producer and in agriculture generally through the years. Mr. Secretary, we are glad indeed to have you before us and we will be glad to have you proceed in your own way. GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE SECRETARY Secretary FREEMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here always and may the record show that I have with me this morning our Director of Agricultural Economics, Dr. John Schnittker; Charles Grant, budget officer of the Department of Agriculture; and Mr. Robert Beach, Deputy Administrator of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. I have a brief statement, Mr. Chairman. Mr. WHITTEN. We will be glad for you to present it. (1) Secretary FREEMAN. Then I will do my best to respond forthrightly to what I know will be useful and searching questions of this very competent subcommittee. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, this year, perhaps more than any other year since 1961, the Congress and the administration have an opportunity to insure progress in commercial agriculture. Each of the programs affecting the major farm commodities will come before the Congress this year, and they are converging at a time when public interest is especially heightened. This is the subject I would like to discuss in my opening remarks. I do so because I believe strongly that before progress can be achieved there must be understanding, and broad public understanding of the nature and need of commercial agriculture is not as good as it should be. PROGRESS IN RURAL AMERICA Our progress in rural America in the past few years is a good example of how public understanding can help achieve progress. In two previous appearances I have stressed the need for programs to strengthen efforts which will hasten rural development and, with your leadership, those programs have been forthcoming. I was appalled, as I know you were, that the proportion of substandard and dilapidated homes in rural America is three times as great as in urban areas-and now Farmers Home Administration can provide housing loans to all rural residents. More than 14,000 rural communities of 100 or more people do not have central water systems-and where there is no water neither is there likely to be sanitation. Now there is a substantial increase in the loan funds available to assist in financing community water systems in rural areas. The quality of education for the rural child has always been less than that available to the child in urban schools. The rural American generally has fewer years of schooling than an American raised in the city or suburbs. The proposal now being considered by the Congress gives some hope of bringing equity to rural education. RURAL POVERTY Poverty is much more familiar to people in rural America than those in urban areas. Half of the Nation's poverty is concentrated among the 30 percent of Americans in rural areas- or twice as common in rural as in urban America. The programs to broaden the range of job and income opportunities-ARA, Rural Renewal, Resource Conservation and Development, and others have become key parts of the major effort to help rural communities move ahead more rapidly. This whole effort to speed rural areas development has been strongly endorsed by President Johnson in his farm message-an endorsement which calls for parity of opportunity for the rural American. To underscore that commitment, the President has called on every Federal agency to reach out into the rural community as effectively as they now provide services for urban areas. To facilitate this new commitment, we have established in the U.S. Department of Agriculture a special coordinating agency-the Rural Community Development Service and have placed at its head one of the outstanding men in the Department, Robert Lewis, who will appear before you to describe in more detail the goals of this agency. The progress we have made in the effort to bring new hope to rural America would not have been possible without the understanding we have gained by spotlighting the needs which exist in rural Americanor the support and determination of this committee to provide the funding with which these programs are being put to use by rural America. Rural development is vital to the continued growth of our whole economy. But no less vital is the continued success of commercial agriculture. We have benefited enormously from the development of the greatest production miracle in all of history. The earnings from agricultural exports in the early years of this Nation were essential to the growth of an industrial economy; and the increasing efficiency of the family farm helped to free more and more people to produce the goods and services which a diverse and free society requires. And there's more to this great production story. FARMERS AS PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS In addition to providing all the foods our people want to buy, and can buy, our farms produce enough more to provide healthful diets for those who cannot pay at all or can pay only part of the cost. These consumers, through the school lunch and school milk and food stamp and direct distribution programs, receive $750 million worth of food each year. In addition to enough food for those who can pay, and for those who can pay none or only part of the cost, our farmers have been producing enough more to permit hard sales abroad at the rate of $4.5 billion a year, plus $1.76 billion worth a year to use as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy through our food-for-peace program. Life is richer, fuller, and more promising for all Americans because of this tremendous success in commercial agriculture. If you classify as a mirale something that had never been made to happen before in all the long history of men and farms, we have witnessed a miracle. But this miracle is no accident. It is the product of substantial investment, wise forethought, and much hard work. A family farm system of agriculture, which places a premium on initiative and enterprise, has had access to more knowledge, more power, and more resources than any other nation has yet been able to bring to bear. However, this situation could change. There is nothing inevitable in the policies and programs which have brought us to where we are today. And that is why we must take a very hard look today at the policies for commercial agriculture. Food supplies are only part of the reason for this scrutiny. Equally important in this consumer oriented economy is the role of the family farm as a consumer-as a prime consumer. They spend more than $29 billion a year on the goods and services related to agricultural production. They use more petroleum than any other industry. They take 6 percent of all the rubber consumed in the United States each year. They use 5 million tons of steel a year a third as much as the automotive industry. They consume about 4 percent of the Nation's electric power. |